THE SEEKERS - “The Carnival Is Over”
(#206, 27th November 1965)
What sort of qualities must a song have for both Nick Cave and Boney M to cover it? What those two acts have in common is a fascination with piety, and a fondness for playing up a track’s seriousness so that it totters into kitsch*. “The Carnival Is Over” ticks the first box with its stately pace and hymnal arrangement, and by the time Tom Springfield’s lyric reaches Pierrot and Columbine the kitsch potential is obvious too. Potential sadly unrealised in this original: I want to like it because it’s such an oddity, a restrained folk-pop tune that rejects the models for family-friendly balladry and strikes out for more austere shores. But it never quite connects with me. The smooth nobility of Judith Durham’s singing is attractive; the song as a whole though feels like a starchy exercise in writing a ‘folk ballad’, archaisms and all.
But perhaps I don’t like it just because the title is so good, so immediately evocative of things - horseboxes and caravans that vanish in the night, empty fields full of bootmarks and lolly sticks - that the song was never meant to deliver. 4
*(This is not all Boney M are good for, of course.)
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Tom on April 21st, 2005
Sorry for the lack of updates over the last week - I was in Seattle at the EMP pop conference. A big hello to the Popular readers I met there, too.
Anonymous on April 21st, 2005
Such a strange song. I actually heard it a few times on US radio when it was first released, and I’m a bit amazed it made the American airways at all. At 14, I was strangely drawn to the bizarre melodrama of it all–much ado about a carnival leaving town, and why couldn’t the protagonist and the lover to whom it is sung ever see each other again? I have since thought that the song doesn’t seem to be so much about a carnival as it seems to be about going off to war–the rather martial drums towards the end seem to suggest as much. How this connects with a carnival, though, is still beyond my comprehension, and even now I wonder if I somehow missed something in this song altogether. But what?
In the end, there’s something perversely inexplicable about the song, its meaning and its affect, so much that it approaches the point of absurdity. For that reason, I can’t help liking it a bit, just as I take an odd pleasure a certain kitsch artifacts.
With that in mind, there’s something in me that would have loved (and simultaneously cringed) to hear Tom Springfield and his sister sing this one. Perhaps I would then be able to understand the song in a way I still can’t.
Doctor Mod
Marcello on April 22nd, 2005
I knew that the song was derived from an old Russian folk ballad, but typically (and thankfully!) it has a rather more complex history than that. Have a look here for further info. Part of me devoutly wishes that the Seekers had tried recording the original lyric!
Anonymous on April 22nd, 2005
Thanks for the background, Marcello. The English translation of the Cossack song would surely explain the martial feel of it, and why it is truly a “last goodbye.” One even might say it’s grotesquely carnivalesque–but not my idea of a carnival (or a good time)!
Although the Seekers were never as big over here as in the UK (or, indeed, Australia), most people forget that they ALMOST hit the top of the US charts a few months later, when “Georgy Girl” reached #2. One still hears “Georgy Girl” quite often–it’s one of those songs that’s now ubiquitous in stores and fast-food restaurants and other such public places.
Doctor Mod
dickvandyke on May 18th, 2005
Listen to it in the context of someone close to you is slowly passing away - perhaps after a long illness. It takes on new depth … and tears your heart.
Anonymous on September 3rd, 2005
I always felt that ‘carnival’ was a metaphor for life. Not necessarily all of life, just the bit that was spent with the person who is leaving.
kevin mccarron on July 25th, 2006
Surely anonymous is `right’: the song is a metaphor for something coming to an end. The mystery, never revealed, is why it is. Is she married? Is he? The funereal drumming is similar to that which underpins Roy Orbisnon’s `It’s Over’.
Marc Chrysanthou on June 22nd, 2007
Can’t believe some of the derogatory comments about The Carnival is Over! This has to be in my Top 20 songs of all time - so poignant, with such evocative images (high above the dawn is waking, like a drum my heart was beating, your kiss was sweet as wine) and Judith Durham’s voice so clear and youthfully idealistic adds another dimension to its emotional resonance.
ROBERT J. BURNS on September 11th, 2007
DEAR READERS,
THERE ONCE WAS AN OLDER GUY WHO KNEW A YOUNG LADY THAT SUPPORTED HIM IN HIS EFFORTS TO FIND JUSTICE AS HE HAD BEEN A VICTIM OF SERIOUS CRIME. THIS GIRL KEPT HIS SPIRITS HIGH AND HAD COMPLETE FAITH IN HIM KNOWING HE WAS GOING AGAINST BIG NAMES IN ORGANIZED CRIME.
A FEW YEARS AGO THE GUY MOVED FROM THE USA TO BELFAST, N. IRELAND. WHEN THE GUY AND THE GIRL SAID GOOD-BYE IT WAS HARD BECAUSE HE FELT SHE HAD A CRUSH ON HIM BUT HE COULD NEVER TELL HER HIS FEELING TOWARDS HER.
WHILE A BOOK WAS BEING WRITTEN IN BELFAST ABOUT THE CRIMES AND LETTERS WERE BEING SENT TO THE GIRL, THE GUY REVISITED SOME OF HIS LETTERS TO HER AND WAS ABLE TO SHOW COMPLETE PROOF OF THE CRIMES DUE TO FINDING AN OVERSIGHT. THE PROOF ALSO SHOWED THAT THE GUY HAD BEEN A TARGET TO BE KILLED.
TAKE EVENTS AND WRITE A BOOK WITH “THE CARNIVAL IS OVER” PLAYING SOFTLY IN THE BACKGROUND AND CONSIDER THE FEELING THAT COMES OVER THE PERSON WHO SAID GOOD-BYE TO A GIRL HE LOVED BUT COULD NEVER TELL HER AND ALL SHE DID WAS TO KEEP HIM ALIVE. YES, THE BOOK IS DEDICATED TO HER WITH LINES FROM “THE CARNIVAL IS OVER” HAND WRITTEN IN THE COVER OF THE FIRST COPY PRODUCED WHICH BELONGS TO THE YOUNG LADY.
THANK YOU, I AM THAT GUY.
ROBERT J. BURNS
Gene on September 25th, 2007
Don’t care what you think it’s about. I like it.