| Neutral Milk Hotel – Ghost Lyrics | 18 years ago |
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"And she was born in a bottle rocket 1929" I think this may refer to Robert Goddard, an American scientist famous for developing liquid fuels in bottle rockets in the 1920s. From Wikipedia: "After a launch of one of Goddard's rockets in July 1929 again gained the attention of the newspapers, Charles Lindbergh learned of his work ... By late 1929, Goddard had been attracting additional notoriety with each rocket launch. He was finding it increasingly difficult to conduct his research without unwanted distractions." |
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| Clap Your Hands Say Yeah – Details of the War Lyrics | 20 years ago |
| Every song on this album is great, but this and "Yellow Country Teeth" both stand out. This young band is going to be big, I think. There is a good review of this CD at www.pitchforkmedia.com | |
| mewithoutYou – Gentlemen Lyrics | 21 years ago |
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i saw them two years ago when they were touring with ace troubleshooter and their emotion and passion for the music took me back, there were maybe twenty people there and they played with the same intensity as a sold out arena new cd comes out soon, from what i hear it may be better than a-->b life |
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| Pedro the Lion – Keep Swinging Lyrics | 21 years ago |
| Probably the most musically challenging, yet one of the most rewarding, songs on Achilles Heel. Pretty much describes getting really drunk, possibly autobiographical for David though I haven't read anything to confirm that. He does drink and had battled alcoholism in his past life. | |
| Pedro the Lion – Penetration Lyrics | 21 years ago |
| I think I heard somewhere that penetration is also a business term for reaching customers, so it's makes for sense for that line to be in the song, when it originaly was not. | |
| Sufjan Stevens – Say Yes! To Michigan! Lyrics | 21 years ago |
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Amazingly catchy song, makes me want to go to Michigan... Hopefully he's able to follow through on his plans to do all fifty states |
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| Pedro the Lion – Slow and Steady Wins the Race Lyrics | 21 years ago |
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David Bazan: "Winners Never Quit is a weird record because the narrative is so linear all the way through. This was the second or third song that I wrote for it, when I still didn’t have a very clear idea of what was going on. I remember sitting in my apartment starting on this song. I had been married for a couple months, and I don’t remember very much aside from that. To me this is a song that’s been misunderstood quite a bit. In the past, I’d write from a particular perspective and appear sympathetic to that perspective and that character, when really, the point is to make light and mock it, ultimately. The brother who narrates this song is really smug and careless. He lacks compassion. It was a great pleasure to write this song because I really liked mocking that perspective. That perspective and the faith that I grew up in subtly appears everywhere. It’s not very subtle when you think about it, but the way that it’s presented in the song is apparently subtle enough to where a lot of people who this song is theoretically about would come up to me saying, “This song is so beautiful to me. It’s so inspiring thinking about heaven and God’s rewards.” You know, all this total craziness. I would just stand there flabbergasted. I wouldn’t even have the heart to tell them." |
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| Pedro the Lion – Almost There Lyrics | 21 years ago |
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David Bazan: "This song started out a bit different. It was made up of very general references to dissatisfaction and angst. And then in the context of the Whole EP, I changed some of the references to heroin. I was feeling really frustrated with certain elements of my life. This song is literally just an expression of that point in time. The specific lyrics themselves were never really the point. It was more about the tone and mood of the song. " |
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| Pedro the Lion – Criticism as Inspiration Lyrics | 21 years ago |
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David Bazan: "I’ve always disliked one particular thing about all of my favorite indie rock songwriters like Elliott Smith and Doug Marsch. A lot of their songs were always themed in criticism. Like, “You’re such a fucking pro, but you don’t really know.” While I like their songs a lot, that part of them I never liked. And I had been somewhat vocal about that with some of my friends. Then I started writing this song. The first verse started coming out and I realized that I’m writing a song like that. So, I decided that I had to turn that around. I had to make fun of the fact that I’m writing a song like that. So I made light of my own tendency to build myself up by putting other people down that are always helpless in arguing with it, ‘cause it’s a song. This song just kind of goes back and forth between poking and criticizing somebody and then making light of what my motivation might be. " |
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| Pedro the Lion – Bad Diary Days Lyrics | 21 years ago |
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David Bazan: "This was inspired by a buddy of mine who found a letter in a drawer in his house that indicated that his wife had been having an affair. The thing that was interesting to me was what the discovery process in a situation like that would look like and tend to feel like. The song is just snapshots of that process. This song is also loosely inspired by JD Salinger’s Nine Stories. He was just so frugal with words. He was able to say so much without having to explain the details. When I wrote this I was working really hard to make something like that happen. To whatever degree it was successful, I’ve been really proud of this song. That’s why lyrically, this is one I’ve continued to like. It’s so simple. " |
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| Pedro the Lion – The Longer I Lay Here Lyrics | 21 years ago |
| David Bazan: "This song is one of the few totally autobiographical songs in the Pedro the Lion catalog. I was writing It’s Hard to Find a Friend and I was getting a little bogged down. I was feeling like I just wanted to go some place and sit and make something up. At the time, my room was totally filthy and I was feeling like a bit of a failure and a relatively undisciplined person, in general. So I went upstairs to my friend Blake’s bedroom, which was totally clean and I was reminded of my little sister, who is far more disciplined than I am. She’s really a wonderful, diligent person. Very sweet and kind and on-top of her shit. This song just came out from that right there. Aside from a few minor changes, this one came out, start-to-finish, in the couple hours I spent in Blake’s room. It was a very satisfying thing to do. I was really longing to create something and what happened still holds a strong connection for me. " | |
| Pedro the Lion – A Mind of Her Own Lyrics | 21 years ago |
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David Bazan: "I was still coming up with ideas for songs, and with Winners Never Quit, it was very specific and based heavily on certain events. This song was written because this event needed to happen. This is the confrontation song and the killing song. The lyrics for three of the eight songs from this album were written after all of the music was recorded. This was one of them. I wrote these lyrics the night before we mixed the record. Two other songs were written after the record has been mixed. While we were mixing I wrote the lyrics “Eye on the Finish Line” and “Bad Things to Such Good People”. ”A Mind of Her Own” was written the night before the mixdown, and I was just trying to finish all the tracking. That meant vocals, and vocals meant lyrics. I was writing the lyrics and recording the vocals simultaneously. It was a pretty furious process. I started really building a lot of momentum and by the end my voice was pretty blown out. I would’ve re-cut that last vocal, but I didn’t have any voice left, literally. I was pretty fortunate because I had been thinking about this song a lot, but I didn’t have the courage to really commit pen to paper until I was forced to. But because I had been thinking about it a lot, I had a lot of stored subconscious information about it. So, when it came time my subconscious had already done a lot of the work for me, as far as realizing what moments to jump to. Right away in the song, you’re skipping all the confrontation that originally happens and it sort of implies that. She’s already in the bathroom and he’s already making threats before he goes back and sort of recounts. This song also develops his character a bit more during the recounting because he’s so arrogant and so maniacal. I really have fun singing this one. It’s sort of embarrassing sometimes because people perceive the last verse as being my voice. Those are certainly not my thoughts or ideas, but when I get into his mind a little bit there’s a lot of really pleasurable tension. " |
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| Pedro the Lion – June 18, 1976 Lyrics | 21 years ago |
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David Bazan: "This song is sort of me aping TW Walsh, aping Neil Young as far as the melody and chord-progression. And that’s how that song began. At the time, I should’ve been writing lyrics for Winners Never Quit, because the lyrics for that record weren’t finished yet and I was coming up against a deadline. I ended up getting distracted by this song. The first line that came out was, “I was born in KC, Missouri to a girl who wasn’t married.” And that was all I really had. At some point I decided to change it to, “You were born…” because then the perspective has some added depth. And all of a sudden there’s a narrator and a listener that’s implied that caused me to imagine who he’s talking to and what their reaction might be. From there, I just followed the story. I didn’t know what was going to happen. It just kept building. And by the time I got to the chorus, the girl was up on the roof, taking one last look around. By then I knew what was about to happen, and I stopped there for a while. For about a month I didn’t have anything else ‘til I had to record the song. That’s when I wrote the second verse. I’m particularly fond of the line, “Skin and tragedy always attract a crowd.” " |
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| Pedro the Lion – Rejoice Lyrics | 21 years ago |
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David Bazan: "This used to be a song called, “the Stars”. It had a very similar chord-progression and melody. When it was “the Stars”, it was about a guy who had escaped the city for two or three days. He was out camping and drinking a lot of beer. At one point, he became very moved by the immense beauty of the stars. He had it in his mind that he wanted to be one with them somehow – as irrational a thought as it was. I can’t remember exactly what happened, but I know he didn’t want to go back to the city. I liked it pretty well, but something about it just didn’t work, so I came up with “Rejoice”. It’s a really simple lyric. The thing that is compelling to me is I never really decided if the chorus of, “Rejoice, rejoice, rejoice!” is sarcastic and mocking the idea of rejoicing in the face of the statement made previous to it, or if it was sincere, making it a paradoxical statement or something. People would ask, “Are you being serious at the end or are you being cynical?” And I honestly don’t know. It depends on how I’m feeling when I’m singing it. " |
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| Pedro the Lion – Indian Summer Lyrics | 21 years ago |
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David Bazan: "This was back when I was coming up with concepts for songs before I had lyrics. I would come up with a working title and a concept. I’ve since stopped doing that. Usually now I’ll just sit down and start writing and try to make sense of it later. This song’s concept was sort of based on where I live. People complain about the weather a lot. I always got the impression that people just wanted it to be sunny all the time. It really irritated me. If it had been sunny for a long time and then rained for one day people would say, “Can you believe it’s raining again?” I just pictured all these tan, shallow people running around, frolicking in the sun. And then it struck me that pretty soon people would be getting their way all the time. Official reports about global warming started coming out. So, that was what the song was going to be about but it didn’t really work. I changed the game plan a little bit, though some of those ideas still got in there. It started being more about the legacy that we’re leaving for our kids, economically and environmentally. And at some point when global warming does come into full-effect, I imagine that the government will somehow spin it as a good thing and take credit for it. I decided their slogan would be, “God bless the Indian summer.” Especially since after 9/11, the whole God-Bless-America thing was pretty fucking irritating. That definitely had something to do with the song. So, this is mostly a collection of random landscapes and sound bytes. " |
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| Pedro the Lion – Backwoods Nation Lyrics | 21 years ago |
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"We were on tour on September 11. We woke up in Chicago that morning. By September 13 I was really furious. I couldn’t believe the way we were responding to that event as a country. The indignation was so beyond me. The first verse and the bridge came out in four or five minutes. It was very cathartic for me. "- David Bazan |
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| Pedro the Lion – Arizona Lyrics | 21 years ago |
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From interview with David Bazon on cloakanddaggermedia.com: "It really works better with Nevada and Arizona because they’re kind of spooning in a weird way, but I think writing a song about Nevada and California struck me as being more interesting. The first words came out during a free-write. It was, “Arizona curled up with California.” And from there I pictured these landmasses in this love triangle. The state of California definitely has a demeanor. I think the state of New Mexico does too. I imagined what their personalities would be like if they were people. However, as I was writing, they never turned into people in my mind. They remained huge landmasses that were fighting and heartbroken and in love. The end was just a restatement of the story in some ways. Assigning each of them their appropriate rock, paper, or scissors. I think some people find that a bit random, but it’s always made sense to me." |
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| Pedro the Lion – Bands with Managers Lyrics | 21 years ago |
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"We were in North Dakota and I was listening to my friend and booking agent tell a story about one of the bands that he had worked with. They had just fired him. It was on a trail of other firings that they had done at the same time, including one of the band’s supposedly friends and supporters. It just struck me as really funny how unscrupulous people could be when someone is whispering in their ear, “You’re gonna be huge.” Out of that, the first lyric for the song came out and I just jotted it down, and later on it developed a little further. There’s this thing that I do when we’re touring. When your turn at the wheel is over and it’s somebody else’s turn you usually get dibs on the sleeping spot in the back. It’s really hard to sleep when someone else is driving though because you’re scared for your life. Especially late at night. You hear them hit the rumble strip and you can’t sleep. At one point I needed to sleep really bad and I was trying to figure out a way to calm my mind down and I developed a mantra that I use when I can't sleep because I’m preoccupied with the driver. I’ll just say, “I trust Tim Walsh (or whoever it is), and I’m not afraid to die.” Usually if I say that a couple times I’m able to relax my mind and go to sleep. " -David Bazan interview on cloakanddaggermedia.com |
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