| The Tea Party – Requiem Lyrics | 20 years ago |
| "I said that 'Soulbreaking' is probably the most beautiful song the band's written to date. I believe that 'Requiem,' more so than 'Walking Wounded,' is the most powerful song The Tea Party's done to date. And again, to go back with the first song, 'The Interzone,' there's a very tragic irony to that. It's more potent now, given the light of events, than it was when it was written. Same thing could apply with 'Requiem,' where in classical music, a requiem is usually a mass or piece of music dedicated to a loved one who's passed away or a very grand person. A requiem is usually written for this person. And in this case, the whole song, the positive message about this song, is to avoid the requiem. The people that feel that life is beginning to be a little bit too much, especially in these times now, you can only imagine how the people in New York and the families, what they're going through and having to deal with, a positive part of this song is when I'm singing, 'This passes over.' This will pass, too. The song is quite literal, it seems for itself, and it's about avoiding something called a requiem." - Jeff Martin | |
| The Tea Party – Cathartik Lyrics | 20 years ago |
| "With a 'K' at the end. Should I explain it? It's just really bad spelling. But what the song's about is you've gone out to the point where you've reached your threshold. You've partied too much, too many nights in a row. And you find yourself lying on your bed and you're alone. And there comes a point where things will catch up to you if you decide to be that hedonistic, a follower of the philosophy of Dionysus, just going for it, without conscious thinking and conscientious thinking as well to others that are around you. I certainly have gone through those periods in my life, where I'm lying on my bed, looking up at the ceiling, my heart's going a million miles an hour. I don't even subscribe to any one God whatsoever. My spirituality is very laid out. It's very diverse. But I find myself reverting back to a little Catholic boy, going, 'Please God, please God, if I can just get through today, I swear I'll try and change tomorrow. I mean, this will never happen again.' And the fact of the matter is that nine times out of 10, things never change. Eventually, you'll go through your period of purity and everything else and then all of a sudden you're feeling so good, that okay, you'll just descend back into that once again just to see what happens. So it's a vicious cycle, but a truthful one, that's for sure. So this song is definitely the heaviest song on the record. This is guitar central, this song, and again Jeff and Stu just come up with these beats. It sounds like it makes sense. It sounds natural for rock 'n' roll, but if you had to get down to dissecting it technically, it's actually quite complicated. And that's the beauty of it. It doesn't sound like that. We're not into that whole progressive-rock bullshit thing. So it's the heaviest song on the record and probably the most fun to play." - Jeff Martin | |
| The Tea Party – Lullaby Lyrics | 20 years ago |
| "This song was actually the first one of the batch that we wrote for the record. We were up at Scotty Carmichael's beautiful cottage in the Muskokas and we set up a studio there to start writing this record and this was pretty much the first riff that we worked on. The intention with this record was for the band to get back to the basics, whatever that means. But we had just come off 'Heaven Coming Down,' 'Messenger' and 'Walking Wounded' -- these really big orchestrated songs. I don't know how you can make a song bigger than 'Walking Wounded,' in rock music. I had to mix the damn thing - 72 tracks all over the place, man; this is not a three-piece! So the intention was with this record, to get together in a room, face each other, strip it down, and put all the world music instruments away for the initial part of the writing session. The musicianship in this band is quite high, so let's play guitar, bass and drums. Let's play off each other. Let's play like our lives depend on it and just rock and see what happens. And 'Lullaby' was pretty much the first song completed of the whole batch. Poetically the song takes its inspiration from the central figure of the song: Morpheus. You're sleeping tonight but you're safe in the arms of Morpheus. He is the God of opiates, the God of psychic sleep, of numbing yourself to life's experiences and drowning them with opiates. This song is hopefully positively charged. It's awakening an individual's response time to being in the now without having to numb yourself." - Jeff Martin | |
| The Tea Party – Dust to Gold Lyrics | 20 years ago |
| "Since the band started, when I was 22 years old, that's when I seriously started getting into the works of someone, like, say, Nitzsche or Spinoza, different philosophers, and tried, to a certain extent,to apply some of these things to my life; reading constantly, and while I'm reading, applying, which is the most important thing to do if you're going to read philosophy for self-benefit. There are those, though, especially in rock 'n' roll --- because you've got all the myths of say, Jim Morrison. He got into the French poets like Rimbaud and Beaudelaire and whatnot, but he took their lifestyle to heart and drank himself into the ground. But the thing is, especially in this day and age where vanity seems to be the be-all and end-all in rock 'n' roll, it's all about the image. I get very disappointed, and my disdain grows. When I see an interview with Marilyn Manson, and it almost seems like he got Publicist 101 book happening -- okay, if you're going to be a goth rocker, you've got to know this philosopher; you've got to know this poet, this name and this name. You drop them at the right points, and you'll come off as the real deal. Meanwhile, I'm listening to this guy and he's got a bunch of kids around the world, for better or for worse, digging what he does, but when you're dealing with this kind of philosophy --- the most extreme example is Hitler, who used Nitzsche's writings in a very twisted, most wrong way possible. Nitzsche was not anti-Semitic. He was not into purifying the German race. Somehow Hitler twisted his words -- so basically, what I'm saying, is with philosophers like that and books like that and literature like that, there's a certain amount of responsibility. Unless you know what you're talking about, I would highly suggest that you do not bring up those things and try and make yourself into something you're not, because you're being extremely irresponsible with this forum that you've been given. You've been given this pedestal, on which to stand upon, rock 'n' roll, the stage, the whole thing, and you get to talk to all these kids, and maybe you should, if you really want to in your conscience, you want to make a difference and you want to help better or give them questions to ask or whatnot, at least know where you're coming from and be grounded in what you're saying. This is a song against the ones who go on those pedestals and they speak these names and they speak this big talk without actually knowing what the hell they're talking about. That's irresponsibility. They're misleading young minds." - Jeff Martin | |
| The Tea Party – Inanna Lyrics | 20 years ago |
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Innana is, the Sumerian goddess deity. "Inanna is herself the Goddess of Love, and it is this aspect and power - creativity, procreativity, raw sexual energy and passion - that generates the energy of the Universe ... Inanna is both the shy virgin and the sensuous mistress" - from 'Inanna: Journey to the Dark Centre' by Mary Scarlett Moon and Callista Deep River or so ive read in the info about their songs |
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