| Pete Townshend – Rough Boys Lyrics | 7 years ago |
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It is absolutely about Pete's relationship with the bitter aggression of punk rockers, but not in the dismissive way described by others. The song, and the video that followed it, provokes and makes fun of punks, but in the provocatively playful way of an admirer and traveler of a similar path of an earlier generation. "I wanna get inside you...I wanna get inside your bitter mind" is sexually provocative, yes, but not exclusively or even primarlily as an expression of Pete's bi leanings. He's provoking them because it's fun to poke fun and macho toughs, but also because he wants to understand them, because he has a deep curiosity and affinity with rock 'n' roll's rebellious spirit and tradition, a tradition he helped to create, and still deeply loved when this song came out. Still does to this day, I think. |
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| Dropkick Murphys – I'm Shipping Up to Boston Lyrics | 13 years ago |
| The lyrics came from the notebooks of Woody Guthrie, the great American folksinger from Oklahoma. It's a straight story, minimally told. Or maybe less, a snippet of language from an imagined sailor's life that might have grown into a fuller story, but never did. Writers' notebooks are filled with tasty bits that never find a home. The Dropkicks made a home for this one, bless 'em. | |
| The Tragically Hip – Fifty-Mission Cap Lyrics | 18 years ago |
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When I saw them in concert at First Avenue in Minneapolis, maybe around 1993, Gordon Downie introduced it saying "This is a song about wasted potential." The obvious meaning of that phrase is Bill Barilko's death. But I think there's another kind of wasted potential in the idea of a "fifty-mission cap", a veteran, probably in a crappy job, dreaming about his glory days in the war. Downie does a lot of that sort of thing, making great leaps from one story line to another, with a mysterious but undeniable continuity of theme between the two stories. This sort of thing happens in Pigeon Camera and Locked in The Trunk of a Car, too. That's my take on it, anyway. |
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