| Pavement – Elevate Me Later Lyrics | 15 years ago |
| I agree. My only addition is that it's another song on the album that alludes to rock'n'roll mythology--"those who sleep with electric guitars." Add that to "Cut Yr Hair," "Range Life," and "Fillmore Jive," and I think you have enough weight to say that "Silent Kid" could be about an innocent kid entering the rock lifestyle. | |
| Pavement – Fillmore Jive Lyrics | 15 years ago |
| What do people think of the theory that it is rock'n'roll itself that is speaking in this song--saying that it's worn out and needs to sleep? | |
| Pavement – Fillmore Jive Lyrics | 15 years ago |
| "The composers are so distracted." He's going through various genres, talking about why they're unsatisfactory for him. Classical music composers are so distracted. Dance faction a little too loose for him. Punks, rockers. | |
| Pavement – Silence Kid Lyrics | 15 years ago |
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I agree with the Great Ozmaster. I always have thought it was about youthful innocence. SM is encouraging the silent kid to maintain childhood innocence. Specifically, he's telling the silent kid to maintain his innocent pursuit of rock'n'roll glory. On that note, I always thought he said "don't listen to your grandmother's advice about a job." It fits because grandma is telling you to, say, go to law school so you can get a respectable job. But I'm probably totally wrong. Also, I always thought it was the "spotlight express," not "spotlight ecstasy." The "spotlight express" is a metaphor for the music industry, which produces overnight stars, chews them up and spits them out. After all, the album returns again and again to the music industry as a theme . . . "Cut Yr Hair" is the most obvious example, but "Range Life" also talks about making a commitment to "the way I'm living" and makes certain infamous observations about the Smashing Pumpkins. And "Fillmore Jive" is written from the perspective of rock'n'roll, with rock'n'roll saying that it needs to sleep. But I digress. |
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| Pavement – Western Homes Lyrics | 15 years ago |
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I love this song. I think it's a perfect ending for Wowee Zowee. It's a weird change of pace after all those sprawling jams--very fitting with Pavement's style to do that. It's about California, like a lot of their songs. A lot of the immigrants to California were only looking for a new home, a place to breed, a congregation. Now the dream has gone wrong--their homes are "locked forever." That's my take on it, anyway. |
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| Pavement – Mussle Rock (Is a Horse in Transition) Lyrics | 15 years ago |
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I don't underrate it, acorm88! One of my favorites. I love this single (the "Father to a Sister of Thought" single)--three perfect songs. One of my favorite recorded things by any band ever. I hadn't heard about it being a possible closer for Wowee Zowee. I actually like "Western Homes," but yeah, it would have been a great choice. Wonderful impressionistic lyrics that convey some kind of summertime ennui. What happened on Pelican Road? And I love the guitar lick in the ride-out. |
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| Pavement – Father To A Sister Of Thought Lyrics | 15 years ago |
| One more thing: "Newark Wilder" is another song where he alludes to his negative view of marriage. | |
| Pavement – Father To A Sister Of Thought Lyrics | 15 years ago |
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Hm, you all have smart things to say about it. I LOVE this song. The CD single is one of my favorite recorded things ever: this song, then the song about the ladies at the beach club on a Sunday afternoon (clucking lowly like enemy platoons), then a freakin' great Spiral Stairs song about Pelican Beach being closed. Great cover to the CD single too. So . . . anyway, I've kind of vaguely thought it was about fear of marriage? That is, fear of committing and settling down. I guess because a lot of SM's songs from this era seem to be about that subject, and I think I read an interview once where he said that "Rattled by the Rush" was about fear of marriage. If you look at "We Are Underused" from Brighten the Corners, that one seems to be about what he's afraid he'll become after he gets married: a boring, "underused" middle class person who's worried about stupid things. So, my lyrical evidence: (1) "Ugly steeple fear" is fear of going to the church to get married. " (2) Rotten device": he's defensively accusing his girlfriend of trying to trick him into getting married (hey, it happens--i.e. women do it, and men imagine it). Then he says a bunch of mean things about her (her sharpened heel, how he's looking around for someone else in case she breaks up with him because he won't ask her to get married). (3) "Calling the bluffs," "talking tough," he's talking about how his girlfriend has, in effect, said, "well, if you love me, why won't you marry me?", and implicitly threatened breakup if they don't get married. (4) "Good times forever after," that's the myth of marriage. (5) "I'm just a man / you see who I am," he's saying, "I'm really quite simple, I want comfort without commitment." But the hooks, books, angel of Corpus Christi, I don't really know how that fits in. If someone wants to connect A to Z for me here, I'd love to hear it. |
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| Van Morrison – Glad Tidings Lyrics | 15 years ago |
| Yeah, I first heard this song on the Sopranos and almost cried right there . . . what a great Christmas song. This is what Christmas is about for me. I don't care about the religious stuff or the consumption, but I really like seeing the people you love and feeling like "they'll talk to you when you're in trances"--i.e. they love you and they don't care if you're a little off. All they ask is that you don't read between the lines--i.e. you take their love at face value. That's what I read into it, anyway. | |
| Pavement – We Are Underused Lyrics | 15 years ago |
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It's SM thinking about growing old, becoming middle-aged, and feeling ambivalent about slipping into a boring middle class existence. It's saying "we have all this potential, but we waste it all on the wedding invitations and preparing the roast." Thus, we are "underused"--we aren't doing anything important. Then there are the fears of the secure middle class, which grow out of their boredom with their own uneventful existences--"oh my god, there's a Crip in the house!" I think a lot of SM's recent work touches on this sort of stuff. He's fascinated by the contradictions of being a fundamentally middle class guy with a rock-star career. Ray Davies from the Kinks blazed this trail originally (not to say that SM has nothing original to say about it--he's brilliant). |
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| Pavement – Conduit for Sale! Lyrics | 15 years ago |
| I am impressed by this huntmstr fellow. I always thought the song was about a California real estate deal and suburban sprawl. The "conduit between two cells" (not "selves," I always thought) is an expressway between two large cities. Some developer comes in and builds something--say, an outlet mall--and cheers erupt throughout the settlement on its commercial success. In a way it's kind of disappointing to learn that my treasured song about suburban sprawl is more likely about the House of Savoy. But I guess that's OK--death of the author and all. I will continue to think "between here and there is BETTER than anything over there!" when driving through affluent exurbia. | |
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