| X – Real Child of Hell Lyrics | 12 years ago |
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The X documentary "The Unhead Music" shows John Doe in the writing process for this one. In it, he states: "I was inspired by a guy named Robert P. Williams, a blues guy. And he said 'no man or woman knows what trouble really is in this world', and I took it to mean [that] it could always get worse. And that's the sort of thought you can never really identify true trouble or the blues or whatever because always it can go further. "And so the song's about the real child of hell, which you never really see. You're in a bar, or you're in some place, and something strange starts happening, and then all of a sudden you feel like that thing is there, that real child of hell is there, and causing this thing, working its evil way. You turn around to look for it and you can't see it. Turn around to get and it's not there." |
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| Gang of Four – Ether Lyrics | 12 years ago |
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I have always enjoyed the push and pull of this song's rhythmic structure. The bass part gets lodged into my head often, and I came onto this site for the lyrics before searching elsewhere for more details on the track. I found a great article here that shares Jon King's insights on this song along with the rest of the Entertainment LP. http://www.clashmusic.com/feature/gang-of-four-track-by-track "There’d been a report published in the mid 70’s that found the British Government guilty of torturing IRA suspects. They used to, among a smorgasbord of cruelties, make suspects stand up for hours in hoods while white noise was played at gross volumes to break their will. The Americans, years later, tweaked this format by playing hard rock to the holed up General Noriega in Panama until he surrendered. As US Sergeant Mark Hadsell said at the time: 'These people haven't heard heavy metal. They can't take it. If you play it for 24 hours, your brain and body functions start to slide, your train of thought slows down and your will is broken. That's when we come in and talk to them.' Yeah, dude. Whatever, the report on what was being done in our name was shameful; reported back to us on TV, alongside some other world atrocity, while we were enjoying ourselves, unwinding at the end of the day, getting ready for fun and games. So the notion was for 2 voices, telling scripted parallel stories. One voice, the one who’s living his fine life, says 'Locked in heaven’s lifestyle' while the other, at the same time, says 'locked in Long Kesh' (the prison for IRA & UDF members in Northern Ireland). Etc. You get the picture. This one does this as the other does that. The run out chant 'There may be oil in Rockall!', was based on our paranoid notion that the reason the British annexed, in 1955, an ugly & tiny rock in the deep Atlantic was less about stopping the Russians spy on NATO missile tests than the fact there might be oil about to pillage. And it came to pass! In 2007 the Brits announced a claim to vast swathes of the Atlantic for 350 miles around the rock! The first example of eco-colonialism!" |
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| Indigo Girls – Kid Fears Lyrics | 16 years ago |
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The following is from an Indigo Girls interview in Spin magazine, from August 1989: Amy Ray: "'Kid Fears' is about the difficulty of growing up, getting into a world where people know where your hiding places are and what your secrets are. In the third verse, when I say 'Skipping stones/We know the price now,' that's specifically about the music industry. I used the image of skipping stones because the flatter and smoother the stone is, the better it skips and the more spin you put on it the farther it goes. When I say smooth, I'm talking about being polished and dressing right. 'We know the price now/Any sin will do' - there's a lot of things you can do to get further in the industry, and a lot of them, to me, are sins, because they're compromises. I stick to principles too much. I have a real short temper and tend to be outspoken. It's like, one person says something like 'Oh, when the paychecks start rolling in you'll change your mind about that,' can make you say 'Well f*ck you, because I'm never going to change, I'm always going to feel this way and I know I am.' You have to be really strong, and remember that you're getting to play and that's really what you want to do." |
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