| Los Campesinos! – Avocado, Baby Lyrics | 10 years ago |
| "The fires of Delphinus" might also be a nod to the eternal flame at the temple of Apollo in Delphi. Delphi's famous for its prophetic Oracle, which sort of fits in with the "trying to look forward not back" vibe of lines like "It won't get better / that doesn't mean it's gonna get any worse". | |
| Matthew Good – While We Were Hunting Rabbits Lyrics | 12 years ago |
|
Yeah, this is a somehow-even-more-epic version of Peter Gabriel's Solsbury Hill. "Watched by empty silhouettes That close their eyes but never see No-one taught them etiquette I will show another me..." |
|
| The Sisters of Mercy – 1969 Lyrics | 14 years ago |
| I've just listened to the original and the Sisters cover and I'm pretty convinced it's "War across the USA." I've always taken it to refer to the confict between the generation of the Summer Of Love and the establishment, which was brought to a head by the Vietnam conflict. | |
| The Sisters of Mercy – Under The Gun Lyrics | 14 years ago |
|
"The tower, the moon, the gun..." Inkeeping with the "card game" theme, The Tower and The Moon are both parts of the Tarot deck's major arcana. The Tower traditionally depicts a tower being struck by lightining and signifies the breaking down of existing forms (tying into "THe house soon fold and no-one stand"? And even more tenuously, might "the gun" refer to the famous Chairman Mao quote about change only coming through the barrel of a gun?). The Moon signifies dreams, hopes, faith, intuition and the subconscious. Between those two cards you've pretty much got the whole of the Sisters' canon! "Nine nine nine, singer down..." 999 is the number for the British emergency services, the equivalent to the American 911 call. Coincidence that the phrase is so close to "Nine While Nine"? |
|
| R.E.M. – Driver 8 Lyrics | 16 years ago |
| Not strictly relevant to the meaning of the song, but (possibly) interesting to some - in his run on the comic Doom Patrol, Grant Morrison had a character ("Crazy Jane") who suffered from multiple personalities. One of the more "together" personalities that manifested itself was called Driver 8. | |
| Babybird – Candy Girl Lyrics | 16 years ago |
| The little backing-vocal undertone of "And I don't mean that rude..." after every "Lick my candy, girl" isn't enough to convince you that the song's tongue is firmly in its cheek? Fair enough. Personally, it makes me smile every time I hear it. | |
| Eva Cassidy – Who Knows Where the Time Goes Lyrics | 16 years ago |
|
As it's not been mentioned, this song was written by the late, great Sandy Denny, and first appeared on Fairport Convention's "Unhalfbricking" album. I firmly recommend checking out the original. It's been covered numerous times, but my personal favourite is Nina Simone's heartbreakingly fragile version that's available on her "Anthology" CD. |
|
| The Tragically Hip – New Orleans Is Sinking Lyrics | 18 years ago |
|
"i looked up to the Lord above and said hey iggy, thanks". I think that's because in the Live Between Us version of this song Gordon throws in a couple of snatches of "China Girl" which was, of course, first recorded by Iggy Pop (and if you've only ever heard the Bowie version, you owe it to yourself to hunt down Iggy's version. I'm pretty sure it's on The Idiot). (Perhaps) interestingly, China Girl is about a guy who's completely out of control and plainly heading for a fall, possibly dovetailing in with Wonderdog's "Eat, Drink And Be Merry For Tomorrow We May Die" interpretation of this song. |
|
| A Perfect Circle – Counting Bodies Like Sheep to the Rhythm of the War Drums Lyrics | 19 years ago |
|
Thinking more about this, it struck me how clever a turn of phrase "counting bodies like sheep to the rhythm of war drums" really is. It's a more poetic step on from "How can it mean anything to me / If I really don't feel anything at all?" from Stinkfist. It's about desensitisation, isn't it? We've seen TV pictures from warzones so many times that the sight of broken bodies not only doesn't affect us, it's started to actually bore us. The more dead bodies we see, the more bored we get to the point of "falling asleep" - we're counting the bodies like sheep. |
|
| A Perfect Circle – Counting Bodies Like Sheep to the Rhythm of the War Drums Lyrics | 19 years ago |
|
I mentioned this in the Pet discussion, but the "Go back to sleep.." refrain recalls for me a Bill Hicks routine in which he takes on the role of a government official who's attempting to pull the wool over the eyes of the public (about the Kennedy assassination, but the subject isn't the point). "Go back to bed, America!" Hicks shouts. "Go back to bed America, your government is in control again! Here, here's American Gladiators! Watch this, shut up! Go back to bed America, here's American Gladiators. Here's 56 channels of it. Watch these pituitary retards bang their f***in' skulls together and congratulate you on living in the land of freedom. Here you go America, you are free! To do as we tell you! YOU ARE FREE, TO DO AS WE TELL YOU!" Not a big jump from "You are free - to do as we tell you!" to "Safe from pain and truth and choice", is it? This sounds to me like a sequel to Pet. In the first song, you're being seduced by the very human desire to surrender your freedom in exchange for safety. You hand over the burden of your responsibilities and choices to a metaphorical father-figure who'll guide you and protect you from the bogeymen that lurk in the dark - and from yourself. Pet lulls you to sleep with a song that's as gentle as a lullaby in places. Counting Bodies Like Sheep... is what happens if you give the "father" from Pet what he's asking from you. Relentless, monotonous, violent - not so much Industrial music as Military-Industrial music. Just my opinion. |
|
| A Perfect Circle – Pet Lyrics | 19 years ago |
|
Maynard Keenan's a big Bill Hicks fan, isn't he? I ask because when I first heard Pet, the "go back to sleep" reprise instantly reminded me of the tailend of Hicks' routine about the Kennedy assassination: "So there, we have figured out! Go back to bed America, your government has figured out how it all transpired! Go back to bed America, your government is in control again! Here, here's American Gladiators! Watch this, shut up! Go back to bed America, here's American Gladiators. Here's 56 channels of it. Watch these pituitary retards bang their f***in' skulls together and congratulate you on living in the land of freedom. Here you go America, you are free! To do as we tell you! YOU ARE FREE, TO DO AS WE TELL YOU!" I'm not saying it's necessarily "the" meaning of the song - as if there were any such thing, and particularly given that people can quote Maynard actually giving an explanation of what the lyrics mean - but I think the parallels are pretty interesting. "Go back to bed, America!" / "Go back to sleep..." "Your government is in control again!" / "Swaying to the rhythm of the New World Order..." "Watch this, shut up!" / "Just stay with me, safe and ignorant..." "You are free! To do what we tell you!" / "Safe from pain and truth and choice..." Great song, though. |
|
| The Tragically Hip – At The Hundredth Meridian Lyrics | 19 years ago |
|
Yep, the meridian of 100 degrees west runs pretty much smack through the middle (north-south) iof the Dakotas, Nebraska, and Kansas, nips off the corner of Oklahoma then runs on down through Texas just west of San Antonio and is quite literally "where the Great Plains begin". On the surface, this song looks like an evocative indictment of the rural American midwest. I can see how you'd go from that to drawing a parallel between the desolate nature of the landscape and the desolate nature of the culture, but I'm not totally convinced that's the intent. |
|
| The Mission – Wake (RSV) Lyrics | 19 years ago |
|
This is Wayne Hussey's attack on Sisters Of Mercy mainman Andrew Eldritch, written during the "tricky divorce" period just after Hussey and bassist Craig Adams had quit the Sisters. Compare and contrast "This Corrosion" by the Sisters, which is pretty much Von Eldritch's counterblast. |
|
| The Mission – Deliverance Lyrics | 19 years ago |
|
One critic described this as "Mission by numbers - the chorus is fantastic, the verses are embarassing." The 12" version of this single contained samples from the movie Excalibur including Merlin's Charm of Making, and concluded with a hilarious deadpan recitation of Arthur's description of how he obtained Excalibur from Monty Python And The Holy Grail - "The lady of the lake, her arm clad in the purest shimmering samite, held aloft Excalibur from the bosom of the water - proving by divine providence that I, Arthur, was to carry Excalibur. That is why I'm your King!" |
|
| The Sisters of Mercy – This Corrosion Lyrics | 19 years ago |
|
Just one thing to add - "Well, what do you say? D'you have a word for Giving Away? Got a song for me?" Mr. Hussey does, indeed, have a song for Mr. Eldritch. His side of the story is put across in Wake (RSV), from the Mission's "The First Chapter" CD, and is definitely one of their better tracks. |
|
| The Sisters of Mercy – Flood I Lyrics | 19 years ago |
|
I think that this is a song on a couple of levels - the flood is a metaphor for passion, but also a physical flood following a nuclear exchange (on the album, this song runs straight on from Dominion/Mother Russia, which ends with Eldritch imploring "Mother Russia rain down, down. down!"). Cheery, eh? |
|
| The Tragically Hip – Fiddler's Green Lyrics | 19 years ago |
| I can't add much more to wonderdog's comment, except to mention that a personification of Fiddler's Green appears as a character in the Sandman comics by Neil Gaiman, and, coincidentally enough, becomes a dead child's heaven at the end of one story arc. | |
| The Tragically Hip – New Orleans Is Sinking Lyrics | 19 years ago |
|
Just re-iterating what wonderdog said at the start of his excellent post - you really can't put any faith in how Gord introduces the song. The live version kicking around online that segues into Nautical Disaster (well worth checking out, by the way) begins with the line "This is a song about our very favourite nuclear submarine..." And then there's my all-time favourite Downie song "explanation", from the version of The Luxury on Live Between Us - "This is about a man down on his luck, so he takes to the streets shaking a banana at people and tries to convince them it's making a sound..." |
|
| The Sisters of Mercy – Under The Gun Lyrics | 19 years ago |
|
"Forget the many steps to heaven..." is probably a nod to the old Eddie Cochran number Three Steps To Heaven, "Happiness is a loaded weapon" echos Happiness Is A Warm Gun by the Beatles. "The meek will inherit what that damn well please" might be my favourite Eldritch lyric of all time. :) |
|
| The Sisters of Mercy – Anaconda Lyrics | 19 years ago |
|
Love this song. I've always seen it as being about heroin abuse, the anaconda being addiction slowly crushing the life out of the addict ("See her face turn to a mask, and passion turn to she-don't-care"). I love the vaguely snake-charmer-y sound to the guitars, as well. Groovy. |
|
| The Sisters of Mercy – Some Kind Of Stranger Lyrics | 19 years ago |
|
"I'd settle anytime for Unknown footsteps in the hall outside." Another example, as first mentioned on the sadly-defunct "1959 And All That" website, of how of Eldritch's more openly libidinous songs often seem to reference halls or hallways. See also Ribbons ("Her lovers queued up in the hallways...") and Flood I / II ("Her hallway... moves..."). |
|
| The Sisters of Mercy – 1969 Lyrics | 19 years ago |
| A Stooges cover, originally from their eponymous first album. Eldritch mentions that both he and founder-Sister Gary Marx were Stooges fans in the liner notes to Some Girls Wander By Mistake. | |
| The Sisters of Mercy – 1959 Lyrics | 19 years ago |
| And for what it's worth, "Isabel" is the name of a fan who wrote to Von Eldritch and suggested that he record a song with just his voice and a piano. | |
* This information can be up to 15 minutes delayed.