The song lyrics were written by the band Van Halen, as they were asked to write a song for the 1979 movie "Over the Edge" starring Matt Dillon. The movie (and the lyrics, although more obliquely) are about bored, rebellious youth with nothing better to do than get into trouble. If you see the movie, these lyrics will make more sense. It's a great movie if you grew up in the 70s/80s you'll definitely remember some of these characters from your own life. Fun fact, after writing the song, Van Halen decided not to let the movie use it.
I'm scared (I swear) of you. In the tunnel, in the darkness,
The darkest walls of blue, there's beasts & ther's men
& there's something on this earth that comes back again:
Alpha...delta....gamma... everybody's smoked
You can't say that my soul has died away(x2) There's trouble
In the hall & trouble up the stairs & trouble in the trouble
That's troubling the air. Please don't say that my
Soul has died away.
There is a house in New Orleans, not the one
You've heard about. I'm talking about another house.
They spoke of gold in the cellar that a Spanish
Gentleman had left. I broke in one hundred years ago
With a dagger tucked in my vest. Legends of gold
I've tried to hold in the grey half-lite of the
Halway at night....one....two... 3 4 5 we're
Trapped inside the song. We're trapped inside the song(x3)
Where the nights are so long. There's traps inside us
All(x3) and the nights are so tall. And the night
Is so tall. And the knife is so tall.
The darkest walls of blue, there's beasts & ther's men
& there's something on this earth that comes back again:
Alpha...delta....gamma... everybody's smoked
You can't say that my soul has died away(x2) There's trouble
In the hall & trouble up the stairs & trouble in the trouble
That's troubling the air. Please don't say that my
Soul has died away.
There is a house in New Orleans, not the one
You've heard about. I'm talking about another house.
They spoke of gold in the cellar that a Spanish
Gentleman had left. I broke in one hundred years ago
With a dagger tucked in my vest. Legends of gold
I've tried to hold in the grey half-lite of the
Halway at night....one....two... 3 4 5 we're
Trapped inside the song. We're trapped inside the song(x3)
Where the nights are so long. There's traps inside us
All(x3) and the nights are so tall. And the night
Is so tall. And the knife is so tall.
Lyrics submitted by summerbabe
New Orleans Lyrics as written by
Lyrics © ROUGH TRADE PUBLISHING
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i dont know what this song's about, but it seems to be really deep and it's really good to smoke to. i love the feel of this song.
This song is eerie as hell. It's that sound of a band struggling to communicate a beautiful song. I get the same feeling during parts of Wowee Zowee. I think what I'm talking about is best exemplified right when "trapped inside the song" hits and that thin lead guitar just jumps in, kind of ruining it, but kind of making it totally frighteningly beautiful.
My favorite off Starlite....I dunno, for me 'My Pillow Is the Threshold' is sort of a spiritual sequel to this. It's fairly self-explanatory..so explain it to your self!
One thing..the penultimate verse sez: "We're trapped inside the song / Where the nights are so long" and in the last it's transformed into: "There's traps inside us all / And the knife is so tall". To me, simply put: we are victims of circumstance, the odds are forever against us, we are trapped in this reoccurring shadowplay until the final curtain, yet we can sing ourselves to sleep in our personal prisons and whistle past the graveyards before we lay to our final rest.
In other words, it's a song positively brimming full of cheer and joie de vivre. We're all smoked! Maybe it was about some one's last dream before the apocalypse, or maybe it was about David Berman's personal lament for cruel, inescapable fate? Or it doesn't need to be doom, we may also take the good from man's past and cultivate from that? No to No Exit!