High life
Every building same height
Every street a straight line
Team colors, yellow and blue
Cheerlead single-file
Perfect smiles, unaffected
And you won't forget
Our colors blue
No, you won't forget it
Twenty miles westward
Home of the Redbirds
Team colors crimson, blue
Open up your purses
For the boys who reimburse us
With a goal-line stand
On fourth and two
And that goal-line stand, ha!
Summer's dry and fallow
Reservoirs are shallow
Spillways unexposed
It's never been inspected
When the government's elected
That the fields
Will turn to yellow, too (oooh)
Now the fields will turn...
Every street a straight line
Team colors, yellow and blue
Cheerlead single-file
Perfect smiles, unaffected
And you won't forget
Our colors blue
No, you won't forget it
Twenty miles westward
Home of the Redbirds
Team colors crimson, blue
Open up your purses
For the boys who reimburse us
With a goal-line stand
On fourth and two
And that goal-line stand, ha!
Summer's dry and fallow
Reservoirs are shallow
Spillways unexposed
It's never been inspected
When the government's elected
That the fields
Will turn to yellow, too (oooh)
Now the fields will turn...
Lyrics submitted by summerbabe, edited by embassyrow
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Techno Ted may be a person who caused Chris incredible emotional pain & trepidation as well as moments of peace & happiness but now is removed and awaiting his fate. Darling may be a different person who is also free of him and can live her life free of Ted's tyranny. "In between all the laughing, and daydreams ... lies: a desert of truth" Lies are like a desert or the omission of Truth: Where there were Lies then Truth was absent. The song, "Techno Ted", may be a cathartic celebration of the downfall of this person.
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There is still an amazing amount of hope and will in the lyrics; and the lyrics themselve rank and easy five. If only music was stronger it would be one of those great radio songs that you hear once a week 20 years after it was released. The imagery is almost tear-jerking ("City lights lay out before us", "Speeds so fast felt like I was drunk"), and the idea of starting from nothing and just driving and working and denigrating yourself for a chance at being just above poverty, then losing in the end is just painful and inspiring at the same time.
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This is a hauntingly beautiful song about introspection, specifically about looking back at a relationship that started bad and ended so poorly, that the narrator wants to go back to the very beginning and tell himself to not even travel down that road. I believe that the relationship started poorly because of the lines:
"Take me back to the night we met:When the night was full of terrors: And your eyes were filled with tears: When you had not touched me yet"
So, the first night was not a great start, but the narrator pursued the relationship and eventually both overcame the rough start to fall in love with each other:
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Linden CA is a small, insulated farming town about 20 miles east of Stockton CA, with one high school. Contrasted with Stockton, which is a larger diverse urban city, Linden is still very country and very white, with kids working on farms during the summer and football is a VERY big deal, like in other more rural areas across the country. Their mascot is, of course, the Linden Lions. To me, this song is about that small town attitude towards high school football, that it is SO important to the community. As s7ugg1e said, it is about people not paying attention to the important things, or maybe even being able to ignore the fact that your small town is dying, and hide behind the pride of your local football team.
@stickie pants Thanks for that info. I saw a pic of Gary Young with a Linden hat on, now that is explained. For people who aren't diehard fans, malkmus and kannberg grew up in Stockton. Just in case anyone reads this.
it's not a reference to gambling it's a reference to the stakes people in small communities put into football. Whether it be by way of overall support, or that of boosters (open up your purses for the boys who reimburse us). Football is a way of life in the these types of towns, and I don't think it really matters what teams the song is even referring to, as they're probably just generic for the purpose of the song. And I think stickie pants is right about the small town dying.
"Two colors, yellow and blue"... actual lyric is "Team colors, yellow and blue". This is also the case for the lyric "Team colors crimson, blue".
For me this has always been the easiest Pavement song to understand, with the usual Pavement "values":
People don't pay attention to the things they should.
I think all the members of Pavement are sports fans to some degree or another, so it's not surprising that they would write a song referencing football.
I love the references to gambling. Gambling on high school football... decadence American style at its best.
Is it not just called 'Lions (Linden)'?
I heard Steve Malkamus say that this song is about growing up in the Central Valley of California. As others have mentioned Linden is a small town outside Stockton where he grew up.
Water and football are both a big deal to the Central Valley which is one of the biggest agricultural regions in the world but is also basically desert without their extensive system of reservoirs and channels. I think that explains the reference to reservoirs and spillways and the fields turning yellow.
No idea what it means to me. Maybe it's about St. Louis? It's a great song either way.
Oh no .. it's about Kentucky and Louisville. Why would they write a song about a college football game? Because they are(were) Pavement and they can!