Leave Them All Behind

This one takes me (personally of course) back to 1994 - last year at Uni - didn't want to join the rat race - but what else could I do? but listen to this 30 times a day before entering. Whatever the song was written for, too or about isn't it about personal interpretation? Isn't that what makes music music or culture culture? What makes this song beautiful for me is I listen to it now in 2014, going to primary school to pick up my 3 under 8's, and it takes me back!

It is written in the style of Pink Floyd’s metaphorical style of composition. I do think it is a metaphor for a person getting too deep into drug culture which was heavily prevalent in youth culture in the early 90s with the reverie of acid-house in the late 80s catalysing widespread drug use with ecstasy, mdma, lsd and cannibis becoming the cultural norm (as such, as the first track on the album “Going Blank Again”, it was the centrepiece of the album, being a distillation of the treatise they were conveying in the overall album concept about “the blank generation”). I think the song is using an acid trip as a metaphor/allegory for the departure of one from a state of innocence into ‘unknown territory’ of a hedonistic spiral which is brimming with danger. As a deliberately metaphorical piece, I think it is at the same time conveying the idea of the old self transitioning to the new, such as the loss of innocence and the inevitable compromise of one’s ideals to surrender to the reality of embracing a professional career in the capitalist world which for many of us necessitates a ‘shedding of who you were and what you believed’ in order to operate in the “adult world”. I see it in the latter interpretation as being similar to “Welcome to the Machine” by Pink Floyd off of their “Wish you Were Here” album.

[Edit: correction of a grammatical error]

Ride's album Going Blank Again, from which this track originates, was released in March of 1992.

From the very start of the decade, the 90s was inundated with ever accelerating departures from the norm, massive global changes, and in many instances, outright upheaval of what a decent chunk of the global population considered "life as usual."

Change is the only constant in life. We can adapt, adjust, overcome, but too much change too quickly can be overwhelming to the individual as well as large groups of society. For those who have not lived through this time,i invite you to merely check out the wikipedia overviews of 89-92 notable events, compare the significance and rapid rate at which each event came... and then spiral out from there.

I think this song is a reflection of this particular period and the overwhelming total lack of control people felt they had.

"Just look at everything happening, I can't change shit, I'm a speck of dust in a hurricane... fuck it, no sense paddling against the current. The game seems rigged, so I'm not playing... I'll leave it all behind. Don't fight it, don't worry about, just live, leave it alone, embrace the flow."

Wow, I can't believe there are no comments on this one! What a great song! Reminds me of high school, since that is when I first heard it. :)

This song, at least to me, is clearly about an acid trip.