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:
"I had all and then most of you"
Like many relationships that turn sour, it was not a quick decline, but a gradual one where the narrator and their partner fall out of love and gradually grow apart
"Some and now none of you"
Losing someone who was once everything in your world, who you could confide in, tell your secrets to, share all the most intimate parts of your life, to being strangers with that person is probably one of the most painful experiences a person can go through. So Painful, the narrator wants to go back in time and tell himself to not even pursue the relationship.
This was the perfect song for "13 Reasons Why"
Working on the edge
losing my self-respect
foreman who presides over me
the principles of his creed
Punch in punch out
8 hours 5 days
sweat, pain and agony
on Friday I’ll get paid
This ain't no picnic
This ain't no picnic
This ain't no picnic
This ain't no picnic
Hey mister don't look down on me
for what I believe
I got my bills and the rent
I should pitch a tent
but our land isn't free
so I’ll work my youth away
in the place of a machine
I refuse to be a slave
This ain't no picnic
This ain't no picnic
This ain't no picnic
This ain't no picnic
losing my self-respect
foreman who presides over me
the principles of his creed
Punch in punch out
8 hours 5 days
sweat, pain and agony
on Friday I’ll get paid
This ain't no picnic
This ain't no picnic
This ain't no picnic
This ain't no picnic
Hey mister don't look down on me
for what I believe
I got my bills and the rent
I should pitch a tent
but our land isn't free
so I’ll work my youth away
in the place of a machine
I refuse to be a slave
This ain't no picnic
This ain't no picnic
This ain't no picnic
This ain't no picnic
Lyrics submitted by shadowwiththeeyes, edited by stewjas
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I don't think it's necessarily about sex. It's about wanting to start the day with some love and affection. Maybe a warm cuddle. I'm not alone in interpreting it that way! For example:
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d. boon worked at an autoparts store. he wanted to play jazz on the radio but the bigotted boss dismissed it as "nigger shit" and told him to turn it off. he wanted to quit but desperately needed the money, and vented out through this song.
Should be 'foreman presides over me,' not 'for a man'. "Losing my self respect for a man who presides over me" doesn't make any sense. A foreman is the working man's equivalent of an office supervisor or something.
This song is a blue collar anthem about struggling to make ends meet in a hostile and shitty work environment, not racism. It was allegedly inspired by D. Boon's racist boss calling music on a jazz radio station "nigger shit." But that's just what some college kid hipster wrote in a book longer after Boon got killed in a car accident. Hell of a story, but who knows if that actually happened?
Stay skeptic, fuck the man.
This song is about racism. Apparently, It's about a bigotted boss D. Boon once had.
i love the urgency of this song, and pretty much all of double nickels. d. boon just spits out the lyrics as fast as he can, it's tremendous.
I wouldn't go so far as to say "this song is about racism". Of course, it comments on it twice - "I should go pitch a tent but our land isn't free" and "I refuse to be a slave" both show up in the last verse. More so this song is about the American "machine", as he puts it, and how it isn't much of a picnic anymore - for anyone.
that's rad.
sorry i didn't add anything intelligent.
After 20 + years loving this jam ( at Loud volume levels) I have to admit that I've always screamed along with D. Boon thusly : ...' In the Place under My sheets..I refuse to be a slave'... I took that, with the rest of the song, to mean Hate the job you Must endure as a Slave...but never give up Inside your Dreams (that you have when sleeping under your sheets). I will probably continue, My way, but am gladl to have seen these lyrics...