Salad Days

GREAT GREAT GREAT SONG!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I remember hearing this song for the first time about 5 or 6 years ago in a 411 skat video. Like fine wine, the essence of this song only intensifies with age. However, it is through one's own age that this song appreciates in meaning. Oh mama. Words just don't do it justice. What an amazing song, yet so simple.

best minor threat song.

It's also kind os a tribute to the early days of punk, the best days, before the whole scene got messed up and turned into another trend.

i like this song alot, one of my favorites, but to me, its ian saying how they were "babies" when they started, and now, music, and life has changed, and as a band, minor threat is coming to and end. if you listen to it in order that the songs are on the complete discography,and compare to the other songs, it even sounds like a "grand finale" song.

The line "the core has gotten soft" may be referring to how hard core's in some respects was becoming less . . . hard.

To MrPickes: Nice input, but the website IS called songmeanings.net.

in "our band could be your life", azzerad mentions that the rest of the band was getting really into U2 and ian wasn't having any of that gay shit. that helps to explain the difference in the bands sound towards the end. if you watch some minor threat live footage [check youtube or the minor threat dvd], you can see for yourself how intense their shows really were. it's no wonder to me why shows aren't that crazy anymore: we are much safer than we were back then. the 80's we're kind of like the 60's in that a bunch of liberal kids in DC could pack into a room and tear it apart without having to deal with stupid security. however, so many people must have realized that all that danger is really stupid to put themselves in. the scene will never be the same...but i'd [almost] kill to play a show as crazy as a minor threat show.

I have loved this song since it came out and was fortunate enough to see Minor Threat in Charlotte, NC in 1982 or early 1983. I think this song is Ian's lament about the decline of his interest in hardcore music, the hardcore scene in general and his band Minor Threat. He relates the beginning of Minor Threat and the hardcore movement to early childhood with the lyrics "Wishing for the day when I first wore this suit" (meaning a birthday suit as a baby or the beginnings of the band, when everything was fresh and new and fun). He points out that as things have progressed it is not as much fun anymore "Baby has grown older, it's no longer cute."

"But I stay on, I stay on/Where do I get off?/On to greener pastures/The core has gotten soft" Ian relates the hardcore scene to a Merry Go Round or some sort of ride going around and around, saying that although it has gotten old for him, he is still on the ride. He wonders where and when he should exit the genre and go on to something else. "The core has gotten soft" is a play on words, suggesting that what was tight is no longer tight, or what was fun is no longer fun, or what was pure is no longer pure. That's his analysis of what hardcore has become.

"Look at us today/We've gotten soft and fat/Waiting for the moment/ It's just no coming back" He is telling the hardore audience, his band and others to just look at ourselves, what have we become? It used to be great fun, but now it is not. The soft and fat is another reference to hardcore become less "hardcore". He says everyone is waiting for things to be like they used to be, but just as CBGB's in 1977 can never be repeated, the origins of hardcore and Minor Threat cannot be repeated. The great "salad days" of 1980 are just not coming back.

"So serious/About the stuff we lack/Dwell upon our memories/But there are no facts" Don't really know what this verse might mean.

Anyway, I think this song is Ian's homage to what happens in almost every instance where something new comes along. You see it in almost every Behind The Music on VH1. Things are great in the beginning, then people get successful and the original band/scene/person changes, and finally they look back on what used to be, what might have been, and what will never be the same. This takes on even more meaning as Ian was writing this as he was preparing to exit Minor Threat. This was recorded in December 1983 and the band had played their last show that September.

Just my opinion, no inside facts to back it up. Thanks for reading. RLJ

I truly concur :D.. the song is about people allways "wishing for the day", gloryfiyng their youth which may not at all have been so great. ian obviously can't stand these people... thing is.. it actually feels like one of those songs that does "wish for the day", but that may have been the purpose.

awesome.