The song is literally about what the lyrics say. An orgy at the beach. From a magazine interview:
Roisin wrote ‘Night Of The Dancing Flame’ after a trip to Ibiza, “I shouldn’t mention Ibiza again but will do!” she laughs off, almost ashamedly. “We were on a beach in Northern Ibiza, the name escapes me right now, but there’s this hippee festival every full moon in the summer. It was quite sleazy actually.” “There were all these vaseline-clad girls dancing round a fire and these sleazy guru-like older men playing bongos and watching on. Which is where the line, The orgy of the free, comes from. It’s suppose to be ironic because the observation was that the girls were danc- ing through this idea of freedom, but they weren’t really free at all. It was an amazing thing to see, though - the image of heavily vaselined-skin against the firelight. And then they put a circular lamp/sheet thing around the girls and the fire so you could only see the shadows dancing. Visually, it was an incredible feast but still a bit distressing.”
The song is literally about what the lyrics say. An orgy at the beach. From a magazine interview:
Roisin wrote ‘Night Of The Dancing Flame’ after a trip to Ibiza, “I shouldn’t mention Ibiza again but will do!” she laughs off, almost ashamedly. “We were on a beach in Northern Ibiza, the name escapes me right now, but there’s this hippee festival every full moon in the summer. It was quite sleazy actually.” “There were all these vaseline-clad girls dancing round a fire and these sleazy guru-like older men playing bongos and watching on. Which is where the line, The orgy of the free, comes from. It’s suppose to be ironic because the observation was that the girls were danc- ing through this idea of freedom, but they weren’t really free at all. It was an amazing thing to see, though - the image of heavily vaselined-skin against the firelight. And then they put a circular lamp/sheet thing around the girls and the fire so you could only see the shadows dancing. Visually, it was an incredible feast but still a bit distressing.”