I always heard the one line as "Negro observers are counting heads in single file". I think this is about our superior alien overlords peacefully coming down to earth and harmlessly observing us. It employs an unreliable narrator who "doesn't know thick or thin", but has seen them and is trying to describe them and their actions, and to whom they look like negroes. I don't know why the ninnies at Matador censored this, one of the catchiest and funnest songs on the record, from the Psychic Powerless rerelease, but burning books is something facists (whether well meaning or not) do.
I always heard the one line as "Negro observers are counting heads in single file". I think this is about our superior alien overlords peacefully coming down to earth and harmlessly observing us. It employs an unreliable narrator who "doesn't know thick or thin", but has seen them and is trying to describe them and their actions, and to whom they look like negroes. I don't know why the ninnies at Matador censored this, one of the catchiest and funnest songs on the record, from the Psychic Powerless rerelease, but burning books is something facists (whether well meaning or not) do.