What is a dream, what is not, and how do we know? Love can give us a sense of order and security and it can be disorienting and disquieting. Our narrator, in bed, seems unsettled in the presence of his partner. He finds himself in a recurring dream having the luck to live it up in the back of a limousine riding through the sky as a member of the press with a famous actress who displays a wide array of party tricks to entertain them. She means to charm them, ostensibly to advance her career, a hint at the transactional nature of this relationship in which she will always have the upper hand.
A Cadillac is a status symbol, but an old-fashioned, outdated one. Similarly, the “boys of the press” feels dated. Both hearken back to postwar 1950s-60s America and the start of a consumerist, corporate, conformist culture which peaked in the Reagan 1980s to which CvB and other postpunk, underground/alternative music was a countercultural reaction. This preoccupation with an idealized postwar Americana is revisited much more pointedly in CvB’s follow-up to this album, Key Lime Pie, in songs like Jack Ruby, Sweethearts and When I Win the Lottery.
While the actress’s entertainment for the boys is transactional, still there’s some real magic to it. They drink vodka, but she divines water. Since she does so by “dancing a jig,” I always thought the following line was “she will wrestle a pig,” which rhymes, and would be an extreme but suitably surreal way to curry their favor. Everything in this world has its place and time—or does it?
What is a dream, what is not, and how do we know? Love can give us a sense of order and security and it can be disorienting and disquieting. Our narrator, in bed, seems unsettled in the presence of his partner. He finds himself in a recurring dream having the luck to live it up in the back of a limousine riding through the sky as a member of the press with a famous actress who displays a wide array of party tricks to entertain them. She means to charm them, ostensibly to advance her career, a hint at the transactional nature of this relationship in which she will always have the upper hand.
A Cadillac is a status symbol, but an old-fashioned, outdated one. Similarly, the “boys of the press” feels dated. Both hearken back to postwar 1950s-60s America and the start of a consumerist, corporate, conformist culture which peaked in the Reagan 1980s to which CvB and other postpunk, underground/alternative music was a countercultural reaction. This preoccupation with an idealized postwar Americana is revisited much more pointedly in CvB’s follow-up to this album, Key Lime Pie, in songs like Jack Ruby, Sweethearts and When I Win the Lottery.
While the actress’s entertainment for the boys is transactional, still there’s some real magic to it. They drink vodka, but she divines water. Since she does so by “dancing a jig,” I always thought the following line was “she will wrestle a pig,” which rhymes, and would be an extreme but suitably surreal way to curry their favor. Everything in this world has its place and time—or does it?
[Edit: Added clarification]