Holidays In The Sun

General Commentit doesnt exactly seem to me personally to be mocking Communism per see
(and excuse me here, i specialize in prentious kuckle dragging interpretations, so if your not into that, move on nothing to see here)
more along the lines of pointing out with pure punk the utter hypocrisy of the so called 'fee' democratic capitalist countries like England which are in some ways no better than their pinko counterparts of the day in the way they exploit human suffering to further their gains
i.e.- making the green off of concentration camps as some sort of avant garde tourist resorts
*Belsen was a GAS!*

i think this is an underrated gem personaly, where 'God Save' and 'Anarchy' seem to be cited as the primary classics
Rotten starts off with a brilliant little ryhme, immediately emasculatly middle class mores
than paints a gitty sketch of going over' the berlin wall in the tones of twitchy paranoid tourist

but does anyone find the real deal breaker -"And there looooking at meeeeeeeee!"-
to be a example of that famous nietzsche saying:
When i look into the abyss, the abyss looks back at me'....?
its like the narrator has been taught to fear communism as the greatest evil of the ages and is horrified to find his counter parts on the other 'side'
see the exact same thing in him
theyre linked together like two sides of a coin
there is no 'other' here, no monster
just reflections in a mirror or something

sorry
i think its just pretty fucking poetic for a punk song
Rotten was clearly the brains of the outfit
he had important things to get off his chest it seems

• 3 Replies Log in to reply

General Commentthis song was inspired by the sex pistols trip to berlin
they saw the paranoi all around the place and were compelled to write a song

• No Replies Log in to reply

General CommentOne of favourite by SP. It's about Germany and how was it like there at that time *being devided on east & west*. That explains the communism part, you can even sence a bit of sarcasm *Holidays in the sun*, and offcourse paranoia, a feeling of being trapped.

• No Replies Log in to reply

General CommentThe line "A cheap holiday in other people's misery" is a clear reference to the Situationist slogan "Club Med: A Cheap Holiday in Other People's Misery," which refers to a resort set in the Carribean at a time of widespread revolution, war, and misery in the Carribean and Central America.

• No Replies Log in to reply

General Comment
"Cheap dialogue cheap essential scenery"

this cant be true - wrong movie

thats how it must have felt wen you come in from outside
and if you dont run fast enough therl be nowher left to go
like for the rest who never left again

• No Replies Log in to reply

General CommentIt's a mixture I think
stupid holidays in sunny dictatorships (in guarded reservoirs)

and westberlin
big "prisoncamp" surrounded by a very very conservative(they didnt had rockn roll; they had revuetheater and still freaked out about punx in the late 80s) regime(and the wall of cause)
and wellguarded with watchtowers (imagine: sittig at the street, drinking beer while they watch you)
with a the squater/punkscene distrikt right at the wall
british, amerikan, french soldiers were there as well
they even made a manouver inside this district.
It was somehow a realy strange live
on the deklared and prepared ww3 batlefield wich still wore the scares of ww2 with lacking roofs and maschinegunnbulletholes along the houses

song always reminds me at those times

• No Replies Log in to reply

General Commenti thought it was pretty obvious that the song is about getting across the berlin wall, but i dont wanna get into a history lesson, so figure the rest out yourself

• No Replies Log in to reply

General CommentAlyssa1224 - It's REASON, REASON, REASON.

• No Replies Log in to reply

General CommentNow that i have some money (reasonable economy) I don't want a vacation (holiday in the sun) I want to learn something about how the world works. Being poor disenfranchised English kid supposedly from the "free" world hadn't worked for him. The countries behind the iron curtain (Marxist communist) were supposedly the "workers paradise." In theory the ideal place for a person of his background. Upon getting there, though he found it to be the "new Belsen," or a large reincarnation of the Nazi's Bergan-Belsen concentration camp. The people in the so called "workers paradise," were as, if not more oppressed than the singer and looking to get out of said paradise., his look "over the wall" shows him just that. As such, the singer is still left disillusioned and searching everywhere on either side of the Berlin wall for the place he has some voice and authority. Of course the point is typically Pistols nihilistic in that a place for his ilk doesn't exist in the contemporary world, and looking for it in this world will be either futile, or worse result in those who have authority quashing the lower class person seeking same "please don't be waiting for me....."

• No Replies Log in to reply

General CommentIt starts off about package holidays (presumably Rotten thinks that the working class are being cheated by being shoved into these rubbish resort holidays), but I have no idea what all that Communism stuff is about...

• 1 Reply Log in to reply