The song lyrics were written by the band Van Halen, as they were asked to write a song for the 1979 movie "Over the Edge" starring Matt Dillon. The movie (and the lyrics, although more obliquely) are about bored, rebellious youth with nothing better to do than get into trouble. If you see the movie, these lyrics will make more sense. It's a great movie if you grew up in the 70s/80s you'll definitely remember some of these characters from your own life. Fun fact, after writing the song, Van Halen decided not to let the movie use it.
The clouds explode and then the desert blooms
Someone will need to mop this floor for me
When I emerge I find my car
Like a cathedral in a dream of the future
Drive 'til the rain stops
Keep driving
Pull over and blast off when I get the chance
Clear as an insect's wings in sunlight
Flip on the high stakes radio
Try to sing the words right
Drive 'til the rain stops
Keep driving
I had his arms tied up behind him
We were together all day
Maybe make Culiacán by sunset
Try to anyway
High as the clouds now
Flying
Drive 'til the rain stops
Keep driving
Someone will need to mop this floor for me
When I emerge I find my car
Like a cathedral in a dream of the future
Drive 'til the rain stops
Keep driving
Pull over and blast off when I get the chance
Clear as an insect's wings in sunlight
Flip on the high stakes radio
Try to sing the words right
Drive 'til the rain stops
Keep driving
I had his arms tied up behind him
We were together all day
Maybe make Culiacán by sunset
Try to anyway
High as the clouds now
Flying
Drive 'til the rain stops
Keep driving
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Mountain Song
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Jane's Addiction vocalist Perry Farrell gives Adam Reader some heartfelt insight into Jane’s Addiction's hard rock manifesto "Mountain Song", which was the second single from their revolutionary album Nothing's Shocking. Mountain song was first recorded in 1986 and appeared on the soundtrack to the film Dudes starring Jon Cryer. The version on Nothing's Shocking was re-recorded in 1988.
"'Mountain Song' was actually about... I hate to say it but... drugs. Climbing this mountain and getting as high as you can, and then coming down that mountain," reveals Farrell. "What it feels to descend from the mountain top... not easy at all. The ascension is tough but exhilarating. Getting down is... it's a real bummer. Drugs is not for everybody obviously. For me, I wanted to experience the heights, and the lows come along with it."
"There's a part - 'Cash in now honey, cash in Miss Smith.' Miss Smith is my Mother; our last name was Smith. Cashing in when she cashed in her life. So... she decided that, to her... at that time, she was desperate. Life wasn't worth it for her, that was her opinion. Some people think, never take your life, and some people find that their life isn't worth living. She was in love with my Dad, and my Dad was not faithful to her, and it broke her heart. She was very desperate and she did something that I know she regrets."
Gentle Hour
Yo La Tengo
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This song was originally written by a guy called Peter Gutteridge. He was one of the founders of the "Dunedin Sound" a musical scene in the south of New Zealand in the early 80s. From there it was covered by "The Clean" one of the early bands of that scene (he had originally been a member of in it's early days, writing a couple of their best early songs). The Dunedin sound, and the Clean became popular on american college radio in the mid to late 80s. I guess Yo La Tengo heard that version.
Great version of a great song,
Plastic Bag
Ed Sheeran
Ed Sheeran
“Plastic Bag” is a song about searching for an escape from personal problems and hoping to find it in the lively atmosphere of a Saturday night party. Ed Sheeran tells the story of his friend and the myriad of troubles he is going through. Unable to find any solutions, this friend seeks a last resort in a party and the vanity that comes with it.
“I overthink and have trouble sleepin’ / All purpose gone and don’t have a reason / And there’s no doctor to stop this bleedin’ / So I left home and jumped in the deep end,” Ed Sheeran sings in verse one. He continues by adding that this person is feeling the weight of having disappointed his father and doesn’t have any friends to rely on in this difficult moment. In the second verse, Ed sings about the role of grief in his friend’s plight and his dwindling faith in prayer. “Saturday night is givin’ me a reason to rely on the strobe lights / The lifeline of a promise in a shot glass, and I’ll take that / If you’re givin’ out love from a plastic bag,” Ed sings on the chorus, as his friend turns to new vices in hopes of feeling better.
john darnielle said tonight that this song is about torturing someone to death in norhern mexico and then having an existential crisis about it.
so, there's that. he also said it was his take on this extremely popular topic which appears all the time on the billboard charts.
Hi Lauren! You wouldn't happen to be the person I sang Dance Music with before the show in Boston?<br /> <br /> His jam with Wurster at the end of the song was awesome in the original definition of the word.
I interpreted the faint heartbeat as the victim, barely alive but still hanging on. Just like the narrator is mentally.
Great album. I love having to go to the bible and read about the situation and then think about how it applies to the song and my own life.
I would echo everyone's opinion about the themes we're seeing: 1) Kidnapping/torture (our evil on this earth). clouds exploding=violence, mop this floor=blood, hands tied behind the back, etc... 2) Drugs. The whole second verse is drug related. Blast off when I get a chance=taking uppers, clear as an insects wings=he's high, trying to sing to the radio but having trouble.
And I will add one more theme not really covered yet - FLEEING/RUNNING. I feel this is a HUGE part of the song. Fleeing from gods wrath and judgement. Fleeing from our own horrible actions and insecurities. Fleeing from Gods grace. Trying to physically and mentally leave it behind. Notice the references to driving all night. Running from Gods wrath and ignoring the grace that could have been. Like Ezekiel says it's too late. God has set ruin upon the world. He is running from God, from the ruin, the mistakes.
I find the title of the song very intreguing, "Permanent Efficacy Of Grace." In the following I am assuming grace is always efficacious. It is always strong. It is mans concept for the word of God that makes it less meaningful. By itself it will have meaning, with or without, our acknowledgement. Is John saying that Grace is there for the character and he struggles with this but still flees from it? Or is this a snide remark about the Permanent Efficacy Of Grace being a bunch crap? I guess I read the former as being true due to this character running so hard from it.
Thoughts?
Really interesting interpretation, and I think I agree with the vast proportion of what you say. I read it that the character's use of drugs IS his attempt to reconnect with God! In the bliss he finds in the grip of meth or heroin or whatever, he is pure and without sin. He is communing with his better nature, and seeing tantilising glipses of a life lived well. His car is a cathederal, his use of drugs takes him high as the clouds and while he has tied the hands of God as he has tied the hands of his victim, God is always there watching, caring, his companion.<br /> <br /> I believe John is saying that we can all find 'God' in our own way, be it music or poetry or drugs, and that even as we run from the real, genuine love into anger and hatred and selfishness, nevertheless we will be drawn time and time to love, and will seek to find it in any way left open to us.<br /> <br /> I feel very sad for the protagonist, and his folly, but I also find this song incredibly uplifting. To the point where I could almost cried tears of joy first hearing it. The Permanent Efficacy of Grace: that even in this darkest of men, at the darkest of times there beats the faintest heartbeat of compassion, like his victim, not quite dead! :)
This is what John had to say about it before playing it in Seattle recently:
This song is about a unique friendship between two guys. One of whom is tied to a chair and will be dead by the end of the song, and the other who has no name, and won’t ever have one.
The heartbeats at the end of the song on the album version might possibly be a reference to "The Tell-Tale Heart". I bring them up as an argument for the song being about murder.
Like a couple of you have already said, I think this song is from the point of view of a drug user who tortured someone and then left him for dead. The first thing that came to my mind when I heard it was this news story: cnn.com/2009/CRIME/05/19/phoenix.drug.kidnappings/
The "clear as an insect's wings" and "blasting off" sounds like a reference to crystal meth. He's getting high and trying to focus on the songs on the radio and whether he's making good driving time in order to keep his mind off the horrific thing he did, but it keeps coming back to him and he just can't forget how he tied a man up and tortured him for hours.
It's a very visual song. I can almost see the narrator stepping out of a dingy motel into a wet desert, then driving in the rain, drumming his fingers on the steering wheel and singing only to be interrupted by a flashback of a bloody floor and tortured man. Powerful stuff.
I think this verse should be:
I had his arms tied up behind him We were together all day Maybe make Culiacán by sunset Try to anyway
I don't know entirely what this song is about but it would seem that the narrator is some kind of drug addict ("blast off" "high as the clouds now") and he is driving to Culiacán in Mexico with somebody tied up in his car. I would be interested to hear John's influence for this song.
Actually it never specifies that the tied up person is in the car, in fact the narrator states that they were together all day but that could have happened before the narrator set off on his journey. In an interview on Pitchfork John said one of the songs is about murder so it could be this one; therefore the reason someone needs to mop the floors is perhaps because someone has been killed. There's not really enough information given to understand the full scenario, but it's one of those songs that totally gets under your skin.
Thanks for the Culiacán correction, Erolsabadosh.
It's worth noting that Culiacán has a history of drug trafficking. Wikipedia says "Culiacán's reputation as a narco city has made it the de facto home of the Mexican narcocorrido," or drug smuggling ballad. Since this song makes reference to Culiacán, and also apparently to a drug and a kidnapping, maybe "Ezekiel 7" is itself a narcocorrido of a sort.
Just saw the MGs last night in concert. John talked about this song a little bit before playing it. He said that it was about someone being tortured to death.
Pretty dark. Even knowing that, it is hard to understand the meaning, I feel like maybe it is someone on the verge of death, and when being tortured that he is just trying to focus on anything else he can.
If you read Ezekiel 7, it is about God's retribution. I think he is describing something like a drug-related kidnapping/murder, as previous posts have mentioned, as a reference to the growing lawlessness in the world as a corollary to Ezekiel 7 (see excerpt below). In a general way, it reminds me of the feeling you get from "No Country for Old Men" that the bad guys are really in charge, so it is just a matter of time.<br /> <br /> From Ezekiel 7:<br /> "I (God) will hand it all over as plunder to foreigners and as loot to the wicked of the earth, and they will defile it. I will turn my face away from them, and they will desecrate my treasured place; robbers will enter it and desecrate it."<br /> <br /> "Prepare chains, because the land is full of bloodshed and the city is full of violence. I will bring the most wicked of the nations to take possession of their houses; I will put an end to the pride of the mighty, and their sanctuaries will be desecrated. When terror comes, they will seek peace, but there will be none."
Seemed like this song was about a person who reached an epiphany or other understanding after a long hardship... only to realize that the hardship continues despite enlightenment. They're trying to hold on to that sense of understanding, and remember what they learned, and above all keep hold of the progress they've made, all the while falling back into old habits and lifestyles. Finding a reason to live, only to forget what it was...