Wall of Mouths

ok…

..?

I don’t know what the connection between THE James Joyce and Andy’s sister is, but there used to be a lad called James Joyce that was fucking my sister. No shit. So maybe it’s as simple as that. I used to always get an extra kick out of the song because of that.

james joyce isn’t fucking Andy’s sister he’s fucking me and my son Grant Hart.

I am from Northern Ireland I i am not a silly wanker!

most songs mean something but there are always some lines
that don’t mean anything except finding somethin that sounds good
or making a good rhyme or PROVOKING DISCUSSION

Surely the fact it’s called POTATOE Junkie might be a clue to it being about Ireland?

Title: two questions. maybe you folks can help. (merged)

sorry about the test. anyway…

i like therapy?.
i like james joyce.
i want to know what potato junkie is supposed to ‘say.’ what’s the message, the point, or whatever you want to call it. why couldn’t it have been ‘samuel beckett is fucking my sister.’ i’m not doing an interpretative study of t? music or anything; it’s just always bugged me.

also. anybody know any other bands (the less famous the better) that sound like the t? of babyteeth/pleasure death. i want big guitar noise with techno beats and attitude. and don’t tell me the fucking prodigy.

thanks. i like the message board a lot.

Atari Teenage Riot.

Hia Tony

Good question. I’ve been wading through piles of old interviews (it’s really bugging me now!) but the only thing I could find about Potato Junkie is as follows:

(Andy) ‘There’s a line in ‘Potato Junkie’ - which is the only political thing I’ve ever written - and it goes ‘How can I remember 1690? I was born in 1965’.

1690 was the date of the Loyalist victory over the Catholics. Why are people still clinging to this old bollocks? It means nothing anymore and it’s time people woke up to these kind of things. I hate seeing people, their culture and their opinions and their personalities strangled by their upbringing. It’s such horrible, dated bollocks.

It’s such a small country and there’s so much hatred there. It needs to be re-educated. There are too many people clinging to these old cultures.

It would be so easy for Therapy? to write a song like ‘Across The Barricades’ and I think that’s something the media expect. They want a ‘Free Nelson Mandela’ for Ireland and I couldn’t do that. I don’t really believe in it, cos the whole problem is too complex. And sadly, I don’t think there’ll be any kind of a solution before the end of my lifetime’.

(Melody Maker, 11th June 1994)

I don’t know much about James Joyce, but he was raised as a Roman Catholic. Another line in the song is ‘This business is pointless, to think that green is the only colour on the atlas.’ Green being a reference to Catholicism I assume.

I think the line in question is probably there for shock value more than anything else. I suppose it could be saying that the past is still affecting everybody in Northern Ireland on a personal level (James Joyce being a historical figure and the sister representing the modern day - it being his ‘sister’ indicating familiarity).

I wouldn’t like to venture anything further as I don’t know enough about Andy’s politics. I think I once read that he was Catholic and Michael was Protestant but that could have been the other way round, which doesn’t really help!

Anyone else want to have a go?

As far is I know, James Joyce is an Irish Writer. Andy said in an interview, that ’ it’s okay if we make a little fun out of him since everyone had to mess with him in school’. Something like that.
So I guess it’s really an irish-thing.

A lot of Joyce’s books like Dubliners and Portrait of an Artist as a Young Man were written around the time of the Easter Rising of Republicans in Dublin (1916). Therefore a lot of the themes in them ask questions of what it means to be an Irish national etc. Andy seems to be saying ‘fuck that’.

1690 was the date of the Battle of the Boyne, and the motto of the Orange Order is ‘Remember 1690’ but how can you remember something that happened over 300 years ago?

If u lived in Ireland, or Northern Ireland u’d know, but in fairness…

Wouldn’t it be possible that ‘Potato Junkie’ should be seen as ‘Poeto Junkie’? This could be a man who wrappes the girls around his finger, using sweet words, maybe as it James Joyce did in his writings.I am really not sure, ‘cause I don’t know anything about him.

http://www.dotmusic.com/live/webchats/therapy/transcript.asp

Here is a question I asked about Potato Junkie in a webchat with Micheal and Graham once.

no probs,