Wall of Mouths

Well, Potato Junkie is the very obvious song to pick here. “This business is pointless, to think that green’s the only colour on the atlas!”

Also, talking about the Northern Ireland subject in the Infernal Love-booklet, “There Is A Light At The End Of The Tunnel” was a positive sounding way of dealing with the subject, mind you that the original lyric was “There isn’t light…” but considering that this line is being repeated a few times (…) they didn’t want such a depressing ending to an otherwise depressing sounding album…

Cheerz,
TW

‘I cannot remember 1690’ - Potato Junkie
‘Like the 12th Day of July’ - Bad Mother
‘Red skies, the summer marches on’ - Church of Noise

All these lyrics are about the Orange Order methinks. The Castlereagh mentioned in Tango Romeo is a police station, and the lyric ‘try to avoid being RU-seen’ in the same song is about the old NI police force, the RUC. Theres probably many more ‘political’ lyrics…

I think “stop it you’re killing me” is poilitical,isn’t it??

Idiots authority, promising equality, so where is the land of the free?

Yes, I reckon that’s probably their most obvious political lyric, actually. The one that sprung to mind for me (although I can’t make out more than about ten words from Suicide Pact :P )

Michael wrote:

Bad Mother definately is, I once asked Andy about it. He told me the line ‘The vicious vulgar colours clash, like the 12th day of July’ refers to the clash between the Catholics and the Protestants. The vicious colours orange and green symbolise both groups, orange being the colour of the Protestants and green the colour of the Catholics. Apperently July 12 is or was the date of the Orange March.

Yeah, I’d picked up on that one and I guessed that there was some significance to “1690” in PJ. Not sure about Church of Noise - isn’t that just about um, sunsets? Six Mile Water sounds very ‘divided community’ to me, so I guessed there might be something there as well.

THat would make sense - it is a bit Romeo and Juliet-ish.

God Kicks is also about the Protestant vs Catholic issue I believe. It was something like: the Protestants kick with their left foot, the Catholics with their right, but God doesn’t make a difference between both religions and kicks (judges) with both feet.

“swore we saw the city hall on fire” (you’ll have to read up on your irish history to get that one, obviously the “we come from across the border is pretty simple to get, and the six mile water is an area in antrim.
most of therapy?s lyrics have some bit of politics in them, but sometimes its hard to get if you dont know irish history.

its common place here to hear the statment, “he kicks with the other foot”, in relation to someone being from the ‘other side’ or other religion.

I always thought ‘animal bones’ was politically influenced.
Church of noise was meant to be a big political song, but i read that it got watered down a bit. Still has refernces to the marching season.
1690 12th july, is the date of the battle of the boyne, dutch protestant william of orange,(king billy) defeats catholic james, and ensures protestant english domination of ireland for next couple of centuries. Still commerated with orange marchs every july. ‘corourful’ affairs these marches, hence the vicious vulgar colours lyric.

I love the line in god kicks, ‘all the memories i have are decked out in presbeterian grey’ very evokative indeed.

‘Dont expect roses’ is also a take on ‘new’labour winning the uk elections after so long being in opposition, the moral of the story, dont expect everything to improve, very true in the long run, remember when all these other bands jumped on the labour bandwagon (oasis being one) and now they all look stupid.

For a band that say publically that they avoid being a political band, they have quite a collection of politically influenced songs, and all very good ones too, which is so hard to do.
Banana republic by bob geldof is a great political song too….Oopps…off topic…!

Alex wrote:

Church Of Noise originally had a sample of Rev Ian Paisley about “good Catholic” something or other, but I can’t remember. And then it was taken out, and my memory serves me badly as I cannot remember why. I _think_ it was pressure from the record company, which is a bit pap really.

Unfortunately it’s usually in through one eye and out, er… , the other…

Ahem

Did T? ever do an interview in the NME and they mentioned Ian Paisley?

Oh

And shouldn’t that be in one ear and out the other?