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Dawn
The song:
With its topics of leaving a family and taking drugs this song reminds me of
Home. Other songs that mention family or home are BD3,
Familiy,
Family Life,
Inheritance, My
People, No Mirror, No Shadow and
Twilight Home.
[ Back to Dawn ]
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Deadeye
The song:
When playing You Weren't There live, Justin usually announces the song with
"never ever believe what you see on TV".
Deadeye:
A well chosen Native American expression for television.
- Source: B-Sides and Abandoned Tracks booklet -
Heart on the blooded sleeve:
To wear one's heart on one's sleeve means to "make one's feelings apparent".
- Source: The New Oxford Dictionary of English -
A little knowledge is a dangerous thing:
In his poem "An Essay on Criticism" English poet Alexander Pope (1688-1744)
warns that a little knowledge is worse than no knowledge at all:
A little Learning is a dang'rous Thing;
Drink deep, or taste not the Pierian Spring:
There shallow Draughts intoxicate the Brain,
And drinking largely sobers us again.
- Read more: Project Gutenberg - Wikipedia entries on Alexander Pope and "An Essay on Criticism" -
Butterfly:
An idea often expressed in connection with the chaos theory
is that with a beat of its wing a butterfly can cause a tornado in a completely
different corner of the world; i.e. a seemingly insignificant event can make
a huge impact. Justin repeatedly expressed his interest in the chaos theory
(and seems to refer to it in Vanity).
So here in this sense "a little knowledge" would be like a butterfly's wing.
- Read more: Wikipedia
-
[ Back to Deadeye | Back to R&R ]
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Drag it Down
The times they are a-changing:
The title of a well-known song by Bob Dylan. Dylan said about this song, "I
didn't mean ['The Times They Are a-Changin'] as a statement... It's a feeling",
a sentiment often expressed by Justin Sullivan about his music, too.
Come gather 'round people
Wherever you roam
And admit that the waters
Around you have grown
And accept it that soon
You'll be drenched to the bone.
If your time to you
Is worth savin'
Then you better start swimmin'
Or you'll sink like a stone
For the times they are a-changin'.
Come writers and critics
Who prophesize with your pen
And keep your eyes wide
The chance won't come again
And don't speak too soon
For the wheel's still in spin
And there's no tellin' who
That it's namin'.
For the loser now
Will be later to win
For the times they are a-changin'.
Come senators, congressmen
Please heed the call
Don't stand in the doorway
Don't block up the hall
For he that gets hurt
Will be he who has stalled
There's a battle outside
And it is ragin'.
It'll soon shake your windows
And rattle your walls
For the times they are a-changin'.
Come mothers and fathers
Throughout the land
And don't criticize
What you can't understand
Your sons and your daughters
Are beyond your command
Your old road is
Rapidly agin'.
Please get out of the new one
If you can't lend your hand
For the times they are a-changin'.
The line it is drawn
The curse it is cast
The slow one now
Will later be fast
As the present now
Will later be past
The order is
Rapidly fadin'.
And the first one now
Will later be last
For the times they are a-changin'.
- Source: Bob Dylan Site - Read more: Wikipedia -
Mammon:
Biblical term. Derogatory for money or wealth.
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The Dream
His hands are weak . . .:
Biblical reference: "Watch and pray, that ye enter not into temptation: the
spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak"
- Source: The Bible. Matthew, 26.41 -
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Drummy B (Billy McCann Version)
The song:
These weren't the original lyrics which everyone liked except Justin. He decided
to make it the song about Belfast that he'd been trying to write for years.
- Source: B-Sides and Abandoned Tracks booklet -
Many many years ago I used to live in Belfast, and by chance
on the Protestant side. I always thought that there was a kind of hole between
those people that wanted to live in the seventeenth century and those that wanted
to live in the twentieth century, but as long as the IRA were operating they'd
stay together. And I always thought perhaps if one day there would be an IRA
ceasefire then this kind of Protestant block would start to split apart. And
that's exactly what's happened. Interesting times. And now perhaps also the
old fashioned republican movement is splitting, too, between those people that
want to be 1916 and the people that planted the bomb the other day and those
people that want to be twentieth century.
- Source: Justin Sullivan, 21/08/98, Sumpfblume, Hameln -
Belfast is, of course,
the capital of Northern Ireland. Here's the history of (Northern) Ireland (incomplete
and abridged):
More or less in the beginning Ireland was Celtic, until in the early Middle
Ages it was converted by Catholic missionaries. Ireland formed a cultural, religious
and political union. Between the 8th and 11th century Vikings came and left
again and apparently did no great harm, but in the 12th century the English
started to meddle with Irish affairs. In the 16th century English King Henry
VIII began to subjugate Ireland completely and proclaimed himself King of Ireland.
He also split from the Roman Catholic Church and founded his own, the Anglican
Church, in order to get divorced or kill his wives and marry again as often
as he liked. Today, the Anglican Church, a mixture of Protestant belief and
Catholic ritual, is still the English state religion. Henry tried to spread
his new faith in Ireland, and so several Irish rebellions took place against
the English that were motivated not only politically but also religiously. The
subsequent queens and kings and also Oliver Cromwell, leader of the Puritan
and democratic revolution in 1648 (yes, he's that guy with the New Model Army),
continued the oppressive policies against Ireland and Irish Catholics. In 1798
social misery lead to another major but unsuccessful Irish rebellion, after
which the Irish parliament was abolished and the union of Great Britain and
Ireland (under the name of United Kingdom) was formed. In 1829, however, the
Irish nationalist movement gained a major victory and subsequently became a
mass movement fighting for the repeal of the Union. The English reacted with
violence, so the until then peaceful movement grew more radical. In 1905 Irish
nationalist party Sinn Féin was founded. After the violent Easter Rising
of 1916 Ulster, the mainly Protestant northern part of Ireland, got its own
parliament, while the predominantly Catholic south became independent. In 1949
this part was finally officially proclaimed a republic. In the northern part,
Northern Ireland, a violent civil war has been raging for the past eighty years,
between Catholic nationalist on the one hand who want to become part of the
Republic of Ireland, and Protestant unionists on the other hand who want to
remain under British rule. The Irish Republican Army (IRA) is a terror
organisation fighting for Northern Irish independence. Although in the 1990s
the British government and the IRA agreed on ceasefires several times in order
to find a political solution, and although the Northern Irish parliament has
now more authority and independence, there are still outbursts of violence on
both sides, and a peaceful solution of the conflict still seems to lie in the
far future.
- Source: Encyclopaedia Britannica - Read more: Wikipedia entries on
Belfast and
History of Ireland
-
Billy McCann:
Either a real person or an amalgam of people Justin knew when he was living
in Belfast that was on the opposite side, the other divide, in Northern Ireland.
- Source: Robert Heaton in an
interview
with Chris Benn in May 1997 -
Glenshane Pass:
A major mountain pass cutting through the Sperrin Mountains in Northern
Ireland.
- Source: Wikipedia -
[ Back to Drummy B (Billy McCann Version) | Back to You Weren't There ]
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Eleven Years
Stevie:
It could be coincidence, because Stevie is a frequent name, but there is also a
Stevie in F#NY.
Grey
eyes:
The person in I Wish also has grey eyes. Anybody knows the colour of Joolz'
eyes?
Eleven sweet years:
The song was released in 1990, so eleven years earlier it was 1979, a date that
also appears in F#NY.
I'm proud of you:
Chris Naylor wrote me an e-mail about this part:
"the verse is thanking
joolz and saying i'm proud of you
because.....
on the thunder and consolation tour and earlier tours they played a venue in
london called Brixton Academy
(it's now called O2 academy brixton)
the 10,000 footsteps is because army fans wore clogs in those days, and if my
memory is intact, the capacity was 5,000 at brixton academy
therefore 10,00 footsteps. the band used to sell out the venue, and it's a nod
to joolz for getting them to that stage in their career.
i used to stand outside stockwell tube station in london near the venue and hear
the fans coming along the road!"
Brixton Road:
A major road in Brixton in the south of London, leading towards the city's centre.
[ Back to Eleven Years | Back to F#NY | Back to I Wish ]
21/01/2011