[ I - K | Introduction | Song Index ]
I Love the World
The song:
The album is called 'Thunder and Consolation'; the music is thunderous and the
lyrics console a few people, we think and we've been told so. The opening track
is called 'I Love the World', which some people say is a cynical outlook on
the destruction of our world. And we don't think it that way; man is killing
the world but we love it. And if we can do something to save the world then
we will do. And the chorus goes "I love the world, I love the world, I love
the world" etc. It's a very simple statement: welove the world!
- Source: Robert Heaton in an interview with German radio station Radio Bremen
4 in February 1989 -
Petergate:
A small street right in the centre of Bradford.
Ark:
The Ark is a symbol for the hope that amidst all destruction of the earth we
will survive. In the Genesis, the first book of the bible, when God sees how
sinful man is he decides to destroy the earth with a flood. He only saves one
man, Noah. God orders him to build a huge ship, the Ark, and to take his family
as well as one female and one male of every kind of animal on this ship. Then
he lets it rain for fourty days, until every living thing on earth has drowned.
After a hundred and fifty more days God makes the water slowly disappear. Noah
sends out different birds a few times, until finally a dove brings back an olive
leave, so that Noah knows the ground is dry again, and everybody leaves the
Ark and lives happily ever after. Noah, by the way, is 600 years old when all
this happens . . .
- Source: The Bible. Genesis 6-8 - Read more: King
James Bible -
|
I Wish
Grey eyes:
The person in Eleven Years has also grey eyes.
[ Back to I Wish | Back to Eleven Years ]
|
If You Can't Save Me
Calvary Hill:
The place where Jesus Christ was crucified to
death. According to the Gospels of Matthew, Marc
and Luke, on the cross Jesus was mocked to save himself, if he really was the
son of God, a notion echoed in the lines "You're never going to save the
world/If you can't save me". The Gospels also report that after Jesus died the
sky went black.
- Source: e.g. The Bible. Matthew 27, 38-43 - Read more: King James Bible
-
Mary:
There were several women named Mary present at Jesus' crucifixion, one of them
his mother.
[ Back to If You Can't Save Me | Back to Too Close to the Sun ]
|
Inheritance
The song:
At some stage in your life someone will come up to you and say 'you're just
like your mother'. And they'll be right, cos it's true. The personalities of
your parents will rule your life, and there's no way you can get away from that.
You may live your life and think that you've broken away from the mould, but
what you're really doing is leading your life in exactly the same way as your
parents would do if they were you. However different you might think you are
from them, whether you like it or not, eventually you'll end up being very
similar.
Some parents I think defend you all the time, whether you're right or wrong,
and some parents go to the other extreme, and lead you to believe that whatever
you do isn't good enough. Mine are like the latter. Therefore, I go through my
life believing that whatever I do isn't 'good' enough. In some ways that's a
pain in the neck but in other ways it's really good because you're always trying
to get better.
- Source: Justin Sullivan in an
interview with House of Dolls Fanzine in 1989 -
Compare BD3, Dawn, Familiy, Family Life, Home, My People, No Mirror, No Shadow and Twilight Home for other explorations of the theme of family and home.
Munsters:
Very human family of monsters in the classical American sitcom of the same
name that was aired between 1964 and 1966.
- Read more: Wikipedia -
|
Island
The song:
"On the Easter Island they build massive statues of stone. In order to
transport them they had to chop their trees. There was a successful civilisation
on this island, but it needed more and more land. One day the last tree was
chopped, and the soil eroded, with underfeeding and diseases as result. Moreover
they couldn't build anymore ships to get off the island. Since as Briton I am an
islander, too, the song tells a lot about my own feelings. You could even read
the fate of the Easter Island as prophecy for the fate of the whole planet".
- Source: Justin Sullivan in German Online Magazin
Uncle Sally's; my translation - Read more:
Wikipedia -
[ Back to Island ]
|
Killing
The song:
"This is a song about something that's happening in England over the last five
years, perhaps the front line against the government is the Road Protest Movement."
- Source: Justin Sullivan, 21/08/98, Sumpfblume, Hameln -
"The road movement in England is partly as it appears, in the
sense of an ongoing eco-battle with the powers that be. England is a small country
and there is 462 of these roads pending and if they go on doing this there will
be nothing left, road after road after road. And it isn't the answer. Thatcher
didn't like anything that was even lightly public because it smacked of socialism,
so she'd destroyed the public transport system so there wasn't anything except
cars. Everyone loves cars, I love my car and I love driving and all the rest
of it. It isn't the answer. So on one side, it is a movement against roads which
I think is gathering support. On the other side, it is the only direct confrontation
with central power that is going on at the moment in Britain. I think that since
the collapse of the Berlin wall, it has thrown the old left wing into disarray
combined with the destruction of the old industries which led themselves to
strong unions. So the point there, confrontation there, is more likely to be
these kind of eco-things."
- Source: Justin Sullivan in an interview
with Chris Benn in February 1997 -
Snelsmore Wood is also about the Road Protest Movement.
St George's Hill:
Place in the county Surrey, southwest of London, not very far away from Newbury.
The place is famous because in April 1649, during the English Civil War, a group
of Diggers, nonviolent agrarian communists, assembled there and began to cultivate
the common land. They claimed that God had created the Earth for everybody to
share and provide for their basic needs. Their activities alarmed the Commonwealth
government (i.e. the government of Oliver Cromwell and the parliament)
and roused the hostility of local landowners, who were rival claimants to the
common lands. The Diggers were harassed by legal actions and mob violence, and
by the end of March 1650 their colony was dispersed.
- Source: Encyclopaedia Britannica -
Leon Rosselson wrote the song "The World Turned Upside Down" about this event, which was covered by Billy Bragg (on the "Back to Basics" album), the Oysterband ("The Shouting End of Life") and Attila the Stockbroker ("The Siege of Shoreham"), who also spoofed it ("The Liggers' Song" on "This is Free Europe"). I can only highly recommend all four albums.
Stanworth Woods:
I think a place in Lancashire in the North West of England, were the M65
motorway was completed in 1997.
Marking crosses
upon doors:
This might be a biblical reference: The second book of Moses, Exodus, tells the
story of how the Israelites flee form a famine in their Promised Land and settle
in Egypt, where they are oppressed by the Pharaoh. God then sends a series of
plagues onto Egypt. The final plague kills all first born sons, passing over the
houses of the Israelites who have sacrificed a lamb and marked their doors with
the blood.
- Source: The Bible. Exodus, 12 - Read more:
King James
Bible -
[ Back to Killing | Back to Ten Commandments ]
|
Knife
A dream in a
dream:
There is a famous poem called "A Dream Within a Dream" (published 1849) by the
American writer Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849) that questions the way one can
distinguish between reality and fantasy.
Take this kiss upon the brow!
And, in parting from you now,
Thus much let me avow—
You are not wrong, who deem
That my days have been a dream:
Yet if hope has flown away
In a night, or in a day,
In a vision or in none,
Is it therefore the less gone?
All that we see or seem
Is but a dream within a dream.
I stand amid the roar
Of a surf-tormented shore,
And I hold within my hand
Grains of the golden sand—
How few! yet how they creep
Through my fingers to the deep
While I weep—while I weep!
O God! can I not grasp
Them with a tighter clasp?
O God! can I not save
One from the pitiless wave?
Is all that we see or seem
But a dream within a dream?
- Source: Project Gutenberg -
[ Back to Knife ]
16/06/2007