Classic from Marillion,
Fugazi
Vodka intimate, an affair with isolation in a Blackheath cell
Extinguishing the fires in a private hell
Provoking the heartache to renew the licence
Of a bleeding heart poet in a fragile capsule
Propping up the crust of the glitter conscience
Wrapped in the christening shawl of a hangover
Baptised in the tears from the real
Drowning in the liquid seize on the Piccadilly line, rat race
Scuttling through the damp electric labyrinth
Caress Ophelia's hand with breathstroke ambition
An albatross in the marrytime tradition
Sheathed within the Walkman wear the halo of distortion
Aural contraceptive aborting pregnant conversation
She turned the harpoon and it pierced my heart
She hung herself around my neck
From the Time-Life-Guardians in their conscience bubbles
Safe and dry in my sea of troubles
Nine to five with suitable ties
Cast adrift as their side-show, peepshow, stereo hero
Becalm bestill, bewitch, drowning in the real
The thief of Baghdad hides in Islington now
Praying deportation for his sacred cow
A legacy of romance from a twilight world
The dowry of a relative mystery girl
A Vietnamese flower, a Dockland union
A mistress of release from a magazine's thighs
Magdalenes contracts more than favours
The feeding hands of western promise hold her by the throat
A son of a swastika of '45 parading a peroxide standard
Graffiti conjure disciples testaments of hatred
Aerosol wands whisper where the searchlights trim the barbed wire hedges
This is Brixton chess
A knight for Embankment folds his newspaper castle
A creature of habit, begs the boatman's coin
He'll fade with old soldiers in the grease stained roll call
And linger with the heartburn of Good Friday's last supper
Son watches father scan obituary columns in search of absent school friends
While his generation digests high fibre ignorance
Cowering behind curtains and the taped up painted windows
Decriminalised genocide, provided door to door Belsens
Pandora's box of holocausts gracefully cruising satellite infested heavens
Waiting, the season of the button, the penultimate migration
Radioactive perfumes, for the fashionably, for the terminally insane, insane
Do you realise? Do you realise?
Do you realise, this world is totally fugazi
Where are the prophets, where are the visionaries, where are the poets
To breach the dawn of the sentimental mercenary
Songwriters: Derek William Dick / Ian Mosley / Mark Kelly / Pete Trewavas / Steve Rothery
Fugazi lyrics © Sony/ATV Music Publishing LLC
Loscil plays drums in Destroyer. The lyrics and vocals are from the frontman in Destroyer, Dan Bejar, and in fact are taken directly from a Destroyer B-side called Grief Point. So it's a track referring to a self-referential lyric. It's about them making music at that time, the choice of A-side, and making whatever track was supposed to be the b-side before it came this. Destroyer are constantly changing style, but the EP is out of step with anything else they've done, it's pure ambient. I don't think Dan liked it. He's moaning about being tied to the genre, Loscil, Tim Hecker (the guy Dan collaborated) on the A-side, and the keyboard player from Destroyer (whose name I don't remember). Exploding Rockets is another reference to one of their songs.Loscil: The making of Grief Point.
I hope he keeps his promise...
Loscil plays drums in Destroyer. The lyrics and vocals are from the frontman in Destroyer, Dan Bejar, and in fact are taken directly from a Destroyer B-side called Grief Point. So it's a track referring to a self-referential lyric. It's about them making music at that time, the choice of A-side, and making whatever track was supposed to be the b-side before it came this. Destroyer are constantly changing style, but the EP is out of step with anything else they've done, it's pure ambient. I don't think Dan liked it. He's moaning about being tied to the genre, Loscil, Tim Hecker (the guy Dan collaborated) on the A-side, and the keyboard player from Destroyer (whose name I don't remember). Exploding Rockets is another reference to one of their songs.
Bits of all this make sense if you know the whole story, and a bit about the singer Dan Bejar and his lyrical style and persona. He usually says his lyrics are nonsense, but sometimes they do make sense. This one is a real headfuck. Falling out of love with what he's doing, starting over again. I love the way it comes in at the end of that album, which progressively lures you into a relaxed sleep with gentle pulses and waves. Then Dan turns up and delivers that really narcissistic black-soul shit. They say one of the definitions of Narcissism is that the sufferer is always going to get bored of with what they are doing, and go after a new sensation, a new self, something different from what they were into before. He's saying it's a regular thing for him and he's embracing it. The band are constantly shifting in style.
He's in an ongoing battle with this and his persona partly because he comes from the Canadian post-rock scene which is extremely dour and about pushing people away. He's constantly walking that line between being an 'honest', woke, depressed-about-the-world, cynical lyricist and self-parody of being such a bad news bear who basically hasn't got a lot new to say and does that same thing as all rock stars which is talk about rock-star problems, the scene, band politics, self-pity, being bored, and not understood.
Here's my favourite Dan Bejar song. Maybe because he's in it for about two minutes out of the twelve. It's the last tune on the album Destroyer released shortly after this. Again, it's out of step with the rest of the album but works as a coda. If Grief Point is a Destroyer track at the end of a Loscil album, I like to think of this as a Loscil-style tune at the end of a Destroyer album.
I think it's fair to say Dan is really sticking the knife into his miserable, superior self with these lyrics.
'I sit around,
and watch things wither,
Retrace my steps
Like the laziest river
Chewing over what the world has done'
That's fighting talkIn a generally shite decade for music Marillion were at the top of the list of the worst of them !
Great song though.Not impenetrable lyrics, just a great nonsense do-wah intro. Prize for the first poster to give me the next line.
Dum dum dum dummy do-wah,
Oo yea yea yea ah
O wo wo-ah.. ah
..???
In a generally shite decade for music Marillion were at the top of the list of the worst of them !
Somebody answered it some time ago. You are right, great song by a great artist.Great song though.
By the big O
You may be lonely waiting for the answer