banished
Release Date: 9/96
Album: KEEP YOURSELF AMUSED
Writer: ADAM MARSLAND
Lyrics:
I had a life in here somewhere
I socked it away from wear and tear
I never took it out but it's not there
I left it somewhere outside this room
Before joy condensed and rained gloom
Before ironic destiny lowered the boom
I never meant to harm her
But now I'm experiencing instant karma
You can never trust a farmer
They're always reaping what they sow
Don't wanna be banished
Never to be seen again
Bigger things going on outside
I wasn't notified that I had died
Vanished
I never saw the need in friends
I was standing here waiting for a bus
When I suddenly became diaphanous
Unto the victor go the spoils
Maybe gold is forever, but aluminum foils
The pathetic loser whose stopped watch never boils
Once many people knew my name
That was before the amber waves of shame
Now my kingdom's her eminent domain
I wanted to let her down not drop her
But now I seem to have come a cropper
Because nothing now can stop her
From becoming what she beheld
My father once told me
That no good deed goes unpunished
Now the ironies are piling on me
By the metric tonnage
I learned from her what trust is
Now you can find me where sleeping rust is
But there's a certain poetic justice
In the way things all worked out
Spanish! Coma esta bien?
Adam sez:
"Banished" perhaps sums up the early Cockeyed Ghost ethos best: high dual vocals, witty wordplay, and an arrangement designed to rise, fall, and then build up to an explosion at the end. The tag falls apart in a cacophony of guitar and cello, but live this song and its extended ending was almost impossible for any band to follow, and we regularly closed our shows with it, working ourselves into a frenzy. I would get so worked up that I would lose control and hurt myself...but it was a staple of our live shows up until our performance at South by Southwest in March 1997, when I tumbled off stage and took out my right knee. After that we stayed away from this song for awhile.
The recording says "watched pot" in the second verse but the lyrics actually are "stopped watch," because a single pun isn't good enough, it has to be a double pun.
The obscure lyrics are basically about jealousy that someone is moving on in their life, and you're stuck where you are.