I wrote this song when I was 25. For the record, I got carded for cigarettes until I was 29. I was by all accounts a kid when I was 25. I did not have financial goals or complex responsibilities. I had to make rent and I needed beer money. The rest of my head space was taken up with dreams. Kids dream differently from grown-ups. The way you imagine the world as a young person is similar to a dream. You don't know enough to understand the world with any depth and you deduce the rest. It seems fully fledged but it will be decades before you realize how half hatched it all is. And your limited understanding makes your dreams seem almost as real as real stuff. Young people maintain that sense of whimsy and pass it around. Some people seem stodgey from the onset.
This song is the story of an accidentally successful messianic figure. I knew enough to know I wouldn't want to continue to be observed as an authority about anything in the spring of my adulthood.
I recently put the album this song was first on onto Bandcamp and decided to learn it and make a recording with gear from the 21st century.
Mudfence Turnaround has songs on it, recodings that are more than 30 years old. It has promise. I found myself liking it.
It's funny to look back and find yourself astute. Thirty years gives a piece of art long enough to lose the relevance of being “contemporary” in a specific time.
This one still works.
well I waited and waited for the word to come. I got tired of waiting so I started to hum. I came to a thought.wrote me a line. gave it significance and called it a sign. maybe it's me. I don't recall. called it the truth and said that it would conquer all. now people come around just to hear me give 'em that line. I got fat I got settled. I get laid all the time. I know I believed it when i first wrote it down, but now I don't go over to that side of town. maybe it's me.I don't recall. called it the truth and said that it would conquer all. they built me a city and they built me a road, and they built me a wall around the truth I had told, and I got three squares and a chair and the details are out of my hair. they call me an institution and say that you gotta go there. maybe it's me. I don't recall. called it the truth and said that it would conquer all. now, I don't wanna tell 'em that I changed my mind or that this kind of thing happens to me all the time, but truth as a vehicle has called it a day. now show me to the hole in the wall and thanks anyway. maybe it's me. I don't recall. called it the truth and said that it would conquer all.
Ultimately, I escaped.
Here's a link to the Bandcamp:
https://samknutson.bandcamp.com/album/mudfence-turnaround
And a video link-
https://youtu.be/pYflZR6WT8s?si=9z69T00JF_CxKfvU
