Fire Editorial

Lyrics

Two blinded in Detroit!
Something must be done
Jaws dropping at ringside
In the blood tide
When the fireball hits

Down Indiana way
Make 'em check their guns
Real tears when it's over
Smell the sulfur
When the dark vault splits

Lord of the hidden pocket knife
Tawdry dreams all come to life
Save yourselves
Save this town, save everything not nailed down

War in Ontario! Dead before the bell
Crushed hopes of the young breed
All the best bleed
All the proud boys break

Who will stand before the flood?
Who will mop up all the blood?
Who alone?
Skin, bone, steel, stone
Swim or drown
Save this town, save everything not nailed down

Banter

• We're having an object lesson in this release cycle, you how when you're young, you make your first record, and somebody hates it, and you get all depressed, 'cause the person who wrote the review goes, oh, this is the worst thing I've heard in my whole life, and you go, aw man, I didn't mean to make the worst record that guy has ever heard in his whole life. Now I feel bad. Then you get mad, and you go, argh, I bet he likes terrible music, but, nah. You feel bad again, you thought you liked your record and now you feel like you've wasted your time. Takes a long time to get over that. And then you go, ah, people who review records don't know anything, but you go, no, I review records, and I know some things, so, by extension... But then, we had a miraculous thing happen this year, that has totally changed my relationship to what people would write about what we do. Because normally, it's like that, normally somebody says, oh, this record is not as good as the last one. Fuck, I thought it was better, man! I wouldn't have bothered with it if I hadn't thought it was better than the last one! There's no point, going, "ah, here's the new record, it's not as good as the last one, but why not!" That's not our position. So, I wrote this song, it was really hard to write because it was totally unlike anything we'd ever done. I'd been playing Gershwin and Ellington at the piano, and I was like, I could do something remotely in that vein maybe, and I wrote a little tiny fraction of two bars. And then I had to spend the next two weeks teaching it to myself, because it was way above my normal pay grade as far as [inaudible]. And I worked really, really hard to learn it, I worked so hard to keep it a secret, I told Peter, "I'm doing a thing, man, it's really weird", I maybe played him a little snippet of it on the phone, 'cause I was having to write four bars at a time, it was very different. I finally di dit, and then me and Jon Wurster went in to do a pre-production demo, which - the Mountain Goats generally do not do pre-production. Pre-production is for bands that have a large budget. But I knew this song was gonna be hard to do, so we went into the Rubber Room in CArrboro and practiced, I was doing all these count-offs into the mic so we could get the timing right, and Isent the demo to Peter, and he goes, [deadpan Peter impression] "well this is quite insane". And we wondered, is it gonna fall off during the recording session? The songs you can't get right, they just go into the scrap heap and you recycle some of their lyrics if you need to. But we did it! I said, oh my god, this does not sound like any other Mountain Goats song, even close. What's [inaudible] gonna say about it? Well. Down to the last critic, they said "this one song is jazzy". [cheering] Well, thanks! This jazzy song is for you. [plays incorrect chord, stops] Hey Matt, what's the opening chord? [Matt, proving a point: Ebmaj7/F]. (2015-05-27 - Urban Lounge, Salt Lake City)
• There was a guy in the Upper Midwest named Ed Farhat. But nobody who watched him work knew that that was his name, because he never dropped character in public. Not once. He played a guy from Lebanon; his mom was, in fact, from Lebanon. He was from Detroit. His character was called The Sheik. And his gimmick was that he didn't care if his opponents died, disfigured, or burned beyond recognition, so long as he walked out and they got carried out. When I was a child, it was terrifying to read about this guy. He didn’t want to win, he just wanted to murder his opponents. And the wrestling magazines would write these editorials, you know, because they had to keep character, they wrote these editorials editorials saying, someone has to stop The Sheik! Someone’s gotta stop him! 'Cause he’s gonna blind somebody! He will blind them! We gotta pass a law against this guy! In point of fact, he owned the Michigan and Indiana territory. He was the boss, right, so he couldn’t have been banned. It was his game. But when you are twelve, all you know is wow, here’s this guy, who is throwing fire at people. That's how - he goes into the wrestling ring, he knows the rules and he throws fire at them. (2015-05-29 - The Showbox, Seattle)
• This is a song about professional wrestling... [JD laughs, audience cheers] It's about a guy who used to like, really, really - I mean all the wrestlers beat everybody up, but this guy didn't even try to win, he just tried to maim and to harm and to burn. His opponents. He never won any matches at all, he got disqualified every time. I was quite inspired by this guy, that really takes a commitment, to go, well, most people are here to win or to lose, but I am beyond all that. The wrestling magazines would get all heated about how he would throw fire at people, and write editorials that he probably wrote himself, about how he had to stop that or be banned from wrestling. (2015-06-01 - The Fillmore, San Francisco)
• So once upon a time in the kingdom of Michigan, there lived a man named Ed Farhat. Most people did not know him as Ed Farhat. They knew him as the Sheikh. His mother was from Lebanon but he himself was from East Lansing. His - he was a wrestler but his main job was running the whole territory. Cutting paychecks, fixing the matches, doing whatever, but his own gimmick was a wrestler of profound, incomprehensible violence. Who did not wrestle to win, because he never won. He just started cheating as soon as he entered the building. Not the ring, the building. He would, like, you know most cheater wrestlers, they can at least make it down the walkway to the ring. But the Sheikh would rake a guy's eye as he was trying to get in, and then beat the hell out of him outside, never even make it in. Just be wandering around the building kicking ass. Terrifying guy. And one of his main gimmicks was to throw fire. Now, you might say to yourself, if I become a wrestler, I probably won't throw fire at people. But Ed Farhat thought about things differently. he was a visionary. And in the wrestling magazines that I read as a child, there would be these editorials. Be quiet back there at the bar, I'm tired of listening to that. [cheering] In the wrestling magazines I would read as a child, there would be these editorials that would say, somebody has to stop the Sheikh! He's gonna blind everybody with his terrible fire! I was a credulous child, I'd think, yes, someone should stop him! This song essentially embodies those editorials. (2015-06-02 - Great American Music Hall, San Francisco)

Live Performances

Footnotes