Damn These Vampires[1][2][3]
Lyrics
Brave young cowboys
Of the near north side[4]
Mount those bridge rails
Ride all night
Scream when captured
Arch your back
Let this whole town hear
your knuckles crack
Sapphire Trans-Am[5]
High beams in vain
Drive wild broncos
Down the plain
Push up to the corner
Where the turbines hiss
Someday we won't remember this
Crawl 'til dawn
On my hands and knees
God damn these vampires[6]
For what they've done to me
Tie those horses
To the post outside
And let those glass doors
Open wide
And in their surface
See two young, savage things
Barely worth remembering
Feast like pagans
Never get enough
Sleep like dead men
Wake up like dead men
And when the sun comes
Try not to hate the light
Someday we'll try to walk upright
Crawl 'til dawn
On my hands and knees
God damn these bite marks
Deep in my arteries
Crawl 'til dawn
On my hands and knees
God damn these vampires
For what they've done to me
Banter
- This is a song, um... this is a song about mirrors. (2011-03-25)
- I didn't go crazy, nobody — I didn't, I spent zero nights in jail, it's all good. Unlike the John in this song. (2011-03-29)
- This is a song about a couple of people who are not quite clear how to stop damaging themselves but they sure do enjoy their present condition. (2011-03-30)
- Like so many other things, this song takes place in Portland, Oregon. (2011-04-05)
- This is a song about how sometimes you wish to curse all of the vampires. (2011-04-11)
- You have friends and you think that they're the greatest people in the world, but there comes a time when you realize, all at once or it can come upon you gradually, that your friends aren't the greatest people in the world but they're actually parasites sucking the blood from you - not because they need the blood but just for their own entertainment. And then you have like one friend on your shoulder saying you're just being neurotic, your friends are great, and yourself in the middle saying 'no they're not, look at the facts'. (2011-05-28)
- This is a song about how a person will sometimes come to your house that wants to stay there for a long time, and is kind of a thief, and he's only your friend if — you know what, I had a guy, I knew a guy when I was a teenager who would show up at the party and you didn't really want him to be at the party. Yeah, he would never leave, but he was sort of always there so it was like leaving and arriving were sort of not really issues with this guy. And one of the Shumpert brothers, our friends, named him Wonder Buddy, and explained it as follows: 'Cause you wonder, why is he your buddy?' I really loved that. This song is about, like, the more dangerous version of Wonder Buddy, like, Danger Wonder Buddy Mark 2, right, when he figures out that to really maximize on his oppression he has to start actually stealing stuff and/or harming people and/or kiting checks. (2011-06-23)
- This is a song also about being in the middle of something that you know you are going to have to finish walking through like one of those people the movies walking through a fire. Only it's not a movie, it's your actual life and it really feels like real fire. (2011-06-26)
- This is a song for when you have a direct and pressing need to curse all of the vampires in your life at once in a single gesture because there are a lot of them so if you try to curse them one at a time, it will be exhausting and you will probably die before you get done cursing them. So this, really, is a song in favor of more efficient curses that get whole groups out of the way so you can move on to other people who need cursed. (2012-05-06)
- I haven't figured out what exactly to say about it that is true and at the same time not over-long and ridiculously self-congratulatory. This is a song about a couple of people who are not quite clear how to stop damaging themselves, but they sure do enjoy their present condition. (2015-11-26)
- This is a song about your friends who seek to drain you of your life-force. They're still your friends, but they need your life-force. It can be hard navigating — I say navigating, but I mean even establishing — the boundaries of friendships like these, because certain things in these friendships are not navigable. One, you have life-force, two, your friends need it to survive. So that sort of eliminates most of the other useful boundaries. After that, boundaries are sort of like a quaint conceit you might occasionally deploy in the service of getting your needs met. (2016-04-06)
Live Performances
Footnotes
1. The song is "actually about [John] when [he] was nineteen". (Tumblr)↩
2. Connected explicitly to Steal Smoked Fish: "The "Steal Smoked Fish" line is a reference to "Damn These Vampires" line, I'd think. The latter, earlier song is an exaggerated, romantic picture of the people in the song. The former, latter song is a clear-eyed view of the same people. There are no actual vampires." (Tumblr)↩
3. The opening chords are not an intentional Rocky Horror Picture Show reference. (Tumblr)
↩
4. As this song occurs in Portland, 'near northside' can be taken to mean the north side of Portland, which is divided between North and South by Burnside Street. Chicago and several other cities have districts named Near North Side, however, these are unrelated. (Credit: Annotated TMG).↩
5. The Pontiac Trans Am was a specialty package for the Firebird, typically upgrading handling, suspension, and horsepower, as well as minor appearance modifications such as exclusive hoods, spoilers, fog lights and wheels. Four distinct generations were produced between 1969 and 2002. (Credit: Annotated TMG). ↩
6. Regarding this line and its parallel in Steal Smoked Fish...theologian J. R. Daniel Kirk asked John about the distinction on Twitter. The conversation proceeded as follows:
Kirk: Alright @mountain_goats Which is it? "God damn these vampires" or "God bless all vampires every night"? My prayers are so confused.
John: @jrdkirk we travel great distances in our faith journeys n'est-pas
Kirk: @mountain_goats indeed. Indeed we do. And if we're lucky, God, perhaps, goes with us. And hears it all.
John: @jrdkirk (the direct answer is that the damning speaker is me in 1986. the blessing speaker is the person I became.)
His article on the theological issues in Mountain Goats songs is worth the read. (Credit: Annotated TMG) This article is heavily referenced throughout both the original Annotated TMG site and here. As a non-theologian and only culturally Christian, I appreciate JR Daniel Kirk a whole hell of a lot.↩