We’ve added a new ‘lyrics’ section to the blog so, if you are interested you can see what Candi’s Dog are going on about. The lyrics will be there ‘warts and all’ and contain crap lyrics which were rushed off in five minutes and those where real thought was involved; where the nuances of each individual word was agonised over; where the character and meaning evolved over a period of months into something which may or may not also be crap. You can decide for yourself. So we thought we could occasionally have a look at some of the lyrics in case you were wondering. Besides, after just four posts, we need something else to talk about before we end up just posting about really good cups of tea we’ve had recently, or something.
Took a Short Diversion is a fairly recent addition to the Candi’s Dog set and features on our new album (out soon!). The song tells of someone returning to their hometown, in this case Perryville. I should say that this is not the hometown of any member of Candi’s Dog and would in fact represent an extremely long diversion of several thousand miles, were we to undertake the journey. Our own hometowns do not rhyme with much of use (thanks Mam/Mum and Dad!), and while the use of American place names in songs by British bands who have never visited the place in question is extremely naff, the fact that the lyrics could be misconstrued as saying the place is grim and miserable mean we did not want piss anybody off who was local enough to give us a good kicking. If by some miracle we make it big in the USA we will obviously change it to a small village in Burkina Faso to avoid being set upon by angry Kentuckians.
So this is a personal experience song, reflecting the fact that we occasionally visit the places where we grew up and wander about. Once you have got past the novelty that everything looks really small and what was once your whole world can be crossed by car in a matter of minutes, it all gets quite miserable. Taking a short diversion is essentially a masochistic experience where you inflict upon yourself the pain of loss for the warm glow of your childhood and a simpler, threat free, decision free time when you had not messed up yet and where dear friends were on your doorstep and not scattered to the four corners of the earth.
Obviously this is all nonsense; the golden age certainly did not feel like it at the time and the place ceased to be the moment he left it, but nostalgia is a powerful force that makes you buy concert tickets for people who you never listen to any more, watch awful films and trashy I love (insert year) programmes and, for some at least, occasionally take a short diversion.
candisdog.com 