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- Home /
- The Annotated Lyrics /
- Kick The Can
Kick The Can
Lyrics
Lies are all
You are flying
You are flying
You are flying
By sailing babe
Come outside
Come out to town
You gotta kick the can or abseil in some foreign land (2)
You are sailing
And finish up a bird I guess
You're in the heart of France
A place very accustomed to your visage
A place very accustomed to your visage
(3)
You are flying
You are flying
You are flying
Visage
Commence descent
Over Madagascar
Over Madagascar
You gotta kick the can or descend in some foreign land
You gotta kick the can or descend in some foreign land
You gotta kick the can or descend in some foreign land
You gotta kick the can
You gotta kick the can
You gotta kick the can
You gotta kick the can
You gotta kick the can
You gotta kick the can
You gotta kick the can or descend in some foreign land
You are landing on a supporter of a swear word
Wholly entrenched
Entrenched
You gotta kick the can
You gotta kick the can
You gotta kick the can
You gotta kick the can
You gotta kick the can or descend in some foreign land
You gotta kick the can or descend in some foreign land
You gotta kick the can
You gotta kick the can
You gotta kick the can or descend in some foreign land
You gotta kick the can
You gotta kick the can
You gotta kick the can or descend in some foreign land
Notes
1. Kick the Can is an old children's game and, what is probably more relevant here, the title of a Twilight Zone episode from 1962. It is about a man at a rest home who thinks he will become youthful if he acts like a child; he begins playing Kick the Can and, sure enough, is tranformed into a young boy. If the lyrics are rendering a similar account, which is possible but doubtful, the "foreign land" may refer to Shakespeare's "Undiscovered country, from whose bourne no traveler returns" (Hamlet). I am unsure about a good many of these lyrics.
Ben Pritchard wrote the music.
Ben Pritchard on Twitter, 1 May 2020 (from Dan):
I wrote Kick the can for that album, first song I ever wrote. I wasn’t too keen on it at first, we had to write the whole album in a rush and recorded it in an unfinished studio underneath a body builders gym with the sounds of dumbbells dropping every few minutes. Many takes!
2. "An abseil (/?æbse?l/ or /???pza?l/; from German abseilen, meaning "to rope down"), also called a rappel after its French name, is a controlled descent of a vertical drop, such as a rock face, using a rope. Climbers use this technique when a cliff or slope is too steep and/or dangerous to descend without protection," according to Wikipedia.
3. The music changes here, to the extent that it's almost like an entirely different song. Paul Saxton notices that the drum part here is quite similar to Can's "Oh Yeah," which could be one reason for the title "Kick the Can."
"I Am Damo Suzuki" also uses the drum part from "Oh Yeah." "Kick the Can" made its debut on the 8th of October, 2001, at the Cockpit in Leeds. "I Am Damo Suzuki," from This Nation's Saving Grace, was retired after 1987, but it reappears in April of 2001, after which it was played 66 times before being finally retired (so far) in May, 2004. So the writing of "Kick the Can" appears to be contemporaneous with the revival of "I Am Damo Suzuki."
Comments (21)
And thanks, Paul, the drum beat is reminiscent of "Oh Yeah," good call.
Annotating is like making sausages etc. etc....
From the October 2001 studybees.com interview by Penny Broadhurst:
https://web-beta.archive.org/web/20050205084123/http://pennybroadhurst.com:80/mesinterview.htm
https://web-beta.archive.org/web/20011214015820/http://www.studybees.co.uk/mes1.htm
"Think
Like mountain climbing
or skiing in the Alps
Think of it-
I don't."
.. just a thought - (and sense of it reminds me of Little Rebel, Sing Harpy / Hilary etc for some reason...?)
https://twitter.com/Benpritchard6/status/1256178976793546753
It was a dream; it was a tin can
It was a dream
It was a dream; it was a tin can
It was a dream
Had he kick, kicked that dream
Kicked that dream down the street?
'You're in the heart of France' should be 'You're in the heart of trance'?
Isn't 'kicking the can' an americanism with two meanings: Kids kicking a can in the street because they're bored with nothing better to do and no money. Ready recruits for the army; 'kicking the can down the road' also means putting something off til later.
October 7th 2001 U.S. and uk invaded Afghanistan, blaming them for 9/11. Afghanistan is very accustomed to your visit. uk invaded twice in 19th century, then U.S. with us supporting. 'You gotta kick the can or abseil in some foreign land', could mean not many choices for poor kids. Or it could mean you can put off revenge until later, or invade now.
I agree with "my sailor mate" and "accustomed to your visit".
But I still hear "you're in the heart of France", not "trance".
Unless we go with MES' pre-cog claim, which I don't, 9/11 can't be anything to do with the lyric.
The album was recorded mid-2001, according to thefall.org. The CD of Are You Are Missing Winner was on sale at a gig on 8 October 2001 (a month prior to official release), the same gig that saw Kick the Can's live debut.
While it's impossible to listen to lyrics about abseiling into a foreign land without also thinking of military action, it's a mistake to backwards engineer references to Afghanistan.