Mister Rode
Lyrics
I got a name I got a say (2)
I got a name I got a say
I got a name I got a say
And:
It just came and then it stopped
It just came and then it stopped
I got a look translucent
I got a look translucent face (3)
My mirror dissolves every day (4)
I got a name I got a face
I got a name I got a say
I gotta show medical card
All wang doctors all tryna…
It came in tricolours with headband
Its summers were all in a day
They had a name they had a face
They had a name they had a say
They had a say!
Said going downtown
They had a name
They got a say
It came in tricolours each day
When I’d seen that show today
When I’d seen those swinging doors
No richness for…
Gimme just don’t
Come round lemon freshness
The lemon freshness
The lemon freshness
I gotta show medical doors
All right
Gonna kill
I got a name I got a say
I got a name I got a say
I got a name I got a say
I got a name I got a say
I got a name
I got a name I got a say
I gotta show a barrel of doors
I gotta walk I got around
I get a seat I got a name
It just came and then it stopped
It just came and then it stopped
Then it stopped
It just came and then it stopped
I got a name I got a say
I got a name I got a say
It’s taking off
It said and took off
I got a name I got a face
Notes
1. There is a race horse named "Mister Rode." Harley points out that RØDE is a brand of microphone, if it is the reference here the title could refer to MES himself.
2. It may be "I gotta say," but below "they had a say," so I went with "got a say." I suspect that it is "I got a name I gotta say," though, the name being Mister Rode. However, on it least one life version, MES sings "I got a name I gotta trace." There are doubtlessly mistakes in the lyrics as I've transcribed them, which I hope will get mostly ironed out in the coming days, as more people get ahold of the album.
John Cooper Clarke, "I Married A Monster From Outer Space":
"each time I see her translucent face
I remember the monster from outer space"
4. From "Calendar": "Your mirrors are dissolving today." The line is vaguely reminiscent of the Grateful Dead classic "Dark Star":
Mirror shatters
in formless reflections
of matter
Glass hand dissolving
to ice petal flowers
revolving
The Dead are an unlikely reference point for MES; still, some have pointed out a musical similarity between "Mr. Rode" and the jam section to "New Potato Caboose," from Anthem of the Sun. I am skeptical that any of this is intentional, but it's worth considering.
Otherwise, talk of dissolving mirrors seems like generic psychedelia, and it wouldn't surprise me if connections can be drawn in other places.
More Information
Comments (31)

- 1. | 09/12/2013

- 2. | 21/12/2013

- 3. | 02/02/2014

- 4. | 15/02/2014

- 5. | 15/02/2014

- 6. | 15/02/2014

- 7. | 16/02/2014

- 8. | 11/03/2014

- 9. | 28/03/2014
The lyrics are a meditation on identity and anonymity, from the perspectives of, first, a passenger at a subway or commuter rail station, second, a patient about to be wheeled into surgery in a hospital, and third, a soul boarding an airplane and experiencing its subsequent takeoff.
At the subway station, as the train arrives, our protagonist sees his "translucent face" reflected in the windows of the train as it slows to a stop (and, through his translucent image, he sees the faces of the anonymous passengers inside the train--thus the "mirror" that "dissolves every day". The chorus asserts identity in the context of that most anonymizing of modern activities, packing onto a train, with all the awkward glance-avoiding etiquette that accompanies it.
In the second vignette, the protagonist observes that he has "gotta show medical doors", which tidily sets the scene--he is going to be wheeled into some part of a hospital. He muses over: his distrust of "wank doctors", the "tricolours seen every day"(?), "summers all in a day" (a line possibly filched from the Ray Bradbury short story "All Summer in a Day") and hospital disinfectant, among other things.
His anxiety growing, he mordantly observes that, rich or poor, all go through the same swinging doors. As he slips into full-blown anesthesia/paranoia, he encourages the doctors toward their putative (in his paranoid estimation) task: "gotta kill!"
(The chorus of this verse serves a different purpose--to have a name and a matching face in this environment is reassuring, as it lessens the chance of having a leg sawed off when one should have had one's tonsils removed instead. OTOH, one indeed has a name when it is attached by a tag to one's toe as well.)
In the final tableaux, passengers are boarding a "barrel of doors" that also has wings--an intercontinental jet. Our protagonist has "a name and a seat", and negotiates his way down the aisles until he arrives at his appointed place.
The final lyric, "It's taking off, it said, and took off" is accompanied by a swelling instrumental run-up that starts cheese-ily enough with childlike puttering noises provided by Eleni's keyboard, but then gains a Mancabilly intensity that has an oddly transcendent quality (which could be said to be a quality obtained by the song in general).
At the very beginning of Mister Rode, the melody starts with a descending four-note figure (by itself on the promo/vinyl version, behind "I got a face" on the digital) that is strongly reminiscent of church bells ringing changes. (It seems familiar--I poked around the internet, listening to the changes rung at various churches in hopes of stumbling on it, but no such luck.) Gradually, that figure transforms (via a tacked-on inversion) into something raga-like, aided by Peter Greenway's sinuous, sitar-ish voicing and phrasing, ranged against twin drummers playing loopy, shambolic complementary patterns.
Church bells? Changes? Perhaps.
But at the least, MES here revisits the weighty topics of existence and mortality and seems to be, if not entirely reconciled to the latter, at least somewhat accommodated to it.

- 10. | 30/06/2014

- 11. | 22/12/2015

- 12. | 01/02/2017
"each time I see her translucent face
I remember the monster from outer space"

- 13. | 11/02/2017

- 14. | 17/02/2017

- 15. | 18/05/2017
DO we know this? I always think "I gotta show medical card," which makes sense but I don't know that he says it. But just now the first one sounded like "medical code." Anyone want to put ears on it?

- 16. | 22/05/2017

- 17. | 23/05/2017

- 18. | 18/05/2018
A reference to 'tricolours' could mean the French flag.
'Summers were all in a day'. In one day Armstrong had his name ripped from the record books. The Tour takes place in July.
Armstrong famously recovered from cancer, there are plenty of medical/hospital references in the song.
'I got a name, I got a face'. Another reference to being removed from cycling history perhaps.
'It just came and then it stopped.' Is this the money and sponsorship that dried up after the report into his doping was completed. Armstrong estimates he lost $75m in one day.
Is the 'translucent face' a way of pointing out that his denials became more see-through?
'Lemon freshness' - Former Tour winner Greg Lemond was a big critic of Armstrong. Or is lemon the shade of yellow in the Tour De France leader's jersey?

- 19. | 20/05/2018
I want to just amplify SlightlyDislocated's note in comment #9, there's a 1954 Ray Bradbury short story entitled, All Summer in a Day, which is set on Venus.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/All_Summer_in_a_Day
Bradbury died on 5 June 2012. This song debuted live on 30 October 2013 and was first released on [i]The Remainderer
10" in November. According to Wikipedia, Bradbury's death coincided with a rare transit of Venus across the Sun.

- 20. | 20/05/2018
"I Got a Name" is a 1973 Jim Croce song, which featured in Tarantino's Django Unchained (2012).

- 21. | 20/05/2018
Barrel door bolts are a thing.

- 22. | 15/07/2018

- 23. | 15/07/2018

- 24. | 15/07/2018
Lots of good stuff in the comments here, it goes in so many directions I think I'll leave most of it down here for now and let people peruse it and consider...

- 25. | 15/07/2018

- 26. | 16/05/2019

- 27. | 28/06/2019

- 28. | 28/07/2019
Mark, spent some time in hospital in Germany around 2009.
Maybe Mr. Rode was a fellow patient or Doctor?

- 29. | 09/08/2019

- 30. | 16/10/2022
I was reading testimony from the Eichmann Trial and was reminded of this song: http://www.nizkor.com/hweb/people/e/eichmann-adolf/transcripts/Sessions/Session-069-01.html
I gotta show medical doors
All right
Gonna kill [i][/i]
etc, etc.
A tale of man so desperate for meaning in the face of liquid and vanishing identity/one’s own mortality that any organization, cause or activity will do, no matter how terrible and hideous?
“I got a name, I got a say”

- 31. | 16/10/2022
The headband the leather strap on the Nazi Death’s head cap perhaps?
Maybe a deliberate confusion of victim and persecutor? The predicament universalized, the aging and coming apart, even this character struggling with loss of meaning once his precious party dissolves. The transit imagery could be the trains that with brutal and absurd efficiency transported so many to their deaths.
“They had a name, they had a say”
But also, the ephemerality of events, of whole movements, of whole races: gone, suddenly. And with them their secrets, hopes and turmoils. Collective memory relying on exhumed scraps, the dead doomed to be forgotten or misunderstood by posterity.
It's..."my mirror dissolves every day"