SONG: “Flip the Switch” (To download: right-click & “Save As”)
ARTIST: grant.
SOURCE: “Deep brain stimulation may help Alzheimer patient’s memories”, Telegraph.co.uk, 31 January 2008, as used in the post Memory on tap.
ABSTRACT: I’m not sure what it says about me that I read a story about a procedure that’ll give you absolute photographic recall of any one event in your past and my first thought is, “Well, there goes this relationship.” The memory being described here isn’t a real one, although I developed an inexplicable obsession with the image of bees crawling through gas stations after driving through Georgia in the mid 1990s, when I seemed to keep running into sad, desperate bees. Crawling on the concrete. So I wanted to write a nostalgic song The Zombies might have sung about the moment in which a girl gives the kind of ultimatum that both parties eventually sort of forget ever happened for the sake of domestic tranquility. Then I gave up on making the drums sound real and ran out of time to meddle with much of anything else, which is probably for the better. Simple seems to work.
As far as the recording goes,I think the lesson here is that one’s vocal performance improves once one no longer gives a damn about waking up the kids. (They stayed asleep, too.)
LYRICS:
I’d forgotten there were bees
Crawling on the concrete
Beneath your sandalled feet
And you wore that orange skirt
That rose above your knees
And the way your forehead creased
I was filling up my car
As the floodlights blocked the stars
I was blind but now I seeCH:
Now, too well I see
The way that you won me
Locked in my memory
Let’s play it back againSurgeon, open up my skull
Find that single cell
Doctor, wire your terminals
Turn it on until I’m wellCH:
Oh, how well I see
The way that you won me
Messed with my memory
Let’s play it back…BR:
And this is the night that decided
Our love would never die
How was I so misguided?
When every tiny detail seemed to cry
She lied, she lied, she lied
She lied, she lied, we lied
We lied, we lied, we lied, we lied.
I’d forgotten that one crease…I’d forgotten that one crease
Between your somber eyes
And the way your fists were squeezed
Demanding that I answer
I’d forgotten how you seemedCH:
To be burning into me
The way you always used to be
Messing with my memory
Let’s play it back againFlip the switch, flip the switch
Let’s play it back again
Flip the switch, flip the switch
Let’s play it back again
Flip the switch, flip the switch
Let’s play it back again
Flip the switch, flip the switch
Let’s play it back again
again
again
again
again