As someone that never made friends with an instrument, but needed to contribute something other than a marginal singing voice to his bands, I have always felt that a song's lyrics were incredibly significant. I used to love it when I went to shows and bands that I had never seen, much less heard of, were handing out lyrics sheets at their merch table. (Keep in mind I'm old and the internet wasn't always as accessible as it is now.) I loved it even more if the lyric sheets contained little blurbs about the writer's motivation or inspiration for what she/he had written. Only at punk rock shows have I ever seen this behaviour in musicians. And while I know that punk rock hardly has the market cornered on socio-political commentary, it's prevalence in the genre, and the accessibility of these ideas, was one of the things I found so appealing. I haven't come across many handouts beyond political pamphlets and gig flyers at shows in more recent years. I don't have anything against political tracts, or necessary self-promotion, but when I started writing the lyrics for Centre of the Universe I knew I wanted to get back to this tradition of expanding upon the ideas contained in a song and sharing it with the listener - one nerd to another.
Hostage Life doesn't give out lyric sheets at shows, of course. Photocopying is too expensive, I'm too lazy to haul my ass to the copy shop, and really the last thing the world needs is more ready-to-discard paper products. It's much easier, and far less wasteful, for me to post lyrics and their accompanying essays in a blog and let anyone with internet access and an interest in witnessing some self-indulgence have a look.
Every day or so we'll be adding song lyrics and essays...until we run out. From then on we'll find something else to type about. If you've found yourself here and have no idea what the hell I'm talking about, then go to myspace.com/hostagelife and download our new album Centre of the Universe for free. Cheers.
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