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I scoffed, but you know what? Your interpretation. Email me when new interpretations are posted for Motorcycle Emptiness. Your email address. Manic Street Preachers Song Meanings.
Get a weekly email update We won't give out your email. The Mercury Prize Curse. Never Look Back Warren Zeiders. Slow Down Summer Thomas Rhett. Damn Strait Scotty McCreery. Liminal2 Its been a long while, but I ended up back here somehow just to see if you had added any further comments and there you are!
I wanna talk about the line 'All we want from you are the kicks you've given us' as you mentioned it in your last post.
This is the line in the song that first got to me when I was really exploring the Manics music properly for the first time after the 'This Is My Truth' album came out. I went backwards from there even though I owned 'Generation Terrorists' and 'Everything Must Go' already, but I had yet to invest in their songs' actual depth and meaning. It's possibly enough for many people to accept the distractions from the real shitty side of consumerism and capitalism.
As long as the conveniences and amusements keep coming, it's just enough for some people. Finding out what actually makes you happy is so much more difficult than just taking the thrills, pills and shiny new things on offer. The rest of your last message was interesting as well. The battle for democracy - the thing that apparently creates waves of envy from non-Western countries - is a lie in that it completely fails in what it promises to provide.
You were spot on about democracy being the freedom to compete brutally against one another. Dictatorships are horrendous, but aren't they simply more transparent versions of democratic governing by today's standards? Its like the saying 'communism is the longest road to capitalism, and capitalism is the longest road to communism' - or every form of government eventually becomes a dictatorship.
Upheaval by populations in certain non-democratic countries seems to be about what religion is the best one rather than solving human rights abuse issues and in the West I guess we have a different set of futile distractions. Ego loaded and swallow! Once you realise ego is such a controlling force in human behaviour you start to look at things differently I think. What motivates this that and the other If its mindless and seems to serve the good of only the few its probably born in ego.
Any further thoughts from you would be welcome Limina2. Hey, it was cool to come back and find you'd added another post. I like your interpretation of the 'kicks' line, but I've been thinking about it a bit more and it seems ambivalent.
There is also 'kicks' in the sense of 'give somebody a kicking', which reminds me of Richey's lyric 'at least a beaten dog knows how to lie. The lyric 'If you stand up like a nail you will be knocked down' from 'Faster' is another good example of this. But Richey is full of fight in Motorcycle Emptiness, and 'all we want from you are the kicks you've given us' suggests he needs the conformist culture there so he can kick back against it - that gives him a feeling of revolutionary heroism that I think we all get when we 'kick against the pricks' an old English idiom.
Interestingly, that lyric from Faster is a Japanese idiom, and the Motorcycle Emptiness video was filmed in Shinjuku, Tokyo where I used to live. The Manics had a massive fanbase out there and I think Richey often had the Japanese in mind when thinking about the challenges of self-expression in a rigid and conformist society. Interesting that you came at the Manics from 'This is my truth Anyway, good to hear from you again, mail me any thoughts you have about anything as you are so perceptive and articulate that it is a pleasure to read your posts.
Liminal2 on June 22, Liminal2 Hi, once again, I think you have picked up on something here I might have mis-interpreted. The 'Kicks' line makes more sense taking in to account the 'fall-back' idea. I am sure Richey was fully aware of the contradiction of having socialist values and being invloved with a conglomorate like Sony or even just in the marketing of music as a 'product' in general.
I think he wanted to distance himself from consumerism by calling it a kind of 'emptiness' which is what gives the song such a sorrowful edge. He knew it was pointless, but his vanity ensured he had little choice but to give in to at least some of its offerings. In a way its the ultimate challenge - the idea of living without the 'kicks' perhaps enters most people's minds at some stage the appeal of the whole crashing on a desert island with no comforts simplicity but in reality, most of us aren't really wired up in such a way that we could practically sustain ourselves that way.
The things that create heated debate and continue to divide opinion are senseless dogmatic religions, which political party is slightly less crap than the other, how can we make more money fast etc In most people's minds, these are the real big issues, not whether or not any of it actually works.
Its like one huge ongoing distraction from the rampant removal of our basic liberties and the feeling left from it all is, we need 'them' because there's no other feesable option. General Comment i dunno the video was shot in japan i think its about the increasing isolation and competition in society today. Yes but Am I the only one to notice the deliberate mondegreen?
General Comment I know this is the science geek inn me taking, but to add to MercyKiller's comment, neon is an inert gas, and so does not react, maybe something to do with a lack of energy used as energy is needed for a reaction and so a lack of motivation probably political, in the idea of starting a revolution because everyone would rather watch TV and succumb to the distractions.
My god between this insight, the association of the song with CHE guevaras Motor Cycle Diaries, and the simple history of the band living in an area where they couldn't afford motorcycles its a fukin brilliant song and then the guitar riffs. General Comment Nicky Wire: The ultimate early Manics statement of longing for something you're never going to get. There's a slight sense of melancholic hope, accepting defeat and making something of it.
It was one of the first songs we [Nick and Richey] sat down at the table and wrote together which was pretty special. It still gives me goose bumps thinking about it. There are so many lyrical ideas in "Motorcycle Emptiness" you almost get swamped in it: too much of everything.
Even today it sounds like no other band. Liverpool on August 12, Link. The rest of the lyrics have been settled. It's about consumerism and people's blindness to the live they're being oppressed to. LaTragedieHumaine on January 28, Link.
General Comment It's the song me and my bf call "our song" and it was a great feeling to watch them in Cardiff in Jan'05 and see them perform that with my bf close by holding me.
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