[Intro: The Flaming Lips]
Yeah dah dah dah dah... Is there an astray in here?
--Can we smoke in here?
--Yeah, Eric said it was in his pockets
The good times... (Yes!)
Who needs the good times?
The good times are killing me
[Modest Mouse]
The good times are killing me
Here we go
Got dirt, got air, got water
And I know you can carry on
Shrugged off shortsighted false excitement
And oh what can I say?
Have one, have twenty more "one mores"
And oh it does not relent
The good times are killing me
Kick butt, buzz-cut dickheads
Who didn't like what I said
The good times are killing me
Jaws clenched tight, we talked all night
Oh but what the hell did we say?
The good times are killing me
The good times are killing me
The good times are killing me
Fed up with all that LSD
Need more sleep than coke or methamphetamines
Late nights with warm, warm whiskey
I guess the good times they were all just killing me
Got dirt, got air, got water
And I know you can carry on
The good times are killing me
Enough hair of the dog to make myself an entire rug
The good times are killing me
Have one, have twenty more "one mores"
And oh it does not relent
The good times are killing me
Shit-kicker, city slickers who all wanted me dead
The good times are killing me
Get sucked in and stuck late nights
With more folks that I don't know
The good times are killing me
The goooood tiiiiimes aaaaaaare killing me (The good times are killing me)
The good times are killing me
The goooood tiiiiimes aaaaaaare killing me (The good times are killing me)
The good times are killing me
The goooood tiiiiimes aaaaaaare killing me (The good times are killing me)
The good times are killing me
The goooood tiiiiimes aaaaaaare killing me
The goooood tiiiiimes aaaaaaare killing me...
Who needs the good times?
I listened to this album, I think last year? Maybe two years ago? I knew about another song from Modest Mouse, Sugar Boats from Strangers To Ourselves, for much longer, and I vaguely knew about their other music, but someome I was watching at the time considered it "one of the albums everyone should listen to", so I gave it a listen. I actually didn't know this band made Float On, lol.
The entire album is quite good, but I couldn't call it a favorite. Tracks on it like Bukowski and Black Cadillacs are more memorable to me over other tracks like Dance Hall and Dig Your Grave, but it's overall a good listen.
Once Again I have yapped about things other than the song itself. This track is another one of those tracks with a clear figurative meaning but I prefer to interpret more literally, with "The good times" referring to drug use. It's not really a metaphor, what with the bridge mentioning LSD and meth and all, but the way I see it is that the world outside is in The Good Times (or at least pretending that it is), what with the idea that "Racism is over" and that "America is a free country" and that we should all be grateful, actually, and not be trying to push "fringe issues" that nobody cares about. If these are the good times, then the good times are killing me.
Less... topically, though, I do think this is mostly the human nature of normalizing whatever situation we find ourselves in, we got water, got dirt, got air, so we carry on, even when it's bad, to make it "the good times" because we are more used to prosperity as a society at this point. Previous songs on this playlist alluded to this feeling, where the current mood is something that wants to provoke, twenty more "one mores", to drive us to need more sleep than coke or methamphetamines, so I chose to make this song the ending to this "side" of the playlist as a sort of culmination to that mood. This is the sort of song I just want to sing with other people just chilling and crying because the world sucks right now, just scream out "the good times are killing me."