Dirt Bike
From This Might Be A Wiki
| song name | Dirt Bike |
| artist | They Might Be Giants |
| releases | John Henry, John Henry + Factory Showroom |
| year | 1994 |
| first played | February 13, 1993 (92 known performances) |
| run time | 3:05 |
| sung by | John Flansburgh |
Trivia/Info
- This song follows a linear narrative about "a kid sitting in a town [with a] religious cult passing through the country, and he's just thinking about what it would be like getting swept up by the cult."[1] The cult in question is "a fictitious rock band phenomenon called 'Dirt Bike'," with the song being "the story of their phenomenon."[2] John Flansburgh would elaborate on this song's concept in a 1998 interview while explaining the subject matter of "Working Undercover For The Man":
In a weird way, there's a much more crazy and elliptical kind of song on John Henry called "Dirt Bike" that's essentially the same idea [as "a band going around the country infiltrating youth culture"], except that it's so crazy in terms of its lyric. It's almost beyond interpretation, because it anthropomorphizes a dirt bike as a cult leader, and the idea is that there's this dirt bike traveling around the country and gathering up a cult.
- Flansburgh on the repetitions of "ride" in the song's coda[3]: "Its to create a lull, with everybody riding into the horizon."
- Flansburgh on the guitar pedal used for this song's guitar solo[4]:
I suspect it actually was one of the rare appearances of my original Maestro FuzzTone (the Satisfaction pedal) that I owned for a very brief period in the middle 90s. It was amazing to look at, but really screwed up – cost too much as it was already a collectors item, but it didn't actually work at all consistently. It was probably one single component going bad, but back then repair people seemed to feel it was beneath them to service pedals – even legendary pedals – so pedals kind of worked until they didn't, and maybe you tossed it or put it in a drawer. In this case I think I sold it at a used shop and found the Fuzz Factory)
- The song's earliest known performance was at a KROQ yacht event in February 1993, of which the song was performed by the once-off trio of John Flansburgh, Frank Black and Ed Krattiger. It was introduced by Flansburgh as "a brand new song we almost finished writing today"[5].
- Due to incomplete lyrics, both the Dial-A-Song demo and the John Henry demo are noticeably shorter than the final version.
- This song features Steven Bernstein on trumpet, who played trumpet on various other songs throughout John Henry.
Song Themes
Body Parts, Hands, Mind Control, Hypnotism, Personification, Plans, Religion, Supernatural, The Senses, Swing Feel, Transportation
Videos
Current Rating You must be logged in to rate this. You can either login (if you have a userid) or create an account with us today. Dirt Bike is currently ranked #198 out of 1085. (159 wikians have given it an average rating of 8.71) |
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