Incommunicado

[Track Info] [The Lyrics] [Explanation]

Line

Incommunicado - Track Info

  1. Album version (05:16) [Clutching At Straws (1987)]
  2. 7" version (04:05) [7" Incommunicado (1987)]
  3. Alternative mix (05:56) [12", SCD Incommunicado (1987)]
  4. Extended version (04:00) [12" Incommunicado (1985)]
  5. Live (St. Goar, Germany - "Freilichtbuhne Loreley", July 18th '87) (05:41) [12"/SCD Warm Wet Circles (1987)/ Live At Loreley (1987)]
  6. Live (Edinburgh, Scotland, - "The Playhouse", December 17/18/19th '87) (05:23) [The Thieving Magpie - La Gazza Ladra (1988)]

    Notes: Comparing to album version, 2) lacks the instrumental intro and has a shorter instrumental passage in the middle. 3) is a long version: comparing to album version, instrumental intro starts without fading in and is also longer. The keyboard part that introduces Fish' singing (8 bars) is replaced by a guitar part. Brief guitar riffs added here and there. At the beginning of the second refrain 8 extra bars with keyboards leading. In the second refrain drums part is different, and echo is added to Fish' voice. In the end echo on Fish' voice and some verses "Incommunicado, Incommunicado" are absent. Fading out is longer, and it ends instrumental without drums. All live versions follow studio album version. Fish announces 4) saying "This is for all the drinkers in the audience!". Additional backing vocals: Cori Josias. Live version 5) has several small lyrics differences: in the verse "... and I don't give a damn for the Fleet Street aficionados" Fish replaces the word "damn" with "fuck". In the verse "... a villa in France" Fish sings "a villa in Scotland".

    Lyrics by Derek William Dick (Fish)
    Performed Live for the first Time: December 27th 1986

    Published by Marillion Music, Charisma Music Publishing Co. Ltd.

Incommunicado - The Lyrics

I'd be really pleased to meet you if I could remember your name
But I got problems of the memory ever since I got a winner in the fame game
I'm a citizen of Legoland travellin' incommunicado
and I don't give a damn for the Fleet Street afficionados

But I don't want to be the backpage interview
I don't want launderette anonymity
I want my handprints in the concrete on Sunset Boulevard
a dummy in Tussauds you'll see,
Incommunicado, incommunicado, incommunicado, incommunicado

I'm a Marquee veteran, a multi-media bonafide celebrity
I've got an allergy to Perrier, daylight and responsibility
I'm a rootin-tootin cowboy, the Peter Pan, the street credibility
always taking the point with the dawn patrol fraternity

Sometimes it seems like I've been here before
when I hear opportunity kicking in my door
Call it synchronicity call it Deja Vu
I just put my faith in destiny -- it's the way that I choose

But I don't want to be a tin can tied to the bumper of a wedding limousine,
or currently residing in the where are they now file
a toupet on the cabaret scene
I want to do adverts for American Express cards
talk shows on prime time TV,
a villa in France, my own cocktail bar
and that's where you're gonna find me

Incommunicado, incommunicado, incommunicado, incommunicado

Sometimes it seems like I've been here before
When I hear opportunity kicking in my door
Call it synchronicity call it Deja Vu
I just put my faith in destiny -- it's the way that I choose

Incommunicado, incommunicado, incommunicado, incommunicado, it's the only way
[Incommunicado, incommunicado, incommunicado, incommunicado]

(Rainbow Room, LA; St. Moritz Club London)



EXPLANATION OF SONG ELEMENTS
Copyright © 1997 Fraser Marshall, Matthew Anderson & Bert ter Steege.


Incommunicado

Debbie Voller: Fish: 'Incommunicado' - straight in at Number Six and now down to thirty-something! This is a necessary diversion from 'Russians' and it's a sort of macho-gung-ho approach! Torch really wants to be famous but he doesn't want the responsibilities that go with fame. 'Incommunicado' is another word for 'pissed'!

'Handprints in the concrete on Sunset Blvd'
trevorw@ms.kallback.com said: Speaking of Los Angeles and lyrics, did you know there are no" handprints in the concrete on Sunset Blvd"? (Incommunicado) They are in front of the Chinese Theatre on Hollywood Boulevard.

'Legoland'
Legoland being the theme park in Denmark, dedicated to the best toy a child could have. Lego is a plastic building block toy. It now has gone advanced with lights and sounds, but when I were a lad, you just built your train and pushed it yourself... Lego had an interesting policy: they never made any green blocks to try and discourage people from building war machines. Naturally, you got used to red tanks after a while. There are now several Legolands, including one in the UK

'Fleet Street Afficiaonados'
Fleet Street would be interpreted as the home for the British print media. In reality, even back in 1987, a large part of the press had moved out to places like Wapping where they could house both editorial and printiing sides of the operation under one roof. Afficiaonados is a rather appalling pun on Fish's name, and is referring to the paparazzi brigades of rags such as the Sun and Mirror.

'Tussauds'
Madame Taussards:
Brewers:
The widely known London exhibition on wax models of prominant as well as notorious people established by Marie Tussard in 1802. She was born in Berne in 1760 and was taught the art of Wax modeling at Paris and in due course gave lessons to Louis XVI's sister Elizabeth. After a short imprisonment during the French Revolution, she came to London to practice her art. She died in 1850.

'Marquee'
Cp. Cinderella Search

'Peter Pan'
Compton's Interactive Encyclopedia says: James M. Barrie's best-known play, 'Peter Pan', was first presented in 1904. It is the story of a boy who refuses to grow up and creates his own world of Indians, pirates, and fairies. It was adapted as a play with music (1950), and as a musical comedy (1954, revived in 1979) that was also performed on television. 'Peter Pan' was also made into a silent film (1924) and a feature-length animated cartoon (1952). Barrie retold the play in narrative form as 'Peter and Wendy' (1911). Because he wanted his creation to benefit youngsters as much as possible, Barrie donated his rights to 'Peter Pan' to a London children's hospital.

'Taking the point.. patrol fraternity'
To 'take the point' was an expression used by soldiers. I've not encounterd the phrase used before Vietnam, but I'm sure it must be older than that. It was a nasty pposition to take in a patrol. The point man would go several metres ahead of the patrol and check the path for danger. Usually the one tyo tread on a mine, fall down a punji pit, shot by a sniper or napalmed by his own side. To 'take the point 'means to feel out where other will follow.

Steve Ross: Just to add to the explanation provided, I believe that "dawn patrol fraternity" refers to a group of acquaintances who stay up all night drinking until the pubs close in the early hours of the morning - the long stagger home quite often ends with the sun coming up. If a person is "the point" of that fraternity, that person would be the instigator of going to the pub and probably the one who keeps ordering rounds until the pub closes.

'Synchronicity'
Pear's Cyclopedia: An attempt by the Psychologist Carl Gustav Jung to explain the apparently significant relationship between certain events in the physical universe which seem to have no causal link. This rather involved concept is easily understood if one realises that almost all scientific and philosophical beliefs are based on a principle known as 'causality'. We can express this in another way by saying that an object moves because it has been pushed or pulled by another. We see because light strikes the retina and signals pass up the nervous system to the brain. A stone falls to the ground because the earth's gravity is pulling it towards its' centre etc. For all practical purposes, every event can be looked upon as being 'caused' by some other prior event and this is obviously one of the most important principles of the operation of the universe.

Jung, however, felt that there is a sufficently large body of evidence to suggest that events may be linked in a significant (i.e. non chance) way without there being any true causual relationship between them. The classic example he held to be the supposed predicitve power of astrology by which there appears to be a relationship between the stella constellations and the personality and life patterns of people on earth. Jung was scientist enough to realise that there could be no causal relationship between the aspect of the stars and the lives of people billions of years from them, yet felt that the evidence for astrology was sufficiently strong to demand an alternative, non-causal explanation.

The trouble with synchronicity, which has not made much of an impression on the world of physics or psychology, is that it is not really an explanation at all, merely a convenient word to describe some puzzling coincidences. The real question, of course, is whether there really are events occurring which are significantly but not causally linked, and most scientist today would probably hold that there are not. Still, it was typical of the bold and imaginative Jung to tackle head-on one of the principle mysteries of existence and come up with a hypothesis to attempt to meet it.

'Deja Vu'
The sense that one has experienced an event before and is recollecting it in the same instant as the instance is actually taking place. Many scientists believe that Deja Vu (literally French; already seen') is an incredibly fast feedback loop where information is somehow stored and retrieved far more quickly than usual. Others disagree, pointing out that they have specific knowledge of when they first became aware of the 'Deja Vu' information. It should be pointed out that this is strictly precognition.


Sources:

 


Last Modified: 27 jul 2000