[skippy the wonder dog]

the lyrics on fireworks are Gord all the way ... it's especially obvious on later albums because he reuses lines (winter's solitude with options). also over time he's developed his own language of symbol and metaphor that make the "canonical gord" (if i may) pretty easy to pick out.

fireworks is a great example of a lyric well matched to the music. one of my favorite tunes for the first seven zillion listens, and then unfortunately it palled on me so i've had to put it away.....

[grooveless touque]

Fireworks never palled on me because it never grew on me. For a while it was the only song on all of PP that I wasn't crazy about, and a trillion live performances have completely soured me on it. I love the lyrics, and it flows well, but I really don't like the music or the general "sound" of it.

[Chris Tanz]

I think that Gord wrote 38 Years Old, since in the olden days he spent time defending its fiction, but I still think that "held back the curtain for my older brother Mike" is one of the worst lyrics ever, right up there with "a roadie named Bart" from Tom Petty's Great Wide Open.

I would say the following: the same guy that penned Killing Time on the EP probably wrote
- Blow
- NOIS
- 38
- Everytime You Go ("pulled down his birthday suitcase, brown with dust from no place; said 'my girl don't just walk, she unfurls'")
- Trickle Down ("skeletons come here to dance, but the barrooms beat their brothers into a bloddy trance" "'hit the brakes,' is all you can say; conductor said, 'we'll save 'em for another rainy day')
- Opiated ("bought two-fifths of lead-free gasoline, said 'the bottle is dusty but my engine is clean'")

I think the others (I'll Believe, She Didn't Know; Boots; When the Weight; Another Midnight) all seem like collaborative efforts.

We need a forensic lyricologist looking at these things,
Chris Tanz

[skippy the wonder dog]

Yeah, I always thought 38 yrs old was a pretty poor lyric: seems the mounties had a summertime war to wage? that's pushing it....