[potsie]

Thinking back, I'm reminded of how much 9/11 hung over everything around this time. No exception here. "Leave" has obvious allusions to 9/11 but I also seem to recall Gord taking about 9/11 influencing more on this album - the love theme of "Are you ready?", elements of "Good Life", etc. I seem to recall Gord talking about this at the time. Am I remembering this correctly -- or I am just inferring this based on my own interpretations.

I think 9/11 is touched upon on IVL but those events, and the subsequent war, appear to be more broadly addressed on In Between Evolution. The timeline of the IVL release of June 2002 would suggest that the band was recording in the fall of 2001, thus there would have been time for those events to infiltrate Gord's song writing. I've never thought of "Are You Ready" as alluding to 9/11, although the question of "are you ready to love?" does seem to imply a broader, more global sense of "love", as opposed to a romanticized love between two individuals. So it does work in the "Let's all learn to love each other instead of killing each other" philosophical stance to the insanity of war. In that way it is a cousin to the follow-up question of "Are We Family?" on IBE.

WRT to "Good Life", I've wondered about the "And all the smoke for one life Gives way to shaky movements" being a 9/11 reference. However, the most obvious song on IVL to be influenced by the times is "The Dark Canuck". The verse of "If we ever get home, and the subject comes up, this War isn't for children, War is nothing's enough" is a direct reference. The word "War"is capitalized suggesting the current military initiative and not referencing war in a generic sense.