[sean.bonner]

You're Everywhere

This song has been kicking my ass so much this week. It's a shame Robbie doesn't set up his lap guitar for shows anymore, to open up the ability to play this (along with Vaccination Scar... which is inferior IMO).

If memory serves correct, there may have been a show or two on the IBE tour where they actually opened with it... and what a kick ass opener it would have been. (EDIT: Kelowna, BC - 2004-11-15)
You're Everywhere is a great gem from In Between Evolution that had fallen off my radar for a little while, but I'm so happy I've rediscovered it.

Anyone else here have some love (or hate) for IBE Track 7?

[andrew sharpe]

Love the chord change into the chorus and the disguised reprise at the end. Also sleep on the train VS sleep on the plane. Great song. IBE fast becoming my favourite album on the strength of Gus and Nashville, two of the best Hip songs in the catalog.

[chives]

Agreed.

Under-rated song from an even bigger under-rated cd. Love the live version from the 2004 Los Angeles show on live downloads (or any live version for that matter). The lap guitar could be utilized for more songs than just those 2 - Wheat Kings, 38 Years old, so there is a definite case to be made to start using it again. The song is a great, slow, steady, grindy (almost proto-typical Hip song).

[fingernailsonhull]

You're Everywhere

This song has been kicking my ass so much this week. It's a shame Robbie doesn't set up his lap guitar for shows anymore, to open up the ability to play this (along with Vaccination Scar... which is inferior IMO).

If memory serves correct, there may have been a show or two on the IBE tour where they actually opened with it... and what a kick ass opener it would have been. (EDIT: Kelowna, BC - 2004-11-15)
You're Everywhere is a great gem from In Between Evolution that had fallen off my radar for a little while, but I'm so happy I've rediscovered it.

Anyone else here have some love (or hate) for IBE Track 7?

This song, Mean Streak, and Goodnight Josephine are the gems of this album for me.

[Escape@Hand]

I saw them in Rochester on the IBE tour, and they opened with You're Everywhere. It's one of my all time favourite Hip tunes, and I wish Robbie would break out the pedal steel for this one, and Vaccination Scar. They could totally re-arrange some other tunes for it as well; Bobc would be cool with it.

[blacksox12]

Lots of love for Track 7. Wish they would play it more. Have only seen it once here in Ottawa back in 2004 and it was fantastic. There are some fantastic tunes on that album - Gus, Goodnight, Heart of the Melt, One Night in Copenhagen.

[TheLuxury]

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You are everywhere, within and without
Where it don't matter what we used to do now
Where I feed my people when I get behind the plow
When I write the tiger hangin' on by his eyebrows

Somehow where the gang in me is bein' all that it can be
Somehow part hope is a plan and part vigilante streak

When I reel my Irish in, when I sleep on the train
In straight lines through shadows, you're there
Where the future lies under no moon at night
At the ballroom hangin' out, you're there

You are there when I stop writing things down
And when I forget about who I am now
Forget about who's kissin' her, who's behind my plow
Now it's time to drown all of that poetry out

Somehow where democracy is how we all learn to sleep
With ourselves drawing to ourselves everything we can carry

When I reel my Irish in, when I sleep in the rain
In straight lines through shadows, you're there
Where the future lies under no moon at night
At the ballroom hangin' out, you're there

There's no escaping
This dream we're dancing
With no distractions

When I reel my Irish in, when I sleep on the plane
In straight lines through shadows, you're there
Where the future lies under no moon at night
At the ballroom hangin', you're there

You're everywhere, you're there
You're everywhere, you're there
You're everywhere, you're there
You're everywhere, you're there

[Killer Whale Tank]

I always really liked IBE, and have never been able to understand the lukewarm reception it gets from Hip fans. And this song is the crown jewel IMHO. Loved the chords when I saw the pre-release show, love the lyrics and the emotion in Gord's vocal. A beautiful, complex, haunting chorus. Wonderful stuff.

[spottrax]

I'm on board with You're Everywhere. Great tune. Probably one of the strongest on IBE. Opened with it in Toledo at probably the smallest venue I've seen the Hip.....The Bijou.

[Killer Whale Tank]

"In straight lines through shadows, you're there"

...is a great line.

The other thing about this song is the reference to the "ballroom hanging." I've rolled this around in my mind a lot over the years. It could mean several things:

-'when I'm...in the ballroom, hanging [out];" - you know, chillin'. So the meaning is: "You're there, at least metaphorically, when I do all sorts of things, including stepping out in fancy duds to the ballroom."

Or it could refer to something hanging on the ballroom wall, like a tapestry or portrait. "There in the ballroom, you're on the wall."

But the interpretation that always came most naturally to me was that someone is BEING hung (as in, executed) in the ballroom. It's a "ballroom hanging," in the sense of a what a particularly refined lynch mob might perform.

If so, though, WHO is hanging in the ballroom? Is it the narrator himself (thus: "when I'm...in the ballroom hanging" on a noose - maybe a performer's metaphor for dying onstage, say)? Or is it a hanging of a third party, some atrocity he is condemned to witness? (And presumably, in this case, the "you" he's addressing would be "there" in the sense of haunting his memory, even as he watches the horror unfold. This is what I usually default to when I listen to the song; it's a meaning not far removed from the sentiment expressed in "Bobcageyon" - "in the middle of that riot, I couldn't get you off my mind").

Finally, the "you" of the song could be the person being hung in the ballroom. Maybe s/he was a suicide and her hanging body is "there," in his mind, wherever he goes, even finer affairs in ballrooms.

[andrew sharpe]

I think the perception of the hanging as an execution is too obvious to be unintentional, so I agree with you there.

As for the rest of the song, I think it's about a positive thing (you) being an ever present and necessary distraction from a negative thing. The positive thing could be love, family or art but I perceive the negative thing as being capitalism. I see the "Somewhere where democracy is how we all learn to sleep with ourselves" line as the centre of the song, and the rest of it is just colour for how the narrator deals with it. He seems to be pulling back the curtains on the hypocrisy of democracy. Instead of positive things like sleeping on the train and reeling your Irish in (being less angry?), he is worrying about "pushing his plow" (making money?). In either case, "you" (love/art/family) is there throughout all of it, and it's how he survives it all.

"Part hope is a plan and part vigilante streak" makes me think of riots or demonstrations.

"Write the tiger hanging on by his eyebrows" is probably typical Gord, using a very specific reference that only a small percentage of listeners get, but in an ambiguous way that helps the song even for those who don't. To me it means "creating a very good piece of art", one that is as suspenseful and interesting as a tiger clinging to life.

A ballroom hanging...I'm reaching here, but...maybe a criminal indictment of a wealthy person?...a scapegoat that allows us to "sleep with ourselves". Conrad Black? Bernie Madoff?

But hey I watch a lot of Robocop so I'm hardly qualified to be making these types of interpretations

[andrew sharpe]

From http://songmeanings.com/songs/view/3530822107858540321/:

I heard it from Gord himself in an interview, I believe it was actually referenced in the Hipeponymous Boxset DVD documentary, this song is about his roots. Mainly in reference to his father. Gord is of Irish-Canadian decent. And most of the lyrical references are about the fact that as he grows older (dispite everyman/women stating they don't want to share certain traits with their respective Father/Mother) they tend to show more characteristics and fondness as they grow older. He's simply stating that he's (his father) is everywhere. Meaning he's part of him, as his father is also part of Gord. Actually everything adds up as you listen to the song with this in mind. Excuse the spelling.