Interröbang Cartel The World's Biggest.

(MP3)

Lyrics: Matt Mc Irvin

Arrangement: Casey B

Nose flute: Jeremy Impson

Album: Needs More Wanger

(comments from ZIP: "Chalice of Fire was the first of Matt Mc Irvin's lyrics to be set to music (by Casey B). Matt describes how this song came to be:

SUPER AMAZING JULY 2003 NEWS FLASH: A.r.k's own Casey B. recorded "Chalice of Fire"!

Note: The day before my wedding in July 2000, there appeared the eagerly awaited fourth Harry Potter book, which was something about a goblet of fire. They can't fool me; obviously it was actually a chalice. Apparently the nostalgic exercise reproduced below was actually a prescient glimpse of fin-de-siècle mania. I am better at forecasting trends than Trend Forecaster Barbie!

Either that or I was just accidentally pretending to be Unitarian.

I should also mention that I was definitely imagining the instrumental bridge of my song as having been lifted from the Steve Miller Band's "Abracadabra." But since it was all in my head, they can't sue me! The true Napster is in your mind!

By the way, Karlo Takki's quoted power ballad was the brilliant result of a challenge to write a song from vocabulary taken entirely from the headers of some post.

  Subject: Re: WHAT IS THE DEAL WITH QQ?
  From: Matt McIrvin <mmcirvin@world.std.com>
  Date: Mon, 24 Nov 1997 01:30:47 GMT
  Karlo Takki <ktakki@artcrime.com> wrote:
     [slow metal Guns 'n' Roses-like power ballad in E min.]
     [singer MUST have shirt unbuttoned to waist -- THIS IS IMPORTANT]
     Any subject, any date,
     I can do this for you.
     Any lines, any path,
     I can do this for you.
     Jan, if I can, if I may,
     I can be,
     With you.
     With you.

Aw, man, I hate how now these days all songs have to be about love or something. I miss the Eighties. In the Eighties you could have that kind of song, but you could also sing a song that was about absolutely nothing at all and made no sense, and nobody would even think that you were cerebral or quirky or David Byrne, provided that every individual word in the song was a sufficiently rad-i-kool word.

As evidence I offer the following unrecorded song, which I wrote on the tour bus while I was the lead singer of "The Fixx," shortly before I quit and joined "Loverboy" because they had a better dental plan and more POW-WUH. I now consider this to be the anthem of a generation. Maestro?

An unrelated group of people had an entertaining and horrified discussion about the song which I recommend reading as well.")

Lyrics

[synthetic throbbing and percussion]

She runs in the shadow of a motorized race

The light of the fire in an enemy's face

The moon flies a shiver of electrical night

There's lace in the leather and it makes it all right

Ohhhh, and you're running

Running on a serious wire

Ohhhh, and you're running

Running through a chalice of fire

There's a shot on the water and a bolt in the heart

Mind over matter is the dangerous part

And the line in the mirror is a sliver of steel

Now she remembers how the innocent feel

Ohhhh, and you're running

Running on a serious wire

Ohhhh, and you're running

Running through a chalice of fire

A laser in the night

We bring it to the fight

Whether we're WRONG OR RIIIIIGGGHT--

[cool noises for about twenty seconds]

Ohhhh, and you're running

Running on a serious wire

Ohhhh, and you're running

Running through a chalice of fire

[repeat and fade out]

Commentary

CB comments:

Hold on to your leg-warmers...

This is the Vangelis-meets-Ultravox-with-Simon-Le-Bon-on-vocals version.

AFAIK, there are other versions coming.

Oh, and the lyrics are here:

http://world.std.com/~mmcirvin/kibology/eighties.html (this site does not exist except in archive.org)

And.... sorry.

Love,

Casey B

Not to be confused with Lee "Scratch" Perry's 1982 reggae song, Chalice a Fire.