Always read the lyric sheet while listening...



Take for example *ETBTG's Little Hitler. A song I may have listened to 100+ times.
I was listening to the **BTSSB CD while reading the lyric sheet and - While most of
the songs were as I remembered them - I had no idea what Little Hitler was about.
Tracey Thorn has such ability that she can make a couple of words sound like a
sentence and vice versa. What annoys me is I cannot remember what I thought the
song was about before I read the lyrics.

I can relate to the person portrayed in the song as I have met many Little Hitlers
and also see aspects of myself in there which is unfortunate. I don't know why we
find it so hard to shake certain things from a background we were lucky enough to
have escaped from. The violence and evil that made us get out in the first place
is perpetuated in stories, related to people in pubs or at parties or as a justification
of how well we have done considering we came from such a background. Thieves,
murderers, junkies, thugs, bullies, rapists and abusers are given cult status in these stories.

Stories of murder and mayhem. It's a pity nobody tell's the story of the men and women
who live in this environment all their lives and bring up families who in turn bring up families in similar circumstances, without ever resorting to violence, drugs or crime. The people who just keep trying no matter how many times someone shits in their stair, breaks a window, steals the video or tv, spray paints obcenities on their wall, etc. People who will never attain cult status, whose stories will never fuel the 'ooh's' and 'aaah's' of the Glitterati. Heroes. No matter how abhorrent your background, use
it for titillation or justification and your still there.

* Everything but the Girl
** Baby the stars shine bright

Little Hitler, don't come round here again
with your renegade politics, redder-than-thou-distain
thought we were on the same side
but with a fistfull of nails and your knives from the Clyde

you're a little Hitler now
and you'll grow up heaven knows how
Little Hitlers, little Hitlers
grow up into big Hitlers
and look what they do

Behind every big man there's a small boy
drink to Stalin and Hitler and Jimmy Boyle
hard men get all the catches
every woman loves a fascist
come the big day, you'll be OK

You try to scare me with stories of knives
backstreets and razors and alley-cat's cries
and if your heartless and hard
well this has made you what you are.

There endeth the lesson...