So, while I was working that job and listening to The Hands That Thieve I noticed that Tomas was continuing on one of his most-used lyrical topics and came to the following conclusion: Streetlight Manifesto is one of the most atheist bands in the world.
I first started to keep track of this after I saw Streetlight live and while performing "Down, Down, Down To Mephisto's Cafe", Tomas bluntly said "This song is about the Roman Catholic Church."
While at first I thought that the lyrics of the song were merely a story fabricated by Tomas, as he is wont to do, it made quite a bit more sense after realizing that Mephisto's Cafe was in reality hell. Also, I just made the connection after posting the above video that the album's artwork shows the sky, ground and then fire underneath, making reference to Heaven/God, Earth/Us, Hell/Satan. Once you make that connection about the song it really does become blatantly obvious what the song is about and most would make that connection having just looked at the lyrics plainly. For example:
"Way back when the prophecies began
Do you think they really had a masterplan
Or were they merely writing fabled stories?
I don't know, but it did occur to me
The punishment that they threaten constantly
It's only real if they could just convince me"
Or this one:
"Now everybody's telling taller tales
And I don't know who to believe
Ok, if your father really loves you more
What about the other families?"
This is a really common theme on this album (obviously, given the album artwork) and is referenced in tons of other tracks, such as "The Blond Lead The Blind" with the line "Did you lose faith? Yes, I lost faith in the powers that be, but in doing so I came across the will to disagree".
"Forty Days" is another song off of Somewhere In the Between which deals with Christianity and skepticism regarding it (if you couldn't already tell from the title).
"What a way to begin: we all inherit sin
and nobody's going to quench your thirst when the well runs dry
and nobody's going to hold your hand on the day you die"
Furthermore, a longstanding cover that the band performed live was "Hell" by the jazz/swing revival/everything band Squirrel Nut Zippers, which is song-long wondering about life after death, making specific reference to the Christian idea of hell (Gee, who would've thought with that title!). The song was also included on the band's 2010 cover album 99 Songs of the Revolution: Volume 1 and is a great example that shows both where Tomas draws inspiration for his lyrics and also the type of influences that set Streetlight Manifesto apart from most bands.
So, once you sit down and actually examine all of Tomas' writing it becomes very clear that life, mortality and the morality of Christianity, especially the Roman-Catholic Church, is something that he thinks about a whole lot. I guess that I get pretty defensive sometimes about how people look down on me for listening to ska and how easily people just write off the entire genre as being joke bands who don't take songwriting seriously, and that this is me trying to show that there's a lot more to it than that (I would also point to the Bandits of the Acoustic Revolution/Streetlight song "Here's To Life", in which Tomas eulogizes his favourite writers and artists who have committed suicide and also ponders about how similar he is to them). Perhaps it's a little problematic for me to use Streetlight as an example to counter those arguments, as they really aren't much of a ska band at all and I personally don't think of them as one, but everyone seems to, with the only apparent reason being that they have a horn section and they are an easy touchstone for those who aren't well-versed in the genre. Believe me, I'd love to go on ad nauseam about how The Skatalites' drumming and horn arrangements put essentially every other band that has ever existed's musical skill to shame, but I figure this would be easier for everyone to put in perspective.
So, once you sit down and actually examine all of Tomas' writing it becomes very clear that life, mortality and the morality of Christianity, especially the Roman-Catholic Church, is something that he thinks about a whole lot. I guess that I get pretty defensive sometimes about how people look down on me for listening to ska and how easily people just write off the entire genre as being joke bands who don't take songwriting seriously, and that this is me trying to show that there's a lot more to it than that (I would also point to the Bandits of the Acoustic Revolution/Streetlight song "Here's To Life", in which Tomas eulogizes his favourite writers and artists who have committed suicide and also ponders about how similar he is to them). Perhaps it's a little problematic for me to use Streetlight as an example to counter those arguments, as they really aren't much of a ska band at all and I personally don't think of them as one, but everyone seems to, with the only apparent reason being that they have a horn section and they are an easy touchstone for those who aren't well-versed in the genre. Believe me, I'd love to go on ad nauseam about how The Skatalites' drumming and horn arrangements put essentially every other band that has ever existed's musical skill to shame, but I figure this would be easier for everyone to put in perspective.
To be honest, a lot of the time I get an idea for a blog post and I'm all like "Yeah! That is a great idea for a post!", but find that when I'm writing it it doesn't come together as cohesively as I thought it would and have trouble finishing it. Then I continue to write the post, despite not having ideas about how to tie it together, because I've already started and written most of it and I know that I will at least get a mild sense of relief and accomplishment once the post is finally done and up on the blog. This entry is an example of one of those posts.
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