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Indie Rokkers Lyrics

I like the line between your belly and your thighs
(rollin’ on, rollin’ on)
The smell of your hair
The sparkle in your eyes
(rollin’ on, rollin’ on)
The smoke in your breath
The breathing hard and heavy
The back of your neck
The shine on your Chevy
The moon was so big when I drove it to the levy, girl
(rollin’ on, rollin’ on)

I found blood and I saw stars
All in the backseat of your car
And I told you it was love
But you won’t know the truth
I’m a young man in my prime
With my heart still filled with fear
And it goes on clear

The clean dreams, the sexy limousine
(rollin’ on, rollin’ on)
Jason's got the energy
He used to be a coke fiend
(rollin’ on, rollin’ on)
The skinny brown arms coming out of your shirt
Heart is in the right place brain is in the dirt
You live life like everyone's an enemy
(rollin’ on, rollin’ on)

I found blood and I saw stars
All in the backseat of your car
And I told you it was love
But you won’t know the truth
I’m a young man in my prime
With my heart still filled with fear
And it goes on clear
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Cover art for Indie Rokkers lyrics by MGMT

Shucks. I'm always doing this thing where I comment, then recomment then comment again. I posted this bit as a reply to jaybird2 but I don't want it hidden under a '1 reply' link. What I say is always so very important, you understand.

Jaybird, my friend, you've missed the point completely. The problem here is that MGMT assumes that their listeners, and critics, are endowed with the mental faculties to understand what they're listening to or criticizing. You have proven them wrong. You seem like someone who's struggling to assert whatever notion of self-worth he can muster; trying desperately to let it be known that someone else is wrong and you are right. Your notion of self-worth seems more like misguided feeling of superiority, delusions of grandeur. Well, sir, you may not be right but atleast you've proven MGMT wrong in one respect. You were overestimated, congratulations. Bask in that consolation, if you must.

And I do see the hypocrisy of what I just wrote. I don't care.

MGMT does not endorse cocaine, heroin or other ''hard' drugs. They do, however, try to expose the failings that they see in the world around them. Choking on vomit at the end of Time To Pretend, that's where they say that these things take you. Drugs aren't the central theme in Time To Pretend, but never mind that.

They do seem to endorse psychedelic drugs, as do I. It's hard to explain why, exactly, but I'll say that thought is too important a thing to be tied down by homeostasis. We must explore our dogmas, ideas and interpretations from every angle possible, and psychedelics offer angles that are otherwise difficult to reach. Not to mention the fun.

I've not seen MGMT endorse liver-wrecking binge drink sessions. I'm not sure where you got that from.

One thing that you absolutely have to understand, and I'm not sure how you missed it, is that Indie Rokkers is not a celebration of easy sex and smoky breath. It's a retrospective and sentimental lament. There's also some excitement to it, right or wrong. The song is an exposition of the protagonist's past. It doesn't explicitly pass judgment on the kid in the song, but it's easily understood that there is some regret, a bit of a bitter taste. Notice the sound of the song. Does the music seem to be celebrating?

The repetition of "Rollin' on" suggests to me that the protagonist is, well, rollin' on. Two ways that I can think to take that. Perhaps he was not really thinking at the time, he was just rolling on. Perhaps he was young and foolish and now he's not. He's rolled on, grown up. The car rolls too, obviously, which offers a nice parallel. If the car stayed in the driveway then it would be rollin' on, would it?

And I told you it was love But you won't know the truth I'm a young man in my prime With my heart still filled with fear And it goes on clear

That's a pretty key stretch of words. Is the young man proud to be lying to this girl? What might it mean that he's young, and strong, but also filled with fear and perhaps a little unsure or confused? Might that offer some explanation of his actions? It goes on clear? Like a coat of paint that you can't see? What's the point of that?

There's a reason that they're driving a Chevy to a levy. That reason is American Pie by Don McLean, a great song with a similar theme. They both sing, in a way, about the loss of adolescent hope and excitement, a lost love and the realization that they've grown up since then. From American Pie:

Bye, bye Miss American Pie. Drove my Chevy to the levee But the levee was dry. And them good ol' boys were drinkin' whisky and rye Singin' "this'll be the day that I die." "This'll be the day that I die."

Rest assured that MGMT writes some thought into their songs. As a listener it is your obligation to examine them, figure them out, before deriding them for some imagined evil. Failing to do so makes you a fool.

Yo, do you think the chick is a virgin tho? The "The smoke in your breath" and "The shine on your Chevy" gets me confused because what kind of girl that smokes and drives a shiny Chevy is a virgin? also "You live life like everyone's an enemy" sounds like she doesn't trust people easily and seems like shes a tuff chick so how can this girl be played? I never met a virgin smoker who drives a shiny chevy. it would be more believable something like " jolly rancher breath" and "the shine on your jetta" but that wouldn't...

Not Valid

There is a good possible chance that she is a virgin. Because I just so happen to smoke and drive a Chevy. Not everything is suppose to make sense. Maybe the tuff chick isnt being played.. he said "And I told you it was love But you wont know the truth" but she will never know the truth because hes "heart is filled with fear" and maybe she knows what he has been through and just wont know what he is thinking.

Not Valid
Cover art for Indie Rokkers lyrics by MGMT

Also, something that I forgot to say. MGMT are intelligent, grown men. They spelled the title, Indie Rokkers, like a couple of barely pubescent, hard-rocking 'tards on purpose. It's a barely pubescent, hard-rocking thing that the boy in the song was doing, and the title reflects that. The song itself, as I said, documents the actions and the mood, reflecting on them without guilt or shame but with adult understanding. "I found blood and I saw stars", I don't think that that line refers to nothing more than a broken hymen and and a bit of gas burning in the sky. Take it as a metaphor.

Cover art for Indie Rokkers lyrics by MGMT

this song givess me the chillss :))

Cover art for Indie Rokkers lyrics by MGMT

Getting in the last word doesn't count, jaybird, if you fail to actually say anything. All the same, I guess I'll just tippity-tap on this keyboard for a bit, chewing on my lightly seasoned salmon fillet, then I'm off to bed. I've not really got much that I can say because, well, you didn't give me much to respond to. We're dueling with pool noodles here, but whatever.

As a real-life drug user, one who's used most of the drugs that you're likely now learning about in your tenth grade health class as well as a dozen or more that you've never heard of, I can tell you that not all real-life drug users see psychedelics as a waste of time. The users who do, frankly, are a waste of time in their right. Psychedelics get the brain firing in ways that it does not normally fire and, while they don't necessarily give you anything that you couldn't have gotten without them, they make it much easier to arrive at new ideas and new ways of thinking. No amount of LSD can fire-up a soggy mind, though, and for the soggy-minded acid likely is a waste of time.

LSD cannot raise thought in the unthinking but I'd hesitate to blame the drug for that. It is, after all, a useful tool for most people who've got something sitting on their shoulders. It's a chemical skeleton key for all those brain-doors that you'd otherwise have to wail at with fists and feet until they finally open. As Wikipedia can tell you, Steve Jobs (co-founder of Apple Computers) considers acid-eating to be "one of the two or three most important things [he has] done in [his] life". And it's recently become semi-common knowledge that Crick was using LSD around the time he discovered the double-helix structure of DNA.

Psychedelic drugs don't automatically turn everyone into Nobel Prize winning molecular biologists, of course, but they do make it easier to escape the confines of normal thinking. And normal thoughts don't win Nobel Prizes, do they?

For most people, these drugs are useful in personal and probably not academic ways. They offer insight into relationships, priorities, morals and other things. Other people just stare at their hands and say spew nonsense about the eternal oneness of this or the perfect imperfection of that or, God forbid, they say something like “lol, I'm SO high right now”. But those people suck and they're deluding themselves if they think their own idiocy is the fault of the drugs.

There's more to drugs than empty-headed hedonism, mate, and I think that people would do well to realize that. You may think that I'm wasted my time defending drug use but I think that the time I spend championing the things that are important to me is time well spent. I think that's you're wasting your time copying and pasting the same poorly thought rant across a couple dozen lyrics discussions, but to each his own. Neither of us have much an audience here and, ultimately, our dialectical efforts are futile. Seriously, we'd might as well buy a couple blow-up dolls see if we can't gain entry into fatherhood.

But I enjoy repeating my platitudes and, who knows, maybe I'd enjoy a blow-up doll. Yes, an air-headed little thing that never gives me any sort of challenge. I'll call her J.

I love the fact that this song has absolutely nothing to do with psychedelics, and you guys still ended up discussing them in length. Mind-Pilgrims unite!

Not Valid

panthrop........i agree with everything u have to say ....except your underlying message....trying to imply your superiority.....maybe the LSD hasen't fired enough of your brain cells yet......what makes you think that the trip that you had is the only trip worth having if you've used LSD.....i have many friends who danced like crazy while on the trip,does that make them losers with soggy brains..and if why??? what is your logic behind this assertion..... and since when did enjoying yourself during a trip become so taboo...must everything have a superior purpose for it to be "right"............scientists are finding out with increasing frequency that...

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Cover art for Indie Rokkers lyrics by MGMT

ooh virgin car sex?

Cover art for Indie Rokkers lyrics by MGMT

"And I told you it was love But you won't know the truth"

To me it sounds like he doesn't even know the truth himself.

Cover art for Indie Rokkers lyrics by MGMT

I think it's about losing virginity and innocence, and I guess the girl realized what she'd done, and didn't really want to know the truth.

Cover art for Indie Rokkers lyrics by MGMT

this song turns me on, just like Andrew.

Cover art for Indie Rokkers lyrics by MGMT

This song tickles the shit out of my fancy. I developed a liking to MGMT just tonight, but this song is the most amazing out of what I have (just the Time to Pretend EP)

Cover art for Indie Rokkers lyrics by MGMT

i think the lyrics are actually "and it goes on clear," not "and it goes on bleedin'"