nine while nine

[Jim]

yes

Don't be mean

@Jim

John Cale was a musician in the Velvet Underground and they used to cover a VU track

I know that much - I'm a massive John Cale fan. I just assumed their was a specific story about why the song was sritten about him...

[Jim]

Great gig, that. That's also the one where Von inexplicably says that A Rock and a Hard Place is 'a song about John Cale'. Does anyone know the story behind that?

Rock aside, The version of Nine While Nine is better than the album version which has, frankly, crappy vocals on it.

I can't stress how good this boot is.

[Big Si]

Great gig, that. That's also the one where Von inexplicably says that A Rock and a Hard Place is 'a song about John Cale'. Does anyone know the story behind that?

Rock aside, The version of Nine While Nine is better than the album version which has, frankly, crappy vocals on it.

I can't stress how good this boot is.

The version they did at Leeds a few days later is pretty good too!

http://uk.groups.yahoo.com/group/sistersrarities34/

[andymackem]

Nine while nine always reminds me of Guildford. Was listening to FALAA while waiting for a train there after an interview. It was February, with predictable weather. One of those "life imitates art" moments.

Funnily enough I've only been to Guildford station once since, and that was in the tragic later stages of a short-lived and tiresome romance.

Should never have left the north ....

[kafka]

I don't really follow the suggestions that NWN is related to Prufrock.. now, I love NWN and I love Prufrock, but I can't find much semblance between them, beyond a vague notion that the writer in each case seems to be simultaneously both in one place and in movement..

So, what's the deal? Is someone perhaps confusing NWN with Amphetamine Logic? Or am I missing something?

[Black Biscuit]

Because I am so accustomed to playing the wing and being on the edges as a result, I don't mind chipping in a bit of info here, typically from left of centre.

Victoria Station, or a godforsaken Northern nowheresville station, it doesn't really matter. In fact, I recall Eldo referring to pedantic Sisters fans as 'train spotters' for similar reasons.

And for some info straight from the NWN "saving yourself for an event that never happens" category, note that the only times you will ever be dis-satisfied with your life is when you are not making the effort to get your life to where you want it to be. Blaming others is the biggest cop-out of all time - and some people have just never learnt this.

[nodubmanshouts]

I think its about his parents, deviating from the chosen career path, leaving Oxford, etc....

walking out after an argument with parent, being at a train station, waiting for the train...

I think the 'she' is his mum.

But I could be on crack

[TheBoyNextDoor]

[quote="paint it black"]has to be in everyone's top 10 doesn't it?

..but i was musing over the song at the weekend

9 * 9 = 81
quote]

It's definetly top three here.

Ah.. the year I was born.

[distanceovertime]

My personal Vision:

train = love

He talks about waiting to fall in love with a woman who was with he some (or maybe long) time ago:"And I'm waiting for the train
Caught up on this line again"

He never forget that woman:"I
Can't forget so I call your name and I'm
Looking for a life for me and I'm
Looking for a life for you"

Our eldritch hero is waiting her come back to love her again all the day all days but probably she is with other guy:"And I'm waiting
And I wait in vain
Nine while nine and I'm waiting
For the train....."


Lets take a look to the lyrics

Nine While Nine

"And it's passing strange
And I'm waiting for the train
Caught up on this line again
And it's passing slowly
Killing time but it's
Better than living in what will come and I've
Still got some of your letters with me and I
Thought sometimes or I read too much
And I think you know let's
Drink to the dead lying under the water and the
Cost of the blood on the driven snow and the
Lipstick on my cigarettes
Frost upon the window pane
Nine while nine and I'm waiting
For the train.....

She said do you remember a time when angels
Do you remember a time when fear
In the days when I was stronger
In the days when you were here she said
When days had no beginning
While days had no end when
Shadows grew no longer I
Knew no other friend but you
Were wild
You were wild.....

Frost upon these cigarettes
Lipstick on the window pane and I've
Lost all sense of the world outside but I
Can't forget so I call your name and I'm
Looking for a life for me and I'm
Looking for a life for you and I'm
Talking to myself again and it's
So damn cold it's just not true and I'm
Walking through the rain
Trying to hold on waiting for the train and I'm
Only looking for what you want but it's
Lonely here and I think you knew and I'm
And I'm waiting
And I wait in vain
Nine while nine and I'm waiting
For the train..... [repeat last verse x2]"


Actually im in the circumstances of my Vision so probably im reading too far into the lyrics.
I reallye love this song is deep and have a lot of sense.

[czuczu]

When I did speak of some distressful stroke
That my youth suffered. My story being done,
She gave me for my pains a world of sighs.
She swore, i' faith, 'twas strange, 'twas passing strange;
'Twas pitiful, 'twas wondrous pitiful.

Something I've always wondered about - it's from Othello but fits the rest of the song perfectly..
Wasn't there an interview at the time where he admitted to loads of obscure references on the second side of FALAA, some spread over several songs?!?

[straylight]

Don't know about that but I have heard several people use the expression 'passing strange' to mean 'more than strange' including (I seem to remember)Gordon Brown!

[Mokarran]

Years on....

Is it not the case that music with a certain atmosphere can imbue lyrics with an additional and sometimes unmerited depth?

Andrew Taylor, a well-read literary trickster of limited artistic resource, writes ambiguous verse strewn with learned references. Adds well-judged music. Becomes Eldritch.

mokarran

[stufarq]

Lipstick on my cigarette? Must be about Wayne then...

Couple of worthwhile points though:

1. "Passing strange" is indeed a Shakespeare quote meaning "beyond strange". Considering AE's wordplay, it may also relate to the phrase "passing strangers", perhaps recalling the 1957 song about estranged lovers.

2. Having explained the meaning of the phrase, there hasn't been much discussion on the meaning of "nine while nine" within the context of the song. He's not just waiting for a train - he's always waiting for a train.

3. Driven Like The Snow may shed some additional light, as the two songs share the "lipstick" line and frosty imagery.

[Mokarran]

I'd hazard a guess that the Train represents salvage in some way, whether it be romantic, moral or simply E's own fragile sanity. Cold/frost could represent the lingering, bitter memories of lost love.

I'd sum up most biographical E lyrics as: "Yes I'm bitter as hell, but I've still got a sense of humour and a taste for the extreme, so get the pharmaceuticals in and let's party in the face of our own inevitable destruction".

Not too bothered though; this really is A-level bollox.

mokarran

[stufarq]

I think you've just closed the entire lyrics section by succinctly explaining every single Sisters song in one paragraph. Well done.

[Corvidium]

Nine While Nine (and by extension, Driven Like the Snow) reminds me very much of driving back home from Bellingham Airport in a January early morning, somewhat delirious, surrounded by the pines...

[lordofthepies]

I always thought "waiting for the train" was a metaphor for waiting for the rush from whatever drug one had built up a tolerance to, hence "waiting in vain"

There's a mention of drug inertia in reference to Nine while Nine in this Interview from '87 http://www.spookhouse.net/tsom/mastersvoice.html

[markfiend]

Nice. Thanks. Oh and hello and welcome!

[Silver_Owl]

I like your thinking....and yes, hello.

[markfiend]

Yeah it hooks into the song Train too.

[lordofthepies]

hello.

hello and welcome!

Sorry guys, should have said hello. Thanks for the friendly welcome

[stufarq]

I always thought "waiting for the train" was a metaphor for waiting for the rush from whatever drug one had built up a tolerance to, hence "waiting in vain"

There's a mention of drug inertia in reference to Nine while Nine in this Interview from '87 http://www.spookhouse.net/tsom/mastersvoice.html

Von comes across as pompous and arrogant at the best of times, but here he's really going for broke.

[eastmidswhizzkid]

I always thought "waiting for the train" was a metaphor for waiting for the rush from whatever drug one had built up a tolerance to, hence "waiting in vain"

There's a mention of drug inertia in reference to Nine while Nine in this Interview from '87 http://www.spookhouse.net/tsom/mastersvoice.html

Von comes across as pompous and arrogant at the best of times, but here he's really going for broke.

when he's in that kind of form i can keep up with him when i'm reading it; even if i do have to double back and stop the threads of verbosity from getting entangled and knitting themselves into a nice chunky cabled sweater...but a poor music-journo -even if they are a particularly intelligent species of pond-life- wouldn't stand a chance of being able to process/decipher/analyse/formulate opinion/formulate answer/reply in (a way they like to think of as ) a clever fashion. so pretty much he can say anything. he'd make a brilliant politician if he was a scumbag wanker.

btw- the 9 while 9 "drugs inertia" reference is the journalist's, with no evidennce that the song was referred to as such to, or by, eldritch, so thats pretty meaningless.
it's unusually widely acknowledged -for a sisters lyric- what this song is about i thought...break-up with Claire, post-relationship misery, yorkshire colloquiallisms, cigarettes, cold windows etc.
i'll grant you Train is undoubtedly about drugs though.

[stufarq]

btw- the 9 while 9 "drugs inertia" reference is the journalist's, with no evidennce that the

I was going to say the same but then I realised the journalist actually said it to Von, who didn't correct him, so that would seem to be a tacit agreement.

[eastmidswhizzkid]

read it again..he speaks to von about 9 whiile 9 but only uses the words "drug-inertia" in describing to us the track he is talking to von about... it's not necessarily so that he used the words "drug-inertia" to describe 9 while 9 to von. hehe ...this is the sort of bollocks that the lyrics section is traditionally full of. indeed...