Song #8 – Strange Graves

Song #8 in The Submensas’s set is “Strange Graves” – a true ‘long-lost’ song. A classic punk song in the vein of The Clash, it was a fourth song recorded for our 1986 EP, “Twilight in Beltland,” but was left off the vinyl because I wasn’t satisfied with the vocals.  I intended to re-record the song but that never happened, and the master tape of these sessions has been long lost.  But now this two-minute song has had a renaissance, and is back as a boppy little number with jangly vocals and an upbeat guitar riff.  We put “Strange Graves” on our 2012 compilation, “Trading Cards of Glory”, but it’s a little grainy because the recording was from a CASSETTE.  So we now have a great new version. Here’s how the song starts…

How many times will the world rock and roll,

Before it finally breaks asunder?  

And how many mixed-up little piles of debris

Will you and I be buried under?

A strange grave here/ A strange grave there/ 

all graves/ are strange

… and then I list a bunch of ways to die. The meaning of the song is a little interpretive, but I would say it has to do with choices and how we’ll end up in the places that we’ll end up in… It’s like a mini-version of Jim Carroll’s “People Who Died”.  (It’s two mins, whereas Jim Carroll’s song lasts five and a half.)