Cop shoot cop lyrics

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ebbsandflows
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Cop shoot cop lyrics

Post by ebbsandflows »

Probabely already covered and easily findable if my previous threads are anything to go by. But i've been unable to find the lyrics for the end of this tune. All the websites just have the beginning lyrics. And that Mr Spaceman mumbles so much you just can't make them all out, tut-tut-tut! If anyone has them i'd be much obliged. You know, the bit with the "heaven ain't, any place where you're not near. . . . .and i will love you, and i will love you, and i will love you . . " etc etc

Ta!
drones
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Post by drones »

The desert is any place without you my friend
And I will love you, even if I'm in it 'til the end
'Cos you're so sweet, I'm always wishin' babe that you were here
The desert is any place without you my dear
I only feel right
with a football at my side
ebbsandflows
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Post by ebbsandflows »

Well i'll be . .

Thankyou! :)
drones
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Post by drones »

Don't thank me, I just copied and pasted it from the "your favourite lyric...?" post....down at the bottom of the screen there.
I only feel right
with a football at my side
ebbsandflows
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Re: Cop shoot cop lyrics

Post by ebbsandflows »

My goodness - it looks like I've been obsessed by this tune for over 16 years.

I recently introduced a friend to 'Ladies and Gentlemen....' he of course loved it and was gutted that it passed him by the first time. We are running buddies. He asked me about the lyrics to Cop Shoot Cop and I spent about a month thinking about them anew and then several runs chatting to him about it. DOing so gave me several new insights.

Having focused so much on a tune that has become so personal to me, it felt right to get those thoughts out on paper. And having done that, I felt that it should go somehwere. And this was the logical place. So, there's a long post to follow. I don't expect anyone to read it. But this is the right place for it to exist.

Anyhow, it's good to see some old familiar names on here. It's been a while.

Ebbs.
Last edited by ebbsandflows on Wed Oct 12, 2022 10:49 am, edited 1 time in total.
ebbsandflows
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Re: Cop shoot cop lyrics

Post by ebbsandflows »

Cop Shoot Cop is a song about death, rebirth and change. It can sometimes feel like an appendix or an add-on; particularly coming after the finality and acceptance of Cool Waves. Those first 11 songs are, however, just laying the groundwork for Cop Shoot Cop. If ‘Ladies and Gentlemen We Are Floating In Space’ is a break-up album (which it isn’t), then there is no need for anything after Cool Waves. But here it is.

Cop Shoot Cop is where the album crashes to earth and gets real. The imagery of cops shooting cops (skipping over the drug reference for a moment) raises images of the streets, of corruption and violence. On this last song, the Spaceman becomes mortal and in finding something real, moves on.

False starts
Cop Shoot Cop begins with two false starts. The first sounds out of place on an album where the production is so precise and consistent. There is a ‘Ladies and Gentlemen We Are Floating In Space’ sound, and this initial 13-second introduction is not it. It sounds like it’s recorded in a practice room – an outtake from a recording session. This has not been beamed in from outer space, this is music that emerged from a sweaty room full of imperfect people.

That first 13-second opening also contains the sound of a funeral bell. Again, this is an earthly sound using religious imagery – the end is coming. A massive contrast to the bleep from space that opens the album.

That first glimpse of the tune drifts out and you’re jolted back into in the ‘Ladies and Gentleman…’ aesthetic. It’s present day and it’s happening. Only this time the Spaceman means it. There is that compelling bluesy groove; it gives you something to settle into and something to drive you onwards.

And yet, what you thought had now started proper (had ‘been reborn’) turns out to be another false start. This second attempt at Cop Shoot Cop also drifts out. Then, for the third time of asking (more biblical imagery), and just over 2 minutes in, we’re into Cop Shoot Cop.

“Hey man there’s a hole in my arm where all the money goes”
(Worth here crediting its origin in Sam Stone, but in Cop Shoot Cop it is changed so that it’s the narrator, rather than ‘daddy’)

Sure, there are drug references throughout the album and Jason’s lyrics, but this phrase stands out as bleaker than most. This isn’t drugs as love “in the middle of the afternoon”, or as heaven and hell - “if heaven’s like this, then that’s the place for me”. These drugs are doing nothing poetic or romantic. This is the grim detail of an experience that was once so joyously celebrated in ‘Come Together’ but that has now turned into something mundane and loaded with self-destruction.

Straight after this bold (and let’s face it, pretty funny) opening line we then have “Jesus Christ died for nothing, I suppose”. Drugs are dead and God is dead in the opening two lines. What a start. Don’t fuck about Jason.

The refrain ‘I suppose’ suggests that our narrator is making impassive observations. He has no real interest in any of this. These are just things that happened sometime. Like when "all my friends died for nothing, I suppose". Huh..

In these opening lines we find the album’s hero full of a familiar self-knowing and witty cynicism but now accompanied by an unshiftable anhedonia. This isn’t depression (that’s saved for Let It Come Down), this is something darker, more nihilistic and fatalistic.

“Cop shoot cop, I believe, I believe that I have been reborn
Cop shoot cop, I haven’t got the time no more”

Cop Shoot Cop as in get drugs > use them > get drugs. A violent analogy for the endless cycle of addiction (not necessarily to drugs, but probably). In this case every time he goes round, the Spaceman believes that he has been reborn and that this time will be different. The double “I believe, I believe” hinting at a desperation for it to be so, whilst knowing that it won’t be. Every time is the last time. Until the next time.

Cop Shoot Cop.

Then the admission that that time is running out. This is the same Spaceman that once sung “long long time, between now and my death”, but he’s now getting older and has less and less time left. Something has to change. And soon.

Chorus music
The musical surges that break up the verses bring back the theme of false starts. There are two choruses and both are preludes for the long noise section that follows. Each surge finishes by dying out like a car engine that has failed to catch. There are two attempts to get this ‘thing’ started. After each one, the Spaceman is returned to the cyclical and anhedonic groove that simultaneously drives him forwards and nowhere. Cop Shoot Cop. It goes on. ‘I still believe that I have been reborn, I’m still running out of time’.

“Hey man, there’s a hole in my reason that I gotta close”
And as it continues, it turns out that it’s not just drugs and God that have left him. The Spaceman’s memory is fucked (“…where information goes”), his reason is fucked, love has gone (“all my love, died for nothing I suppose”). He is left with nothing but the repetitive monotony of Cop Shoot Cop where nothing works, his friends have died, his love has died, the drugs are shit, God has left him and he’s running out of time. In many ways, he is already in the desert.

The noise
Finally, on the third attempt, the noise takes hold and we have the trademark Spiritualized cacophony. This one is, however, different to anything else on Spiritualized’s records. All the others have something to hold on to – ‘The Individual’ has a drone to give it form. Electric mainline has a rhythm played on the cymbals. Cop Shoot Cop has nothing. There is no direction – no up and no down. There’s nothing to anchor you to anything. This is a return to floating in space, but not the passive and childlike waltz of the opening track. This time it is a chaotic and painful mess. The Spaceman is being thrown about on waves of disorienting noise.

The noise in Spiritualized records often suggests drug experiences (the sound of confusion). But in Cop Shoot Cop, it is something more, there is something darker to it. Perhaps this is an overdose, perhaps withdrawal, perhaps a breakdown. Whatever – the detail is not really important – this is the long dark night of the soul in whatever form it takes. The Spaceman is being stripped of everything he has come to know. It had to happen – the opening lyrics set this up. But here it is. It’s happening and it’s immediate, confusing and cold.

As the noise section approaches 4 minutes (approaching danger time if it is an overdose – but I’m being fanciful), out of nowhere, that bass line, that plunging rumble cuts right through everything. It lets the Spaceman know that there’s something there. It tells him that something remains and that it is calling him.

This heartbeat (a defibrillator if you want to really get over-fancifull) grabs the Spaceman, drawing him down from space towards earth and into the desert.

The Desert
There are so many metaphors in the desert - the temptations of Christ, and Moses in the wilderness both being pretty relevant here. In Cop Shoot Cop, after the noise, the Spaceman finds himself in the desert with nothing and no-one. No drugs, no God, no reason. This had to happen for him to be reborn, yet it is terrible and inhospitable. It is the promised land, it’s the light that he was drawn to, but it has none of the things that made life worth living in the first place. He only has his memories, longing, temptation and that bassline.

The heartbeat finally gathers those swampy blues and that irresistible beat around it. Having landed in the desert, lost and alone, the Spaceman, compelled by music, picks up his bed and starts to walk.

“Loneliness hits and it lasts for days”
Yet this is no miraculous recovery – the lord does not “shine a light”, there is no “love to take the pain away”. This is life after the storm, life after drugs. For many people, quitting drugs (or love, God, whatever) is the relatively easy part. Living with their absence being the hard part. There is no longer a home. Home was “all these things” and they have gone. This is desperate and lonely.

For the Spaceman, there is nothing to live for or even to die for (“if this is heaven, then you know that I’m not happy here”), but the bassline and Dr John’s piano compel him to keep going – not in hope that things will improve, but whilst holding on to the certainty that they won’t.

“I will love you”
This end repeat is the crux of the song and (in my view) the album. The Spaceman walks through the desert with just his memories left. In those last lines, he cycles through all the things he has loved and that he now loves. He sees them all having now discovered his love for them, his love for their memory and his acceptance that he will continue loving them “even if I’m coming to the end”. This love coming from someone who, at the beginning of the song was unmoved by the death of Jesus, his friends or of love itself. The Spaceman has, at the final moment, found love. But he has found it too late; after all the things he loves have gone.

At the beginning of the album, the Spaceman is innocent and naïve. He is a child floating in space who just needs “a little bit of love to take the pain away”. He needs the love of others. Here, at the end of the album, he finds himself stripped of everything with only his love for others remaining. He will love, regardless of whether he is loved back. And it is this – his capacity to love, that takes him through the desert and towards his terrible, wonderful and inevitable redemption.

Spike Milligan once said that children don’t grow up, they disappear. At the end of Ladies and Gentlemen We Are Floating in Space, the Spaceman has changed. He has suffered, been tempted, loved and lost. He has lost everything but has gained his love for others. And this change – from being in need of love to relying on his own love for others – is the denouement, the rebirth, the final redemption.

The final clarinet (oboe?) sound always sounded like a whisper of smoke to me. And it is in that final whisper of smoke in the album’s dying seconds that the album’s narrator, the Spaceman, our J, finally changes.

And in doing so, he disappears.
sunray
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Re: Cop shoot cop lyrics

Post by sunray »

Fair play, that's a well written piece. Anhedonia was a new word for me too, so thanks for that :)

It always amazes me what people can read into music when my reaction is generally "I like that. Turn it up." :lol:
Nineteen...Nineteen...Six Five
Pat Garrett
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Re: Cop shoot cop lyrics

Post by Pat Garrett »

sunray wrote: Wed Oct 12, 2022 11:13 am Fair play, that's a well written piece. Anhedonia was a new word for me too, so thanks for that :)
There's a really good description of anhedonia in Foster Wallace's Infinite Jest. It struck a chord as it's the way I've felt for the last couple of years!

"The anhedonic can still speak about happiness and meaning et al., but she has become incapable of feeling anything in them, of understanding anything about them, of hoping anything about them, or of believing them to exist as anything more than concepts. Everything becomes an outline of the thing. Objects become schemata."
swmcsherry
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Re: Cop shoot cop lyrics

Post by swmcsherry »

Pat Garrett wrote: Wed Oct 12, 2022 1:30 pm
There's a really good description of anhedonia in Foster Wallace's Infinite Jest. It struck a chord as it's the way I've felt for the last couple of years!

"The anhedonic can still speak about happiness and meaning et al., but she has become incapable of feeling anything in them, of understanding anything about them, of hoping anything about them, or of believing them to exist as anything more than concepts. Everything becomes an outline of the thing. Objects become schemata."
I never did get around to reading that, but read about anhedonia with regards to 'Annie Hall' several years ago, and how that was a more prominent focus originally.

I remember thinking "ah, there's a word for this". Sometimes I'm concerned that I can't enjoy things because I just analyze the shit out of them, or wonder what it is about something that other people enjoy that I just don't get.

Being analytical is a skill that (mostly) benefits me professionally, but can really throw a monkey wrench into more personal situations 🙃

So, this doesn't have a whole lot to do with anything - but ebbsandflows's analysis has gotten me thinking, and I perk up any time anhedonia is mentioned ☺️
- ...if you've got a lonely heart too...

- Come on baby, stop your crying

- Don't wanna live, but I can't resist

- I would rather add some life to my years
sunray
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Re: Cop shoot cop lyrics

Post by sunray »

swmcsherry wrote: Wed Oct 12, 2022 2:54 pm Sometimes I'm concerned that I can't enjoy things because I just analyze the shit out of them, or wonder what it is about something that other people enjoy that I just don't get.
Hmm...i have an opposite reaction in that i can't enjoy things because i don't receive a visceral punch to the guts/heart/head. Almost everything just seems grand/fine/ok. Perfectly serviceable but ultimately lacking any real bite and thus, satisfaction.
Nineteen...Nineteen...Six Five
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Re: Cop shoot cop lyrics

Post by purespace »

Pat Garrett wrote: Wed Oct 12, 2022 1:30 pm
sunray wrote: Wed Oct 12, 2022 11:13 am Fair play, that's a well written piece. Anhedonia was a new word for me too, so thanks for that :)
There's a really good description of anhedonia in Foster Wallace's Infinite Jest. It struck a chord as it's the way I've felt for the last couple of years!

"The anhedonic can still speak about happiness and meaning et al., but she has become incapable of feeling anything in them, of understanding anything about them, of hoping anything about them, or of believing them to exist as anything more than concepts. Everything becomes an outline of the thing. Objects become schemata."
I listened to a local punk band in the 80s called Alien Nation and they had a release called Anhedonia. I wore the tshirt everywhere in high school and it convinced my parent appointed shrink that I was on drugs which I wasn't, just pure depression at the time. Ah youth.

Excellent and compelling write-up of Cop Shoot Cop 👍
I think I feel it coming on
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Re: Cop shoot cop lyrics

Post by BzaInSpace »

ebbsandflows… welcome back.

Fantastic writing there. This is one of the reasons I keep coming back here to be honest, for stuff like this.

I think that track has been somewhat overlooked over the years as as you say it’s preceded by so much. It’s something else. The dynamics are beyond. Theres a bit where the whole thing coalesces into a phased wall of black noise and it’s… woah.

Definitely one to be played loud without headphones: I mean it’ll work that way anyway but.

I also think even that’s it’s called ‘Cop shoot cop…’ suggests some kind of repetition or otherwise. But yeah, amazing essay. More of this please!
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ebbsandflows
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Re: Cop shoot cop lyrics

Post by ebbsandflows »

Hi BzaInSpace :D

Why thank you! But if i'm honest. I think I might prefer Sunray's "I like that, turn it up" summary.

And yeah, anhedonia is a great word. Its prettiness on the page and its hollow ambiguity work well together. I always see it as something much flatter and less dramatic than some people's experience of depression etc. That nothing matters, but without sadness, anger, hurt or blame. Just a total emotional absence. I also love that it's set opposite drug-related notions of hedonism.
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Re: Cop shoot cop lyrics

Post by sharmadelica »

Lovely writing. I listened to both the album version and the Royal Albert Hall live album version today after reading your excellent piece. That spiralling trumpet in the midst of all the chaos, then the bass thump bursting through it all, is one of my favourite moments in music.
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