Radio XLVI, side A, track 9: “Sold Me Down The River” by The Alarm

Oh, The Alarm, the world is so immense, isn’t it?  I fondly remembered this song even before it popped up on the track list, but I never remembered who sang it.  It was you, The Alarm, in case you were wondering.  And as with all my posts, I made sure to check if you had a website to link to so that people could check you out and learn more about you if they wanted to.  Frankly, I wasn’t expecting you to have a website.  A lot of times with songs/bands that I only heard once in my life, I end up having to settle for a Wikipedia page, and sometimes I have to get even more creative to find some way to show that a band existed and was not just in my imagination.  And I thought you would be one of those bands.  I’d only heard this one song, this one AWESOME song, and that was it.  If you’d asked me who sang this song before I started working on this post, I would have just shrugged and continued to listen to it with a smile on my face.

So I was very happy to see that not only do you guys have a website but have apparently been rocking out for decades and are still going strong.  I had no idea, The Alarm.  Which isn’t saying much, since I don’t get out that much.  But still, isn’t it amazing how life just keeps going on all over the place?  I’ve lived my whole life basically without knowing you existed, even after recording this song off the radio, but you so did, and you’ve been making music forever and having a grand old time and I’m just now learning about it.  I honestly can’t deal with it, really.

I briefly wrote before about my dad marveling at the amount of traffic in my fair city, and how it was hard for him to fathom so many lives all within arm’s reach of other, all in their own separate worlds, all unknowable.  Well, I’m paraphrasing.  I believe he actually said “Look at all these damn cars.”  But the point was that he was from a place where you DID know what everyone was doing pretty much all the time.  And this was before Facebook.  And here I am, living in a big city, the ability to connect to anyone or anything at any time, and I didn’t know about you at all, The Alarm.  Hell, I don’t even keep up with what my wife’s doing half the time.  When I was recording this music off the radio, I would have been hungry for all that knowledge.  I can only imagine what I would have been like had I had internet access.  I would have never slept ever.  And I would have definitely known who you were, The Alarm.  But somewhere along the way, I guess I decided that I didn’t like that the world was becoming smaller and I decided to let it get big again, where life went on and I knew nothing about it.

Hm.  Was that profound at all, The Alarm?  Probably not.  I think if you have to ask if it’s profound, it likely isn’t.  Maybe it’s best that we just stick with what I know, which is writing about great songs that I recorded without knowing anything about them.  Like this song.  Thanks for making it, The Alarm, and thanks for being out there in the world giving everyone the gift of your music.

“Sold Me Down The River”

<awesome The Alarm jam>

There’s a fire
Beneath my skin

There’s a fever that makes me ill

Got a love
A love that kills

I got twenty-four hours to live
Come back

I’m beggin’ you please, come back

Come back

I’m down on my knees, come baaaack
I’m beggin’ you pleeeease

I don’t know why
I don’t understand how ya sold me down the river (woo woo)

I don’t know why
I don’t understand how ya sold me down the river (woo woo)

Sold me down the river

There’s a rose
Across my chest

Gotcha name
Written on it

Love’s the drug
That I live by

Give me a shot
Before I die
Come back

I’m beggin’ you please, come back

Come back

I’m down on my knees, come baaaack
I’m beggin’ you pleeeease

I don’t know why
I don’t understand how ya sold me down the river (woo woo)

I don’t know why
I don’t understand how ya sold me down the river (woo woo)

Sold me down the river

Oh, yeah, sold me down the river now

<awesome The Alarm jam>

Sold me down the river tonight

Wooo hooooooo

(Ohhh ohhhh ohhhh)

(Ohhh ohhh ohhh)
I’ve got twenty-four hours

I don’t know why
I don’t understand how ya sold me down the river (woo woo)

I don’t know why
I don’t understand how ya sold me down the river (woo woo)

Sold me down the river

All right

Oh

Uh ho

Uh ho

Uh hoooo

Hooo
Uh hooo

Uh hooo

Oh oh hoooo

Sold me

Sold me

Sold me down the river

Sold me

Sold me

Sold me down the riveeeeeeeer

I don’t know why
I don’t understand how ya sold me down the river (woo woo)

Sold me down the river

Sold me down the river