This blog’s theme song: “Shot By Both Sides”

Most of you are probably too young or too old to remember the band Magazine, an offshoot of the Buzzcocks (lead singer Howard Devoto originally sang for the Buzzcocks, other members either came from or went to Ultravox, Siouxsie and the Banshees, and Nick Cave’s Bad Seeds.) Anyway in 1979 they did what I think should be the Orange Juice’s theme song, “Shot By Both Sides.”

This and that, they must be the same:
What is legal is just what’s real.
What I’m given to understand
is exactly what I steal.
I worm my way into the heart of the crowd,
worm my way into the heart of the crowd,
I was shocked to find what was allowed:
I didn’t lose myself in the crowd…
SHOT BY BOTH SIDES, on the run to the outside of everything!
SHOT BY BOTH SIDES, they must have come to a secret understanding!


About Vern Nelson

Greatest pianist/composer in Orange County, and official political troubadour of Anaheim and most other OC towns. Regularly makes solo performances, sometimes with his savage-jazz band The Vern Nelson Problem. Reach at vernpnelson@gmail.com, or 714-235-VERN.