Story Behind The Song

I wrote this song twenty years ago after a US-Soviet summit meeting in Iceland inspired me to think about what it feels like to hold it together when you mostly want to hit someone or at the very least yell loud at them. No one needs that.

Song Description

"Shake" is a song built of parts I had written and played for years in a number of bands and places before moving to Madison in 1988. I used to play an electric version of it with the Isle of Dogs (the band I moved here with in 1988) and remember a particular version of it at the Club de Wash--slightly different words, super fast, and people were dancing. We opened for House of Large Sizes that night. I never recorded it before it was the only new single on this Uvulittle Release in 2006 (COLLECTED, UVU 271). "Shake" is not so much "about" something as it is evocative of the effort it takes to stay standing in the face of crisis. It was inspired by a couple of specific geopolitical events (a memory of a US/Soviet summit in Iceland in 1986, among other subsequent historical conversations) but took real root in my own reflections after a couple of encounters where I felt called upon to fight the urge to fight back a little harder than I ought to have. Mostly, it's about how hard it is just to stand there and listen, in those times when that is the only thing you should really be doing.

Lyrics

Present time occurred to me the other day
A brother I did not know stepped in my way
We did try to collide
Why oh why he was on my side
We did try to collide

A misunderstanding and all is quiet on the frontier
And everyone is here
We must try not to collide
You and I are on the same side
We must try to at least smile a while

Shake shake shake shake shake
But don't run around
Shake shake shake shake shake
But don't fall down