Snow Blind

Lyrics

Cold breath, on a window
‘Gate Two’ dim-lit on a destination board
No surprises in your lunch box
No surprises in between times
Put that down to Henry Ford

Chorus:
But it was o.k., ’til they got snow blind
They got snow blind thought they were doing us a kindness
They got snow blind thought they were doing us a kindness
Snow blind, snow blindness.

Sky-line from a window
Wall-map well-marked high-up
With a sharply drawn red-line
High-power conversation
High-performance reputations
Don’t look too close at those designs

Chorus

Museum pieces rolling from production lines
Pretty soon they’ll be handing out the speeding fines
Sun-burst through a window
‘Sprint speed’ ‘space age’ ‘tint glass’
Coming soon if not before
Closing channels out of Europe
Bogotá get a crossed line
The whole crowd waiting for the score.

Chorus

Song Description

The idea for this song came from a true story: An entrepreneur is subsidised by the government to develop a new type of car and to build the factory needed to mass produce it. But only a few of the cars are sold and the entrepreneur gets into financial difficulties. So he has the idea to gain a new source of cash by smuggling cocaine. But the police lay a trap for him and the deal fails. After that the whole project died. The remaining cars are only of use as museum pieces. Everyone involved with the project had closed their eyes to its problems until it was too late: The workers, who didn’t want to lose their jobs; the government, that didn’t want to admit their wasted investment.

Verse one: The workers are being driven to the factory in buses on a cold morning. Their lunch is as monotonous as the work on the assembly line.

Verse two: In the relevant Ministry. The curve of the sales prognosis is steeply uphill. After all, the entrepreneur has had great successes in the past. So one doesn’t look at the plans for the new cars too closely.

Verse three: Commercial catch phrases for the new car are strung together. In Bogota the cocaine connection is disturbed. Snow: Slang for cocaine. Snow blind: Here a symbol for the losses that the projects participants incurred. Henry Ford: Rationalised production and introduced the assembly line. Bogota: Capital of Colombia and the biggest cocaine producer.

Versions

• ALive (3:45)
• BDemo (3:18)

Snow Blind Appears On