(The) Harvey Danger Database

Cream and Bastards Rise

Recorded

Release history

Credits

Alternate versions

Lyrics

You’re doing everything your people said to
I’d hate to be the one to break it to you
It’s only sad ’cause it’s true:
They misled you when they bred you

Somebody said some things they had no right to
Somehow they stuck, and you were known as someone who
could simply not follow through if he had to
(But you have to, don’t you?)

You don’t have to be a genius, but it helps to (helps to)
Fools and charlatans, they may get wise
But only cream and bastards rise—
Yeah, you can see it in their eyes

You followed good advices to the letter
You know your friend?
He’s doing so much better than you are ever likely to do
He’ll eclipse you, but he will not miss you

You don’t have to be a genius
But it helps to (helps to)
All the also-rans are real nice guys
But only cream and bastards rise:

People who could buy and sell you
Sharing a joke that they will never tell you
You think you’re dialed in
Someone has to win, and you know what that means…
It means someone’s gotta lose
It’s probably you
It’s probably you

It’s not a race, it’s not a competition
And if it were, you’d be in no position to
get them to listen to you, if you had to
Not even if your life depended on it!

You don’t have to be a genius
But it helps to (helps to)
Some are aliens, the rest are spies
But only cream and bastards rise—
Yeah, you can see it in their eyes

Quotes

SCN: “Cream and Bastards Rise” (yet ANOTHER reference to Harper, the movie we got the title of Merrymakers from) completely belies everything I just said; a rocker born of the Velvet Underground—the band that gave the incipient HD a common tongue at our first practice attempt in 1993—and the realization that most of the rest of the album wasn’t very rock; as is usually the case in our rock songs, the bridge is the best bit; lyric is semi-personal but also founded in a serious disgust for the presidential nomination/election process; Rolling Stone said this song was about the music biz, I always think of Al Gore when I sing it.10A

SCN: P.S. Still angry at and about Al Gore and John Kerry.P&F

SCN: I just loved that expression [in the title]. I tried to get it into a song for many years.

And I mean, it was 2004. We wrote it in 2004, and we recorded it in early 2005. And I’m sure I don’t have to remind anybody that that was the year George Bush won his second term. You know, we’ve since lived through much more traumatic presidental bullshit, but the idea that he could even win again—that anyone in the world would fall for that—was unimaginable to me. I couldn’t even believe that it happened, and I think I was not alone in that.

But then to look at John Kerry after the fact, and be like, “Wait, we thought that guy was going to win?” There was some kind of thing about how John Kerry and Al Gore both had presented themselves as these haughty, patrician, above-all, ‘a complex mind’—you know, that kind of stuff—that was totally ineffective as a means of capturing the public imagination. And then, you know, there’s probably also like a 5% component of thinking about the music business.AD

References

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