(The) Harvey Danger Database

Problems and Bigger Ones

Recorded

Release history

Also known as

Rolling Roads

Credits

Lyrics

Cross through the border states to the wrong side, wrong side
Look away, Virginia

[him:]1
You spend every day like the past is a bridge crossing 20 years
Whispers away, not so much
Get your poison tongue out of my ear

Here’s a fact you cannot rise above:
We’ll have problems, yeah
Then we’ll have bigger ones

From damage to damn control
You wanted to go alone, though
I never said no
I never said no

[her:]
Spiteful confrontations, and trial separations
It’s just another present to get past
The man was very helpful, but I knew he wouldn’t stay
There used to be a baby, but the baby went away

Forswear what you undergo
You wanted to go alone, though
I never said no…

It doesn’t make me cry to hear Dylan say
“Most likely you go your way, I’ll go mine”2
I’ll go mine

Forswear what you undergo
You wanted to go alone, though
I never said no, I never said no
I never said no

  1. Tags from the official HD website, 1999. ↩

  2. Blonde on Blonde (1966). ↩

Quotes

SCN: “Problems and Bigger Ones” is one of two songs on the LP whose lyries always felt unfinished to me; partly I blame Evan for encouraging me to go ahead and follow my misbegotten ambition to make the song into a centuries-spanning tale of bootlegging and abandonment, almost none of which theme survives in any discernible way; original chorus opener was you follow the rolling road, which sounded too heroic or classic rock to the lads, hence the alternate existing lines, but from damage to damn control never quite felt right to me (though I love forswear what you undergo); happy about the Dylan reference, largely because it came before my Dylan deep dive a year or two later; song remains powerful to me, sometimes hard to sing because it’s so emotional, the urgency of the guitar and bass in the second verse and outro are undeniable—close as HD ever got to ’90s-style emo.10A

AMH: This was the first song of ours I heard on the radio, on KCMU, while making TONS of Jell-O for a party at the Wedgwood house. Don’t ask.10A

SCN: I still have the sense that the words for “Problems and Bigger Ones” and “Terminal Annex” were never quite finished. Both songs contained experiments in a discursive, vaguely cut-up writing style, and as a result, I hear myself strugging to find a voice that wasn’t exactly mine. Despite and because of those difficulties, I love them both, and the lesson they taught me about how songs aren’t finished until people hear them. I have no idea what “from damage to damn control” means, but there are plenty of people in our audience who have construed plenty from it, which makes the line mean far more to me than it otherwise might have.MMV

Notes

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