(The) Harvey Danger Database


Terminal Annex

Recorded

Release history

Also known as

(Down at the) Terminal Annex

Credits

Lyrics

Here’s something beautiful
now smash it to bits
Save your little wheelchair empowerment films
Save your swoons, I’m spoken for
It isn’t pretty to think so1
but I can’t feign interest now

Dreaming of the fistfight I never got into
Thinking of the mean shit I wish I’d said to you
Such a fancy lady, call her Secretina
She didn’t get all the good stuff
but she looked like you

Like a zero drowning in a sea of higher numbers.
Everything you say to me is dumb
At least it’s stupid

Twenty heavy hammers smashing down
Here’s a doorstep you can never darken
You complain about an overflowing cup2
Don’t forget that I’m the one who filled that fucker up
(one, two, three)

Like a zero drowning in a sea of higher numbers
I remain as ever intrigued but no more astounded
Like a zero drowning in a sea of higher numbers
I think that I like you better when you just ignore me

So I sit and notice shadows growing
I think of how the clocks are slowing
Hoping hope’s eternal flowing springs3
will do their thing and save me from myself

Like a zero drowning in a sea of higher numbers
I remain as ever intrigued but no more astounded
Like a zero drowning in a sea of higher numbers
You want ego? I will show you ego
I’m jealous now


  1. Isn’t it pretty to think so? — Ernest Hemingway, The Sun Also Rises

  2. Psalms 23:5. 

  3. Hope springs eternal in the human breast: / Man never is, but always to be blest. — Alexander Pope, An Essay on Man (1734). 

Quotes

SCN: “Terminal Annex”: unfinished lyric #2, but also the second example of hearing how John Goodmanson’s wizardry transformed the sound of our basement fantasy into a pop-rock colossus, another long night in Jeff’s car with a cassette; also defensible on the grounds of the “overflowing cup” line, maybe my favorite couplet on the record, and Aaron’s revving motorcycle bass solo.10A

AMH: I think we were all mesmerized by the Echoplex tape delay, which was responsible for the guitar sound in the verses.10A

SCN: Named, inexplicably, for the US Post Office at Third Avenue South and S. Lander, kitty corner from former HD practice space. “Wheelchair empowerment films” comes from puppet-based self-esteem program seen in bewilderment on PBS at 3 am (I’m not in a wheelchair; I use a wheelchair—but “I” was a puppet!). “Secretina” borrowed from Chris Dorr, with love.P&F

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.MMV

Notes

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