The joke is that the Hives only ever write one song. They've had some fun with this accusation in the past - Howlin' Pelle Almqvist once told Rolling Stone that the band was like a school of sharks. "Sharks have been the same for billions of years, and they still rule. You have no need for development if you're a shark".
This is both true and funny, but the truth is the original charge never quite stuck in the first place. The Hives certainly have a very simple template, but - as with the various two-tone suits they've sported over the years - there's plenty you can do within simplicity. Sonically they've - well, not matured, obviously, but they've shifted, from snotty garage punk to snotty pop-flecked rock. In terms of their lyrics, meanwhile, it's true that basically every good Hives song is about how they are smart, and someone else is an idiot.
But it matters who the idiot is.
In this case, the Hives set their sights on teachers and politicians, making the case that they're both ultimately the same job - people pretending they want to help, but really just want private fiefdoms where they can talk at people unable to talk back.
I don't know why I decided to be a teacher. I despised much of my time in secondary school, and indeed suffered what could fairly be called a nervous breakdown at age twelve because my maths teacher at the time was so relentlessly unpleasant to me (and everyone else in the class) that I simply couldn't handle it. I've had a lifelong phobia of electronic alarms because I would lie awake every morning, terrified of when the sound would begin and I'd have to get up for school.
Maybe I just wanted to better than her. More likely, I just have a marrow-deep need to break things apart in front of people to show them how they work, and an equally ingrained need to not use my hands. What else was I going to end up doing but teaching a theoretical subject?
"Walk Idiot Walk" came out in the final days of my NQT year (for the uninitiated, this is the year after you finish your training, where you basically find out if you have any chance of being able to do the job long-term). I'd just decided to give the job at least one more year, a few months before the words "at least" got deleted from the plan.
I'm not saying this song influenced that decision, but it was a timely reminder of whose shoulders I was rubbing against. "I'm one of the good ones" isn't just an excuse for remaining a cop. The education system prefers to do its damage over a much longer period, chronic afflictions rather than discrete incidents of assault and murder, but a lot of people still come out the other end at least as injured as they were informed.
And for what? Online lyrics sheets be damned, the line here is "Still you never learn nothing, and nothing is enough". Your school teaches you nothing of value, except by accident. Your teachers are idiots. They're robots, programmed to program you to accept incoherent and petty power moves from gurning bullies at every stage of your life. They tick your name on the register, you tick their name at the ballot box. Just say you're present - nothing else is wanted or required.
Is all that true? No. Not any more than it's true that the Hives have the technological base to declare nuclear war. But here's what it all boils down to: it was fucking true enough.
Within a few months, I'd handed in my resignation. My pupils would have to watch some other idiot chalk up his name on the blackboard.
B-Side
People are still Bezzing in the post COVID age. Amazing.
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