Interpretations:It's Kickin' In

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Something that hasn't been interpreted is the fake words that are said by the "disaffected waitress"...while these words are entirely fake, in my mind they seemed to resolve themselves into various French words, so I tried translating to see what would happen.

Especially if one pronounces the words inaccurately, it sounds slightly like: "Je souvais la diffement Vous hausse temp de la saille"

These words translate loosely to "I remember the dishonor; you raise the time of service," as though the group may have been to the restaurant in the past and treated the waitress badly, so as a result she plans to give them poor service...probably not intentional, or even accurate, but still interesting.


I have to agree with SK on this. If one glances at the general direction lyrics, or hears the song only once, they might get the idea that it may be a song about drugs but if the song is listened to closley or the lyrics are read, it becomes apparent that the song is not a drug song at all (and therfore not at all justify the "its obviously about using Extacy" post, seeing how the song does not indicate anything about "using Ecstasy" and the line "It's obviously about using Ecstasy" is not so much an Interpretation as it is a blurt about an obviously Unrelated_Thing)- Nightpotato


If you read the lyrics you would see that this song is about some stupid party that this girls boyfriend made her go to so she called her friend so she could get bailed out of there so then they get away from the crowds and go to some stupid foreign resturaunt and have a good time. "it's kickin in" refers to the boyfriends telling their girlfriends that the party is just getting good, when it's really winding down, no drugs.-SK

I do believe the fake words are meant to sound like French. i have also heard several french rock songs that have a very similar feel and style to this. Especially the verses, they really sound like a chorus that would be typical in my small exposure to French rock. -TheCap'm

It's obviously about using Ecstasy -- J. Dogg

Is it drugs kicking in? or just the excitement of going out for a night on the town? (Mr Tuck)

I'm pretty sure it's a night on the town. A phone wakes Narrator up around noon ("shocked awake in the middle of the day ... panic call"), she was still sleeping because she had a hangover from last night ("in a fight over shadows of the night"). They hired a party band, or something, took their boyfriends to it, but shut it down. Then they drag the boyfriends across town where they try to get into some fancy restaurant. Obviously having a good time.

I'm going to get flamed for this, but this song seems to have a tiny bit of a "this is what is wrong with women that embrace and are shaped by the culture of today" slant to it. I'm going to let you try and find that aspect yourselves, because if I go into detail here, people looking for a fight are gonna accuse me of sexism. But yeah. --Tgies


When in doubt, assume we have an unreliable narrator. I think this is about drugs and about partying all night - "shut 'em down" is slang for partying so late the bar closes or the party ends - it means being the last ones to leave. Then they bum a ride to a restaurant across town. If we'd stop laughing we could almost pass - that's being stoned and trying to pass for sober. The waitron isn't understandable because the restaurant is so snooty and they're so stoned. I get the sense this is taking a poke at empty-headed party dogs and how they spend their time. -~Christina Miller, August 2005

I completely agree with nightpotato, MH

A tough one to call, but a nice song. A typical Flans song, that comes from his up-tempo Twisting range of 1950s be-bop meets new wave, he repeats the same trick (albeit with far superior lyrics) on Damn Good Times. A solid song, it only begins to wilt, when compared to Linnell's contributions on the album. However it does kick in when sung live, and had a far greater impact than superior songs such as Wearing a Raincoat. (Mr Tuck)

I fail to see what the "trick" Flans repeats really is. I guess they're both party sort of songs, but style-wise I find the two pretty different. Plus, Flansy - I find - is better at crowd-pumping shout-alongs, while Linnell's niche seems to be the more "thinky" ones, if you get what I mean. Each Giant has his own musical style, and I don't see anything wrong with that. - Rhinoceros Rex

I agree. I meant nothing sinister by the word trick. (Mr Tuck)


_ Oh yeah, and it wouldn't *be* Mr. Tuck if he didn't slip in a snide remark about how Mr. L is a superior musician to Mr. F. That's how you know you have a genuine Mr Tuck comment - accept no substitutes! Mr. T makes excellent comments sometimes, but has a serious crush on John Linnell._

True. Linnell wrote "I'm your boyfriend about me." (mr tuck) - for all the americans this is a joke!

Is it just me, or does this song owe a lot to "This Year's Model"-era Elvis Costello? I think sometimes Flans even sings a bit like him...but don't get me wrong, for me, this enhances the enjoyability of the song! - Stiddy

Flans has mentioned that he likes Elvis Costello, even going so far as saying (in Gigantic) that he's not sure who he admires more (even though he didn't want Costello to produce Apollo 18). The chorus is catchy and punchy. Elvis Costello is good at that too. I like it. I dislike the social commentary about the fancy restaurant. It seems like too easy a target, something other bands would make fun of, but it's nothing new or interseting. The rest of the song meets with my approval (not that you guys wanted it or anything, but still). --An orangutan

I think this song is about two people who are getting married and their respective bachelor and bachelorette parties. --TMBGZamboni

For whatever reason, this song always reminds me of Ferris Bueller's Day Off. Probably because of the "In a restaurant with so much class, if we could stop laughin' we could almost pass" line. --Otsune 

    Agreed. -Lamazo

Firstly, ditto the Elvis Costello influence. Way obvious, from the Attractions-esque arrangement to the underlying air of superiority. This song is a narrative describing the events in a younger crowd's life, with occasional Costello/Greek Chorus bits directed to the audience. I say a younger crowd because it feels very "teen" - waking in the middle of the day, panicked calls to girlfiends, crashing a fancy restaurant, etc. Also, the feel of the "stop to appreciate it" bit is very teen anthem to these ears. Kinda Cheap Trick or even the ever-present Ramones. (NB: To old farts like the Johns and myself, Cheap Trick does indeed feel "teen." You'll just have to use your imagination.) It also seems kind of obvious to me that drugs are indeed involved. Specifically, a drug that involves a delay between ingestion and effect, like ecstacy or acid. Among my circle of friends, "It's kicking in" was exactly what you said to announce to the others that you were starting to feel the effect. Sometimes, this was to alleviate fears that the group had gotten "bunked" en masse. However, most of the time, this was done simply to announce your joy in having taken such a lovely drug - to "stop to appreciate it."

Completely Unrelated Thing: My "mental music video" for this song is essentially edited together from footage taken from "Rock N Roll High School". <>pink.Boy()

To me, I think it's about a guy and his clingy, maybe paranoid girlfriend, and she's really starting to annoy him. I dunno, I have totally out-there interpretations for this wiki. --Lemita 08:55, 6 Jul 2006 (MDT)

The verse about the restaurant always cracks me up, because it's a page out of my own teenage years. My friends and I put on sport coats, went to the fanciest restaurant in the city, ordered salads (because that was all we could afford), and pretended that one of us was a French exchange student (even though none of us spoke French). He did the "fake foreign accent" nonsense words, and we pretended to translate for him. We almost got away with it (yeah right!), except that when we told the waitress "He's from France", she asked "Oh! What part of France?" and all we could do was mumble "Uh... the southern part."

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