JOHNNY APPLESEED

"Our audience is still a punk rock outlaw crowd and they're not happy consumers of what is going on. They know that film, radio and music are all undergoing a process of blanding out and the song is a yell from the heart against that. Johnny Appleseed is a character who was never part of that corporate culture, and the song is a howl for some kind of truth in our lives. "

COOL'N'OUT

"'Cool'N'Out' is a saying I invented. It's like 'over and out' but it sounds like 'cooling out' so nobody quite gets it. We sampled the opening from a track we did on the last album called 'Tony Adams' and from that we built anew song. I especially like the line about putting LSD into the gin supply at the G7 summit. That tickles my marrow bone. "

GLOBAL A GO-GO

"Twice a year, they give me this show on the BBC World Service to play records. I asked them how many people listened last time and they said 40 million. That brings the globe sharply into focus and that's what inspired the track. It's about all living in one world and celebrating our unity as well as our differences. "

BHINDI BHAGEE

" It's another plea for tolerance. Robin Cook recently said that chicken tikka masala had become the British national dish in the new multicultural society. That's my line in the song which I wrote five months before he ever said that. The more different things you try, the more it enriches your own culture. "

GAMMARAY

"The gamma ray is this thing that causes chaos and consternation and a sense of Panic. There's nothing but bad news in the newspapers to make us live in a constant state of paranoia, which is what they want. This song is joking about how ludicrous it is."

MEGA BOTTLE RIDE

"I was looking around the world and thinking we needed songs about something a bit more interesting than the normal crap so I decided to write about the fourth dimension. It's humorous, but live got no doubt the fourth dimension exists. But is it just like the world we're trying to escape from? We need to know if you're allowed to smoke in there..."

SHAKTAR DONETSK

"Shaktar Donetsk is the name of a Ukrainian football team and I knew there was a good story in there. We don't know what's going on beyond our own neighbourhood, that's what it's saying. It's a song calling out for some more intelligent leadership in the world..."

MONDOBONGO

" It's a really beautiful Latin tune and I wanted to make it the story of a romance told in a very condensed way. So I threw away all the verses and just kept the skeleton, so by the end you wonder' what's going on. Is it the end of the love affair or not? "

BUMMED OUT CITY

"Everybody's been there. You've had a terrible row with your partner and you're in bummed out city. I thought I’d stake out the area so I'd recognise it again when next driving through it. I was trying to make myself feel better. It's a love song, in other words. "

AT THE BORDER, GUY

"We were sitting in the pub and I had this idea that we had to build a new city out of all the dispossessed peoples. We were brought up to believe that science and engineering were going to make the world a better place. Now it seems we've come to a halt. But I think we've got to retain some faith in believing tomorrow will be better than today. "

THE MINSTREL BOY

" It's a cover and it's just a great old Celtic tune. I've been trying to play it for a thousand years and finally it came together on this session."