by The Real Mac
The song Too Late off our recently released EP Smoke Signals, which to the naked ear sounds like a love song about two people who are realizing they may be near the end of their relationship is, in fact, an analogy of a story that happened to myself and a friend of mine while backpacking across Europe.
Listen to the song while reading the text.
On this trip, my good friend had purchased a car in London and then met me in Prague to begin our journey. After three monumentally big nights in this crazy city, we left bleary-eyed to make our way to the next stop. Upon checking out of our hostel, I discovered I had lost my set of car keys. The car hadn’t even left the car park for three days! It is still a mystery to this day where those damn keys went. We then knew we had to to be extra careful with our one remaining set of keys.
Cut to a good month later, and we find ourselves in Budapest, in my opinion, the best party city I have ever been to. We had decided to attend a boat party on the Danube where everyone is given a bottle of ‘Champagne’ upon boarding the vessel. On our walk to the river, my friend put his hand into his pocket only to find the car keys. We looked at each other sharing similar concerns but decided it was too far to go back, and we would quite literally miss the boat.
Well, of course, you can see where this is going! He woke up the following morning keyless. This put us in a very bad position as we had tickets to a music festival in Croatia the very next day. Rather than try to replace the keys we went Fuck it! Let’s get a bus to the festival and leave the car in Budapest and sort it out when we get back. Whilst on the way to the festival we sent some emails out. While we are at the festival on an island in Croatia with limited internet connectivity, we managed to get onto our emails and believe it or not we had a response from a car dealer in Budapest telling us they will sort the whole thing out.
Upon our return to Budapest, we breathed a sigh of relief that the car was where we left it for four days, untouched and with no tickets. We were picked up by a tow truck and towed to the dealer who then replaced our keys and even fed us. Now I can’t remember how much we paid, but I do remember thinking this is far too cheap there must be a catch, but there was none. Just good old wholesome Hungarian hospitality.
Now throughout this mayhem, myself and my mate who has since passed away found ourselves in dark places, yet we picked each other up and together we got ourselves out of this mess. Hence the line “falling down when somebody can pick you up” which is repeated throughout the song.
So, no this is not a love song. Just a story about two dumb fuck drunk and high Australians who lost two sets of keys in one month!
I love how music can be interpreted differently depending on the listener. Current mood, what is happening in your life at that time and even your location can determine how a song resonates with you.
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Weird thing is I always focus on the hook in the song…falling down when somebody can pick you up…its like the punchline in a joke.