I really like the song "Fiona" by the Minneapolis band, Romantica. The lead singer, Ben Kyle, grew up in Belfast but moved to Minneapolis. At first listen, "Fiona" seems to be about a guy taking a bus to see his girlfriend and kind of missing her in the connection. I thought of it like "Skyway" by The Replacements. But it finally occurred to me that the lines "bombs explode" and "even the cops are scared" indicated a deeper meaning. Here is a video from YouTube in which Ben Kyle tells what "Fiona" is all about. Because of his Irish accent, I thought I would transcribe the explanation he gives before playing the song.
To get to the high school, you used to have to go through town. Take one bus in one side, and take another bus out the other side. And in the city center, oftentimes you'd have these things called bomb scares where somebody would call in and say that they planted a bomb. And half the time is wasn't true, but half the time it was. And so every time they did it we had to evacuate--the whole downtown area had to be completely evacuated. But what ended up happening is instead of the whole downtown clearing out because there was such a mad rush while everyone just got stuck there for hours--just one big traffic jam trying to get out of downtown. So I would take this bus to school--it would go through the city center and out the other side to school and then on the way home go back into the city and from time to time we'd get stuck in these bomb scares. Obviously, as a kid, it was very unnerving. What was going to happen? And one of these times on the bus, my sister was on and a bomb actually exploded, not on the bus, but nearby, and the windows in the bus were shattered--so a little bit terrifying for a child. This is a song I wrote sort of through the eyes of the young boy and girl.
Left the house at six-forty-five
Caught the 76 downtown on time
Stood there in the rain
She called out my name, and I just cried
Took the 17 uptown
From the back of the bus you could hear the sound
Of the bombs explode, and our fears implode into the night
Oh Fiona
I had something to show you, honey
Wanna walk you home, baby, maybe tonight
Oh Fiona
I had something to show you, honey
Wanna walk you home, baby, maybe tonight
Baby, tonight
Baby, maybe tonight
Baby, tonight
Got out of school at half-past three
Took a bus from Methody downtown
Stood outside the shops, everything had stopped, like the end of time
The sun was going down too fast
I couldn’t wait to leave Belfast on time
No one’s going anywhere
Even the cops were scared out of their minds
Oh Fiona
I had something to show you, honey
Wanna walk you home, baby, maybe tonight
Oh Fiona
I had something to show you, honey
Wanna walk you home, baby, maybe tonight
Maybe tonight
Baby, maybe tonight
Maybe tonight
