Siouxsie & The Banshees : 92 Degrees
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The hottest temperature I’ve ever experienced was 121 degrees in the Mojave Desert near Palm Springs during the summer of 2009. It was too sizzling to move. To tell the truth, I'm uncomfortable at anything over a tepid 85. Siouxsie and the Banshees tell us about a day that “drags by like a wounded animal,” and she refers to the “approaching disease” and “approaching unease” of exactly 92 degrees.
During their twenty years together (1976-96), Siouxsie and the Banshees were a band that emerged from the London punk community. As they developed with more sophistication, they seminally influenced the goth-rock movement. The blistering “92 Degrees” is on their recommended and stylistically consistent 1986 Tinderbox project that reached the Top 100 album chart in the U.S. (largely due to the excellent single “Cities in Dust”).
There's some rather unsettling narration that introduces the song. “Do you know that more murders are committed at 92 degrees Fahrenheit than any other temperature? I read an article once. Lower temperatures, people are easy going. Over 92, it’s too hot to move. But just 92, people get irritable!”
I start to perspire as Siouxsie vocalizes these lyrics:
The blood in our veins and the brains in our head,
The approaching unease, 92 degrees.
Long ago in the headlines, they noticed it too,
But too late for the loved ones and nearly for you.
Shaky lines on the horizon,
Snaky thoughts invade each person,
Watch the red line creeping upwards,
Watch the sanity line weaken,
The volcanic depths of Hades’ ocean,
Bubble under, these crazed eruptions,
It wriggles and writhes and bites within,
Just below the sweating skin.
I wondered when this would happen again,
Now I watch the red line, reach that number again,
The blood in our veins and the brains in our head.
Drink the water with jagged glass,
Eat the cactus with bleeding mouth,
Not 91 or 93, but 92 Fahrenheit degrees.
Shaky lines on the horizon,
Snaky thoughts invade each person,
Not 91 or 93, but 92 Fahrenheit degrees.
Whether it’s fact or fiction, I’ve read that that when the temperature reaches 92 degrees in the U.S., the crime rate rises by 200 percent. A little research indicates the red line hit 96 degrees in Aurora, Colorado on July 20, 2012. My heart and most sincere sympathy go out to the victims of that horrific tragedy.
