Although the band went through many lineup changes over the last 28 years, Mickey DeSadist (vocals) and Dave McGhire (drums) remained the creative foundation of the group through most of its history. McGhire quit in 2003 leaving DeSadist as sole survivor. The main song writers were: Mickey DeSadist, Dave McGhire and Chris Houston.
Bomb The Boats And Feed The Fish
Forgotten Rebels Lyrics
Jump to: Overall Meaning ↴ Line by Line Meaning ↴
My tax dollars paid their ransom, would they do the same for me?
I don't, I don't want them in my home
I don't, I don't want them finding me alone
They're commies, sub-human subversives
They're commies, human living curses
They got nowhere to go so let them drown
I don't want them around so let them drown
Gulls peck flesh from rancid stiffs decaying on the deep blue sea
Bits and pieces here and there, bomb them far from my country
Do you, do you want them in your home
Do you, do you want them finding you alone?
They're commies, sub-human subversives
They are commies, human living curses
They got nowhere to go so let them blow
They got nowhere to go so let them blow
I don't want them around so let them drown
Let's bomb the boats and feed the fish. Bomb the boats and feed the
fish.
Bomb the boats and feed the fish. Bomb the boats and feed their f**king
flesh to the fish.
The lyrics of Forgotten Rebels's song "Bomb The Boats And Feed The Fish" are filled with xenophobic and nationalist sentiments. The singer is expressing their fear and anger towards immigrants, referring to them as "foreign pricks" and "commies, sub-human subversives". They claim that these individuals are taking away their jobs, and that their tax dollars are being used to save them - a sentiment that shows a lack of empathy towards those who are fleeing their countries in search of safety and better opportunities. The singer even goes as far as to suggest bombing the boats of immigrants and letting them drown, which is not only inhumane but also illegal.
The use of violent language and imagery in the lyrics reflects the rise of far-right and anti-immigrant sentiment in the 1980s, when the song was released. The Forgotten Rebels use punk rock as a platform to express their political views and confront social issues, and "Bomb The Boats And Feed The Fish" is a product of that.
Line by Line Meaning
I don't want no foreign pricks to take my job away from me
I am afraid that foreigners will come and take my job, which I believe is rightfully mine. I don't want to lose what I have and feel like my livelihood is at risk.
My tax dollars paid their ransom, would they do the same for me?
I believe that my tax dollars are being used to support non-citizens who are taking advantage of the system. I wonder if these same people would help me if I ever needed it.
They're commies, sub-human subversives
I see these foreigners as enemies who are trying to infiltrate my country and change our way of life. To me, they are sub-human and working against our society.
They got nowhere to go so let them drown
I believe that these foreigners have no right to come to our country and take resources away from us. To me, letting them drown is a suitable punishment for their audacity.
Let's bomb the boats and feed the fish
I suggest we take drastic measures to prevent foreigners from coming to our shores. We should use violent means to discourage them from ever attempting to enter our country.
Bits and pieces here and there, bomb them far from my country
I don't want to be reminded of these foreigners or what we had to do to stop them from coming here. It is better to keep them far away so we don't have to deal with the aftermath.
They are commies, human living curses
I believe that these foreigners are more than just people with different beliefs and customs. To me, they are a threat to our way of life and should be treated as such.
They got nowhere to go so let them blow
I don't see any reason to show these foreigners mercy or compassion. Since they are not wanted in our country, I believe we should let them suffer the consequences of their actions.
Bomb the boats and feed their f**king flesh to the fish.
I suggest we go beyond just stopping these foreigners from coming here. We should also use violent means to punish them and make sure they never come back in the future.
Contributed by Ethan H. Suggest a correction in the comments below.
@princeeggtarts
Nope.
Treat Me Like Dirt: An Oral History of Punk in Toronto and Beyond 1977-1981 by Liz Worth, Bongo Beat Books, 2009.
Stephen Burman (Manager): Mickey’s voice was never great, but I think it was just the lyics. Nobody was singing anything that was as relevant. He had this off-kilter sense of humour, liked similar things -very unconventional. Also, he was very politically aware. Most bands were singing about, “My girlfriend left me, I got no money, I got no car.” Mickey was singing about other things, and that was different. Nobody was doing that. The only bands that were doing anything political were The Clash and The Pistols. pg. 170
Stephen Burman: You have to take the Nazi stuff tongue in cheek, but some people just don’t get that. That didn’t help the Rebels’ reputation… but of course it didn’t help that Steven Leckie was calling himself Nazi Dog. pg. 264
Mickey DeSadist (Singer): You know what? The important thing about that EP was that it got so much publicity for nothing. People like bad news, so we just decided to give a pile of bad news and laugh at them. That’s all it was. There was never any real Nazi-anything behind the band. pg. 264
Pete Lotimer (Drummer): If somebody said something dumb, that was gonna be a song. Or if something happened in the papers he’d call you up - “Let’s write about that!” I’m going, “Nooo!” Ha ha ha. Pg 264.
Mickey DeSadist: We were a bunch of class clowns that knew we could do touchy subjects and get in newspapers, and we enjoyed writing songs together and having a laugh. We were fun for the sake of fun. We at one point thought we might make a lot of money for it… pg. 304
Chris Houston (Bassist): We tried to be the most obnoxious people as possible. Our ideas of fun would be to go see horror movies and cheer every time the zombies killed someone. The steel workers would turn around going, “This is disgusting.” There’s nothing better than going to see Dawn of the Dead with Mickey. pg. 304
Mickey DeSadist: We didn’t want punk songs to be punk. We were just writing songs about touchy subjects to be silly. pg. 304
Chris Houston: There was something about the obnoxiousness of the record that tested a lot of boundaries. Mickey’s sense of humour is definitely misconstrued by a lot of people, which is okay because they would extrapolate on it, and you’d realize that their imaginations were way more perverse than ours. Ha ha ha. pg. 321
Bob Bryden (producer): Mickey says, “We’re not supposed to do this song but we’re gonna do it anyway. One-two-three-four!” Boom – they do, “I Wanna be a Nazi.” And I’m just sitting there going, “Oh no, there’s gonna be trouble.”
But I didn’t anticipate the depth of the trouble. I had no idea how big this was gonna go. pg. 321
Mickey DeSadist: Some members of the audience were intelligent enough to know we were goofing off. Like, I mean, there’s two Polish guys in the band. We wouldn’t actually make it in the Nazi party, would we? And we did that for a joke only because we knew it was a sore thumb. People were being freaked out that I would talk so casually about guys like Dolf and the boys. So they took everything the wrong way. pg. 321
Chris Houston: It was more immaturity. I think when you hear the lyrics to that song it’s pretty obvious. There’s a disclaimer in the last verse. pg. 321
Mickey DeSadist: I had this theory that if they take everything the wrong way, I’ll get a good laugh out of it and I don’t care. Which was a pretty dumb idea.
Have you seen the original version of The Producers, with Zero Mostel and Gene Wilder? I remember being fourteen, me and this guy were laughing our heads off, and people thought there was nothing funny about it. That shows you a lot of stuff behind early Rebels. It shows you exactly our idea. pg. 321
Larry Potvin (Drummer): I didn’t believe in bombing the boats or feeding their flesh to the fish, but as a young person I didn’t understand the implications of what was happening there: People escaping communism; ruthless governments that would kill anything and everybody that would disagree with them. Of course these people were getting on boats and getting the hell out of there. I would, too. pg.322
Bob Bryden: So I eventually ended up going to
I’ll never forget this meetingthe Burlington police department. […] And these two detectives came in and what was really ironic is they had the Rebels album with the lyrics sheet and everything. Not the EP though, the one that has “I Wanna be a Nazi” on it. They had the album, because even at that time the EP was hard to get.So they put the album down on the table, and I’m staring at them, and I’m staring at the album. What I had to do was ensure, or assure, the detectives of the Burlington police who were representing the complainer and the office of the Attorney General in this investigation that the Forgotten Rebels were not a neo-Nazi organization bent on overthrowing the government and taking over the world. I literally had to convince them of that, and I did in those exact words.
I said, “They are a bunch of kids who are total reactionaries who will do anything to shock you. If you say yes they’ll say no, if you say go they’ll say stop. They will do anything to shock you.” And I said, “Clearly, you have fallen into their trap.”
And it was really funny because these guys, at that statement, just folded it up and said “Okay,” and that was that. pg. 322.
Mickey DeSadist: Better Bob deal with it than me.
I got a good laugh out of it. Supposedly the RCMP sat there and asked if these guys were involved in any idiotic activity and Bob goes, “No, these guys are just doing it for publicity; they don’t know what they’re talking about.” And the guy from the RCMP goes, “That’s exactly what I thought, too.”
What really disappointed me was that the only song that ever reflected anything about us is that we were necrophiliacs - “Fuck Me Dead.” We all had a secret desire to go to the morgue when nobody was looking.
I’m only kidding, in case anybody else is stupid enough to think I’m telling the truth. Why didn’t they accuse us of that? Why didn’t they accuse us of being necrophiliacs? I thought they would have got the joke. It was just bait for the newspapers. pg. 322
Chris Hosuton: Then there was our famous gig at Toronto City Hall were it was supposed to be Rock Against Radiation. Then Leckie decided he was going to go pro-radiation, so they screwed us around on the bill.
We introduced winos as our parents. pg. 322
Mickey DeSadist: All I remember is we thought, This is a great place to really stir up a bees nest, ha ha ha. Basically all we did was try to get publicity by just disturbing the show; any slogans we’d shout out was just for the sake of disturbance.
We were just having fun; we were wearing military gear at the most anti-military place, ha ha ha. I remember we had signs - it was Houston, it was all his idea to put the “Pray For War” signs up. Pray for war, ha ha ha. pg. 322
Larry Potvin: The next album was gonna be “Surfin’ on Heroin,” songs like that, and that was just when the president was doing this Say No To Drugs campaign. And I objected to songs like “Surfin; on Heroin.” I remember saying, “I don’t know if we should be playing that,” because I felt to become successful…
I remember the Ontario Provincial Police breaking down my door thinking there were tons of drugs. We didn’t have anything. We weren’t drug dealers. pg. 323
Mickey DeSadist: What really embarrasses me is when people call me a nice guy when I was trying to make a big deal about coming across as a nasty character. Too many people got that point -that I wasn’t that nasty, I was just trying to be silly and smirking at everything myself. pg. 324
@enginekid88
This song is about unrestrained illegal immigration promoted by globalists who bring over mass numbers of people disguised as political "refugees" whose customs are incompatible with Western values, hence the lyric "They're commies, subhuman subversives, commies". The song seems to be even more relevant today than it was when it was written.
@princeeggtarts
Nope.
Treat Me Like Dirt: An Oral History of Punk in Toronto and Beyond 1977-1981 by Liz Worth, Bongo Beat Books, 2009.
Stephen Burman (Manager): Mickey’s voice was never great, but I think it was just the lyics. Nobody was singing anything that was as relevant. He had this off-kilter sense of humour, liked similar things -very unconventional. Also, he was very politically aware. Most bands were singing about, “My girlfriend left me, I got no money, I got no car.” Mickey was singing about other things, and that was different. Nobody was doing that. The only bands that were doing anything political were The Clash and The Pistols. pg. 170
Stephen Burman: You have to take the Nazi stuff tongue in cheek, but some people just don’t get that. That didn’t help the Rebels’ reputation… but of course it didn’t help that Steven Leckie was calling himself Nazi Dog. pg. 264
Mickey DeSadist (Singer): You know what? The important thing about that EP was that it got so much publicity for nothing. People like bad news, so we just decided to give a pile of bad news and laugh at them. That’s all it was. There was never any real Nazi-anything behind the band. pg. 264
Pete Lotimer (Drummer): If somebody said something dumb, that was gonna be a song. Or if something happened in the papers he’d call you up - “Let’s write about that!” I’m going, “Nooo!” Ha ha ha. Pg 264.
Mickey DeSadist: We were a bunch of class clowns that knew we could do touchy subjects and get in newspapers, and we enjoyed writing songs together and having a laugh. We were fun for the sake of fun. We at one point thought we might make a lot of money for it… pg. 304
Chris Houston (Bassist): We tried to be the most obnoxious people as possible. Our ideas of fun would be to go see horror movies and cheer every time the zombies killed someone. The steel workers would turn around going, “This is disgusting.” There’s nothing better than going to see Dawn of the Dead with Mickey. pg. 304
Mickey DeSadist: We didn’t want punk songs to be punk. We were just writing songs about touchy subjects to be silly. pg. 304
Chris Houston: There was something about the obnoxiousness of the record that tested a lot of boundaries. Mickey’s sense of humour is definitely misconstrued by a lot of people, which is okay because they would extrapolate on it, and you’d realize that their imaginations were way more perverse than ours. Ha ha ha. pg. 321
Bob Bryden (producer): Mickey says, “We’re not supposed to do this song but we’re gonna do it anyway. One-two-three-four!” Boom – they do, “I Wanna be a Nazi.” And I’m just sitting there going, “Oh no, there’s gonna be trouble.”
But I didn’t anticipate the depth of the trouble. I had no idea how big this was gonna go. pg. 321
Mickey DeSadist: Some members of the audience were intelligent enough to know we were goofing off. Like, I mean, there’s two Polish guys in the band. We wouldn’t actually make it in the Nazi party, would we? And we did that for a joke only because we knew it was a sore thumb. People were being freaked out that I would talk so casually about guys like Dolf and the boys. So they took everything the wrong way. pg. 321
Chris Houston: It was more immaturity. I think when you hear the lyrics to that song it’s pretty obvious. There’s a disclaimer in the last verse. pg. 321
Mickey DeSadist: I had this theory that if they take everything the wrong way, I’ll get a good laugh out of it and I don’t care. Which was a pretty dumb idea.
Have you seen the original version of The Producers, with Zero Mostel and Gene Wilder? I remember being fourteen, me and this guy were laughing our heads off, and people thought there was nothing funny about it. That shows you a lot of stuff behind early Rebels. It shows you exactly our idea. pg. 321
Larry Potvin (Drummer): I didn’t believe in bombing the boats or feeding their flesh to the fish, but as a young person I didn’t understand the implications of what was happening there: People escaping communism; ruthless governments that would kill anything and everybody that would disagree with them. Of course these people were getting on boats and getting the hell out of there. I would, too. pg.322
Bob Bryden: So I eventually ended up going to
I’ll never forget this meetingthe Burlington police department. […] And these two detectives came in and what was really ironic is they had the Rebels album with the lyrics sheet and everything. Not the EP though, the one that has “I Wanna be a Nazi” on it. They had the album, because even at that time the EP was hard to get.So they put the album down on the table, and I’m staring at them, and I’m staring at the album. What I had to do was ensure, or assure, the detectives of the Burlington police who were representing the complainer and the office of the Attorney General in this investigation that the Forgotten Rebels were not a neo-Nazi organization bent on overthrowing the government and taking over the world. I literally had to convince them of that, and I did in those exact words.
I said, “They are a bunch of kids who are total reactionaries who will do anything to shock you. If you say yes they’ll say no, if you say go they’ll say stop. They will do anything to shock you.” And I said, “Clearly, you have fallen into their trap.”
And it was really funny because these guys, at that statement, just folded it up and said “Okay,” and that was that. pg. 322.
Mickey DeSadist: Better Bob deal with it than me.
I got a good laugh out of it. Supposedly the RCMP sat there and asked if these guys were involved in any idiotic activity and Bob goes, “No, these guys are just doing it for publicity; they don’t know what they’re talking about.” And the guy from the RCMP goes, “That’s exactly what I thought, too.”
What really disappointed me was that the only song that ever reflected anything about us is that we were necrophiliacs - “Fuck Me Dead.” We all had a secret desire to go to the morgue when nobody was looking.
I’m only kidding, in case anybody else is stupid enough to think I’m telling the truth. Why didn’t they accuse us of that? Why didn’t they accuse us of being necrophiliacs? I thought they would have got the joke. It was just bait for the newspapers. pg. 322
Chris Hosuton: Then there was our famous gig at Toronto City Hall were it was supposed to be Rock Against Radiation. Then Leckie decided he was going to go pro-radiation, so they screwed us around on the bill.
We introduced winos as our parents. pg. 322
Mickey DeSadist: All I remember is we thought, This is a great place to really stir up a bees nest, ha ha ha. Basically all we did was try to get publicity by just disturbing the show; any slogans we’d shout out was just for the sake of disturbance.
We were just having fun; we were wearing military gear at the most anti-military place, ha ha ha. I remember we had signs - it was Houston, it was all his idea to put the “Pray For War” signs up. Pray for war, ha ha ha. pg. 322
Larry Potvin: The next album was gonna be “Surfin’ on Heroin,” songs like that, and that was just when the president was doing this Say No To Drugs campaign. And I objected to songs like “Surfin; on Heroin.” I remember saying, “I don’t know if we should be playing that,” because I felt to become successful…
I remember the Ontario Provincial Police breaking down my door thinking there were tons of drugs. We didn’t have anything. We weren’t drug dealers. pg. 323
Mickey DeSadist: What really embarrasses me is when people call me a nice guy when I was trying to make a big deal about coming across as a nasty character. Too many people got that point -that I wasn’t that nasty, I was just trying to be silly and smirking at everything myself. pg. 324
@enginekid88
Larry Potvin (Drummer): I didn’t believe in bombing the boats or feeding their flesh to the fish, but as a young person I didn’t understand the implications of what was happening". So, as a young person they did write that song and meant it. The drummer is reflecting on it much later in an interview and saying now that he is older he sympathizes with the illegal immigrants. His statement to the magazine is nothing more than political correctness. PC did not exist when the song was written. Of course he is gonna say he didn't mean it, it would be politically incorrect to say anything else.
@thehellyousay
Pity you're too fucking stupid and obsessed with your proto-nazi bullshit to get the actual point of the song, drooling fucktard
@enginekid88
You have every right according to freedom of expression to say these things. Even though I don't agree with you, and think your comment is crass and ignorant, I support your right to say it.
@ThePitalover
I
@jjbinx
These guys are Canadian icons
@chrisdeal9945
The more things change the more they stay the same
@ConvenienceMan
Canada was so based before the Charter. Thank the boomers for both Trudeaus
@buckodonnghaile4309
A lot of those boomers despised Turdeau. Don't believe everything they programmed into you in some dogshite public school.