Contributors:

Jonathan Chaffer

GWE99@uno.cc.geneseo.edu

Jack Mingo

Matt Shapiro

The title of this song puns on a wiseguy response to "Do you have a match?" The traditional joke response is "Sure, I've got a match: Your face and my ass." Other humor includes the "I'm going to die no matter what" bit, as well as the logical convolutions in "You say I think it's you..."

Probably the most likely interp of this song is that it is about some sort of failed relationship. The man has fallen out of love: he doesn't want to be touched by his girl any longer. She thinks that he wants understanding, but he knows that the true match is that each time she hugs him, he dies a little. In the second verse, the man gives some options to his wife/girlfriend. If she wants to sleep with someone, try the cat. He is downright mean, sticking gravel in her coffee out of spite.

Here's an interesting alternate interp, that states the song could be a band's message to the music industry:

Get out of the car
Put down the phone
Take off that stupid looking hat that you wear

--"stop doing all the stuff that might put you in that whole mass-communications, taste-making position, at least in regards to us"

I'm going to die if you touch me one more time

--"touch"="write about, etc.;" "die" might be analogous to a total drop in either popularity or inspiration, I haven't decided which.

Well I guess that I'm going to die no matter what

--well, sooner or later, everybody's popularity/inspiration falls off a bit.

Love people are there
The smell of love is everywhere

--"regardless of whatever you do/write/say about us or how you advertise us, we'll still have an audience that loves us"

You think it's always sensitive and good
You think that I want to be understood

--"you complain about songwriters being 'cryptic,' about albums being 'incohesive' or whatever"

I've got a match
Your embrace and my collapse

--"I *know* we're doing something wrong if *you* guys give us coverage... leave us alone!"

Beat up the cat if you need someone else on the mat

--referring to the media's tendency to beat up on what they once welcomed, to make way for the next new thing

I put a rock in the coffee in your coffee mug

--"maybe what we have to offer is heavier stuff than what you're used to dealing with!"

Which one of us is the one that we can't trust?
You say that I think it's you but I don't agree with that

--this might mean, "I think it's *me*," i.e. "I can't be trusted," which yields a liar's paradox (can he be trusted when he says that?); it might also mean, "I don't *think* it's you, I *know* it's you!"

Why can't you be sensitive and good
Why don't you want to be understood

--"you're the ones who don't make any sense... you don't even seem like you want to...."