This is genuinely one of my ‘to be played at my funeral’ songs.
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“I’m A Dog” - Crash Test Dummies
I’m a dog, and I can smell your smell right through your clothes
And I espouse some views that you yourself just might not hold
Sometimes I am given pause to think when
I consider what we could call the good life
When it comes to the city versus the country life
Well, I must say that I far prefer a farmer’s wife
Breakfast with the master in the morning
Feel the breeze and brush against a cow’s leg - mmm!
But it seems the thinkers you call greatest are
The sort who often fall ill young, or pine away
How can they help but drag the species down?
There’s some debate about whether instincts should be held in check
Well, I suppose that I’m a liberal in this respect
I can’t say I liked Robinson Crusoe
But at least he didn’t tie his dogs up at night
And it seems the thinkers you call greatest are
The sort who often fall ill young, or pine away
How can they help but drag the species down?
How come all your poets fall into despondencies?
And then write it down for us to read every indignity?
Not such worthy specimens, these creatures
Hardly fit for what you could call the good life
And it seems the thinkers you call greatest are
The sort who often fall ill young, or pine away
How can they help but drag the species down?
How can they help but drag the species down?
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“The Jail That Sets You Free”
Lately I’ve been picking at the fossil in my throat
It’s hard to stare into the ocean
And to try to stay afloat
Now don’t upset yourself due to the changing of my mood
I’m hard to please sometimes
I’m hard to please sometimes
I’m on a staircase to the bottom of the bottom of my soul
Although my feet are still connected
They are out of my control
Now please refrain yourself from worrying on my behalf
I’m hard to understand sometimes
I’m hard to understand sometimes
Honey come with me
It’s just you and me
Baby believe it’s
As simple as can be
I will be the jail that sets you free
I will be the jail that sets you free
I’m shuffling underneath my pillow for the bed-crumbs of my mind
It’s hard to look there for a future
When I left it all behind
Please don’t condescend and say you’ve heard this one before
I’m hard to please sometimes
I’m hard to please sometimes
And while you’re offering a handshake to a goddamn amputee
I feel my phantom heart is scratching in a train-wreck memory
Please don’t try to cure me with on rectifying glance
I’m hard to understand sometimes
I’m hard to understand sometimes
Honey come with me
It’s just you and me
Baby believe it’s
As simple as can be
I will be the jail that sets you free
“Your Anchor”
She said baby you’re my gold
I said no babe, just your banker
She said baby you’re my chains
I said no hun I’m your anchor
I said baby you’re my wings
She said no babe, you’re a fish
I said baby you’re my dream
She said no hun, just your wish
She said baby you’re my river
I said no hun, I’m your drain
She said baby you’re my color
I said no babe I’m your stain
I said baby you’re my diamond
She said no babe, just your pick
I said baby you are magic
She said no jun, just a trick
She said baby you can see me
I said baby i just sense
She said baby you’re my castle
I said no hun, I’m your fence
I said baby you’re my lover
She said no hun, just your maid
I said baby i adore you
She said no babe, you’re just afraid
1 Like
Love this, but especially the intro to it.
‘Eggs and Sausage’ - Tom Waits
Nighthawks at the diner
Of Emma’s 49er, there’s a rendezvous
Of strangers around the coffee urn tonight
All the gypsy hacks, the insomniacs
Now the paper’s been read
Now the waitress said
Eggs and sausage and a side of toast
Coffee and a roll, hash browns over easy
Chile in a bowl with burgers and fries
What kind of pie?
In a graveyard charade, a late shift masquerade
Two for a quarter, dime for a dance
With Woolworth rhinestone diamond
Earrings, and a sideway’s glance
And now the register rings
And now the waitress sings
(chorus) the classified section offered no direction
It’s a cold caffeine in a nicotine cloud
Now the touch of your fingers
Lingers burning in my memory
I’ve been 86ed from your scheme
I’m in a melodramatic nocturnal scene
I’m a refugee from a disconcerted affair
As the lead pipe morning falls
And the waitress calls
(chorus)
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‘Miss Marlene’ - Donald Fagen
Back in double-o-seven
Miss M was queen
She could roll like a pro rolls
When she was seventeen
Whether straight or hammered
She was the best in town
When she release the red ball
All the pins fall down
Can’t you hear the balls rumble?
Can’t you hear the balls rumble?
Miss Marlene
We’re still bowling
Every Saturday night
Saturday night
Your move to the lane, child
Played on my heartstrings
With the long skinny legs, child
And your hoop earrings
When the stakes are sky-high
That’s when you’d always shine
The ball would ride a moonbeam
Down the inside line
Can’t you hear the balls rumble?
Can’t you hear the balls rumble?
Miss Marlene
We’re still bowling
Every Saturday night
Saturday night
And then, one night
Something came apart
You were throwin’ back hurricanes
And we knew someone
Had played with your heart
You ran into the dark street
At University Place
The cab came up so fast that
We saw your laughin’ face
Can’t you hear the balls rumble?
Can’t you hear the balls rumble?
Miss Marlene
We’re still bowling
Every Saturday night
Sometimes on a league night
I catch her scent again
Her hand guiding my hand
We drop the seven-ten
Can’t you hear the balls rumble?
Can’t you hear the balls rumble
Miss Marlene
We’re still bowling
Every Saturday night
Saturday night
Every Saturday night
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‘Breakfast Ethereal’ - Ron Sexsmith
In my life as a child I wore the stripes
Playing inside right
As the Captain of the St Catharines Imperials
With dumb luck running wild we won the cup
Waking up every day
To love and a bowl of breakfast ethereal
From a soft focus world where tomorrow seemed bright
To the black and the white
TV light of some dreadful soap opera serial
From a scrape to a scar we left little doubt
From the inside out
We were healing ourselves with breakfast ethereal
What have we lost in our mad
Pursuit of what we already had
When was the last time we saw the sun rise
And what did we gain in return
But a lesson that we’d already learned
Remember that first time we saw with our own eyes
We saw with our own eyes
As the sorrowful leaves fall at our feet
All the sadness is sweet
And the trees in the sunlight are seemingly spiritual
I’d love to wake up again and imagine it all
Through the mind of a child
As the day runs wild with breakfast ethereal
Breakfast ethereal
Breakfast ethereal
Breakfast ethereal
Breakfast ethereal
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Just been listening to Misplaced Childhood while I’m out walking and pondering the lyrics…
I saw a war widow in a laundrette, washing the memories from her husband’s clothes. She had medals, pinned to her threadbare greatcoat. A lump in her throat, with cemetery eyes.
…doesn’t get better than that. ‘Cemetery eyes’. We’ve all been there and know that look. The visual imagery is profound.
2 Likes
Sounds also good IMHO!
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‘Diamonds on My Windshield’ - Tom Waits
Well these diamonds on my windshield
And these tears from heaven
Well I’m pulling into town on the Interstate
I got a steel train in the rain
And the wind bites my cheek through the wing
And it’s these late nights and this freeway flying
It always makes me sing
There’s a Duster tryin’ to change my tune
He’s pulling up fast on the right
Rolling restlessly by a twenty-four hour moon
And a Wisconsin hiker with a cue-ball head
He’s wishing he was home in a Wiscosin bed
But there’s fifteen feet of snow in the East
Colder then a welldigger’s ass
And it’s colder than a welldigger’s ass
Oceanside it ends the ride with San Clemente coming up
Those Sunday desperadoes slip by and cruise with a dry back
And the orange drive-in the neon billin’
And the theatre’s fillin’ to the brim
With slave girls and a hot spurn bucket full of sin
Metropolitan area with interchange and connections
Fly-by-nights from Riverside
And out of state plates running a little late
But the sailors jockey for the fast lane
So 101 don’t miss it
There’s rolling hills and concrete fields
And the broken line’s on your mind
The eights go east and the fives go north
And the merging nexus back and forth
You see your sign, cross the line, signalling with a blink
And the radio’s gone off the air
Gives you time to think
And you hear the rumble
As you fumble for a cigarette
And blazing through this midnight jungle
Remember someone that you met
And one more block, the engine talks
Whispers home at last
It whispers home at last
Whispers home at last
It whispers home at last
Whispers home at last
And there are diamonds on my windshield
And these tears from heaven
Well I’m pulling into town on the Interstate
I got me a steel train in the rain
And the wind bites my cheek through the wing
Late nights and freeway flying
Always makes me sing
It always makes me sing
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Seem to post a lot of Waits lyrics on this thread, but his poetry blows me away.
“Nighthawk Postcards (From Easy Street)” - Tom Waits
Yeah, you check out the street and it looks like there’s kind of a
Kind of a blur drizzle down the plate glass
And as a neon swizzle stick is stirring up the sultry night air
Looks like a yellow biscuit of a buttery cue ball moon
Rolling maverick across an obsidian sky
And as the buses go groaning and wheezing
Down on the corner I’m freezing
On a restless boulevard at a midnight road
I’m across town from Easy Street
With the tight knots of moviegoers and out-of-towners on the stroll
The buildings towering high above lit like dominoes or black dice
Used car salesmen dressed up in Purina checkerboard slacks
And Foster Grant wraparounds
Pacing in front of Rainbow, Earl Scheib, thirty-nine ninety-five merchandise.
Like barkers at a shooting gallery
They throw out a Texas Guinan routine:
‘Hello sucker, we like your money, just as well as anybody else’s here
Come on over here now…
Let me put the cut back in your strut and the glide back in your stride
Now climb aboard a customs Oldsmobile, let me take you for a ride’
Or they give you that P. T. Barnum bit:
‘There’s a sucker born every minute!’
‘You just happened to be coming along at the right time, you know
Come over here now’
And you know, all the harlequin sailors are on the stroll
In search of like new new paint
And decent factory air and AM-FM dreams.
Yeah, and all the piss yellow gypsy cabs
They’re stacked up in the taxi zones
And they’re waiting like pinball machines
To be ticking off a joyride to a magical place
Like Truckers Welcome diners
With dirt lots full of Peterbilts and Kenworths and Jimmies and the like
They’re hi-balling with bankrupt brakes
Man, they’re overdriven and they’re underpaid
They’re overfed, and they’re a day late and a dollar short
But Christ, I got my lips around a bottle
And I got my foot on the throttle and I’m standing on the corner
Standing on the corner like a just got in town Jasper
I’m on a street corner with a gasper
Looking for some kind of a Cheshire billboard grin
Stroking a goateed chin
Using parking meters as walking sticks
Yeah, on the inebriated stroll
With my eyelids propped open at half mast
But you know, over at “Chubb’s Pool and Snooker”
Well, it was a nickel after two, yeah, it was a nickel after two
And in the cobalt steel blue dream smoke
Why, it was the radio that groaned out the hit parade
And the chalk squeaked and the floorboards creaked
And an Olympia sign winked through a torn yellow shade
Old Jack Chance himself leaning up against a Wurlitzer
Man, he was eyeballing out a five ball combination shot
Impossible you say? Hard to believe?
Perhaps out of the realm of possibility?
Naaaah
Cause he be stretching out long tawny fingers
Out across a cool green felt in a provocative golden gate
He got a full table railshot that’s no sweat
And I leaned up against my banister
I wandered over to the Wurlitzer and I punched A2
I was looking for maybe ‘Wine Wine Wine’ by the Nightcaps
Starring Chuck E. Weiss
Or maybe… maybe a little something called “High Blood Pressure”
By George (Crying in the Streets) Perkins, no dice
'Cause that’s life, that’s what all the people say
You’re riding high in April, you’re seriously shot down in May
I know I’m gonna change that tune
When I’m standing underneath a buttery moon
That’s all melted off to one side
Parkay
It was just about that time that the sun came crawling yellow
Out of a manhole at the foot of twenty-third Street
And a Dracula moon in a black disguise
Was making its way back to its pre-paid room at the St. Moritz Hotel
And the El train tumbled across the trestles
And it sounded like the ghost of Gene Krupa
With an overhead cam and glasspaks
And the whispering brushes of wet radials on wet pavement
Shhhhhhhhhhhhsh
With a traffic jam session on Belmont tonight
And the rhapsody of the pending evening
I leaned up against my banister
And I’ve been looking for some kind of an emotional investment
With romantic dividends
Yeah, kind of a physical negotiation is underway
As I attempt to consolidate all my missed weekly rendezvous
Into one low monthly payment, through the nose
With romantic residuals and legs akimbo
But the chances are that more than likely
Standing underneath a moon holding water
I’ll probably be held over for another
Smashed weekend
Thank you
“Young Conservatives” - The Kinks
Have you heard the word?
The revolution’s over.
Now the anger’s disappeared
And the rebels are much older.
And the schools and universities
Are turning out a brand new breed of young conservatives.
Get yourself a brand new scene,
Keep your collars white and clean,
It’s time to come and join the young conservatives.
Revolution used to be cool,
But now it’s out of fashion.
Politeness is the rule,
And not an angry young man’s passion.
And they’ve used up all the alternatives,
And they’re rushing down the street to join
The young conservatives.
Conservatives.
Ban the bomb, oh how contemporary,
In your parents’ car.
Another chip off the block, is that all that you are?
Look at all the young conservatives
Hanging out in the bars.
It’s got to stop before it goes to fa-fa-fa-fa-far.
Get yourself some new attire,
Set your sights a little higher,
You’re going to join the young conservatives.
The establishment is winning,
Now the battle’s nearly won.
The rebels are conforming,
See the father, now the sons.
All the urgency and energy
Have turned into complacency,
Now the schools and universities are turning out a
Brand new breed of young conservatives.
Conservatives.
Rebel, rebel found a cause,
Now it’s Hampstead not East End
And now he’s such a well respected man.
The only action that you see
Is in the Sunday Times.
Content to sit in bed and read between the lines.
Rebel, rebel join the young conservatives.
Be a devil join the new conservatives.
It’s a victory for order
Now they’ve beaten everyone.
The rebels are too old now,
And the young just want to be young.
All the urgency and energy
Have turned into complacency.
Now the schools and universities are turning out a
Brand new breed of young conservatives.
Conservatives.
Look at all the young conservatives.
Look at all the young conservatives.
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‘I Let The Sun Go Down’ - Elvis Costello
Whenever I’m in the tightest corner
Whenever I feel forlorn
I think of the isle where
I was born
And the duty to which I’ve sworn
But I woke up in a nightmare
With a Union Jack and half
A crown
John Bull got caught with his
Pants down, again
That’s inviting sundown
It’s time to do or die
It’s time to say “Good-bye”
'Cause I’m the man who lost the
British Empire
Yes I’m the one, I let the
Sun go down
Don’t let the shadows lengthen
And cover my good intentions
They say that darkness brings
The right time
But it’s also time for tears
I’m so sorry and sincere
Ahead of me a brilliant career
Now I’m going nowhere
It’s time to do or die
It’s time to say “Good-bye”
'Cause I’m the man who lost the
British Empire
Yes I’m the one I let the
Sun go down
Stay awhile
Delay the night
I’m too young for twilight
They’d tell the sun to hesitate
That’s when Britain was Great
Now that the lights are flickering
My pulse is quickening
All over the world the lamps
Will dim
And never be seen again
The balloon’s gone up
The night descends
As they lower the flag on
No-man’s land
They’ll take you down
A peg or two
This is the bitter end
I walk into darkness
It’s time to do or die
It’s time to say “Good-bye”
'Cause I’m the man who lost the
British Empire
Yes I’m the one, I let the
Sun go down
I let the sun go down
Don’t let the sun go down
I let the sun go down