Contents
1. 1989
2. All the Rage
3. Bourbon and Blood
4. Alameda
5. Overthrow
6. Prize in the Maze
7. All We Were Asking
8. Same Fork
9. Resistance
10. In the Night
11. Bitterhanded
1989 (mp3)
Cold brick building on the plain
Where I’m stuck
My head is on each train
Bound for luck
I wore things I can not tell
To hide the shame
Hair coated in a gel
To look the same
For all the time we wasted playing Wasteland
And my pitiful attempt at making handstands
It’s symptomatic
Seems so tragic
Force of habit
Seems like magic
Time ain’t the glass; it’s the sand...
The highway gave us such relief
Friday night
A vestige of belief
In unmanned flight.
Sifting through the rubble of salvation
In the afternoon of my last spring vacation
It’s so outrageous
The devil made us
The blood’s contagious
Jesus save us
The game I couldn’t lose but barely won.
My smile falters in the lens
But makes the grade
The things my face pretends
Before it finally fades
Ride the wind out on your back
Come under fierce attack
And close the flanks
Lift up some of your best ranks
And push them to the front
And wait it out
Hope that they cannot rout
Your main force, the one that keeps retreating,
The one that was your guard.
Now everything you’ve said is fine
But in 1989
I learned: everything that don’t bend
Is broken in the end.
All the Rage (mp3)
VERSE
Your hand runs up her leg
While the organ plays
You know what she owes
But not how she pays
The laziest dog on the block
Is chasing you down
Maybe you’re just not welcome
In this town.
CHORUS
Back when love was all the rage
When people lived to middle age
Back when you could see the sky
When people lived before they died
Back when your light fell on my page
Back when love was all the rage
Straighten out the wheel
Take a new turn
But make your decision fast
‘Fore the celluloid burns
Beads of sweat on her neck
While you bleed
There ain’t no more reason, son,
To go where she lead
BRIDGE
In turn
This illusion meant more
Than you or I could ever notice...
And burn
Her into my pores
So I won’t rise above this
VERSE
You sweep up and over the hill
Find only stones
Each one like a marker
Of the girl’s bones.
CHORUS
Back when love was all the rage
When people lived to middle age
Back when you could see the sky
When you could live before you died
When the past had lost its antecedents
In this old hotel
Back when your light lit up my stage
Back when love was all the rage
Back when love was all the rage...
Bourbon and Blood
Meet me in Austin, Texas
At the old Showdown saloon
We’ll drink right through the past
It’s what we always do
And the city lights are buzzing with the heat of the blues.
Call up Old Man Ray
If that son of a bitch ain’t dead
We’ll drink a tank of whisky
And let the smoke run through my head
And I won’t ever want to go to bed.
Just like the lie of a fresh start
Just like the dream where I’m good
The only thing in my heart now
Is bourbon and blood
Bourbon and blood
I’ll stand outside in the darkness
In the warm Texas rain
I’m looking at the city lights
And I’m listening to a train
Running down to the land where the Rio Grande lay.
CHORUS
Meet me in Austin, Texas
At the old Showdown saloon
We’ll drink a fifth and sniff our fists
And piss on our old school
While the city lights are howling with the rhythm and blues.
CHORUS
Alameda
It was in 1994
That I decided to get some more
And set out
On the road
Those were the days
When I hardly knew
A second chance
A secret clue
To let me
Crack the code
I met her in a bar downstairs
From the hotel room where I tried to care
About patching up my life...
Eleven drinks between us down
And she is showing me the town
And asking about my wife...
In Alameda
Alameda
I don’t see her anymore.
I don’t see her
I don’t see her
In Alameda at all.
Her fire burned like a hundred suns.
Her legs could crush sixteen tons
And rest your weary head
She always said she could not stay
But I never listened anyway
Until my empty bed
CHORUS
I’d never say that it was love
But she was all I was thinking of
When I took my final drink
Her place was on 2nd Avenue
Where I park my car and fight the flu
I’ll go home soon I think.
CHORUS
Overthrow
We look at the moon
I just see two but I’ll see more soon
I’m running slow
I guess it’s time to overthrow
The space between my eyes
Sara’s on the warpath looking for lies
My glass starts to glow
I guess it’s time to overthrow
I was tasting
While she amazed them
Then she made a scene until we chased them
I was lost there
She did not care
I chewed off my leg just to escape the snare
Dave is on the bar
Greg is throwing up next to his car
I put on a show
I guess it’s time to overthrow
I was flying
We were trying
To get outside and understand the tie-in
The sky has turned gray
I watch her hips sway
I never could have made her happy anyway.
You know I know
Where to stop but not where to go
That’s still something though.
I guess it’s time...
Prize in the Maze
Woke up on Sunday morning
I don’t know why
I had no clearer warning
Or plan to try
They might think that in the end
I had gone around the bend
But I could still get high
Leaves upon the trees
Gone for a while
Green as I recall
Was their last style
Clouds run right through sinking ships
To borrow rain for future trips
And jump turnstiles
CHORUS
Her best vibrations with
My mad dog sensations
Gave hope to our days
A prize in the maze
Of this life
The coffee there was useless
But came with her smile
You couldn’t eat the food
But I’d walk for miles
From the false end of the town
To watch her dark hair falling down
And swat the flies
Now in the morning when I wake
I put the real on with my fake
For my best sake
Her hips’ best position
And my doomed sense of mission
Gave light to the haze
A prize in the maze
Of this life
All We Were Asking
Maybe these days were numbered
In ways I can’t count.
I had the right stuff
Just an insufficient amount.
I wish I could harden up I wish I could automate
The tasks in this life
That make up our common fate.
And if I save my hope
I hope I can find the account.
Maybe these armaments were mine when I got uptight
The friends who’ve abandoned me don’t keep me up at night
If I had meant to do differently then
I still would have fucked up again and again
Vision is useless from such a precipitous height
All they were saying was try
And all I was asking was why
Maybe our best days
Were never what they seem
Maybe the truth is a thing
We can't reason or dream
If I tried hard enough
If you had noticed me
If I’d gone bankrupt in a
Robust economy
If I had mastered a little grandiose scheme.
Crawl on the baseboards just to get by
And all we were asking was why...
We have so much promise we
Flatly refused
Flattered as we were, we couldn’t help but feeling used.
If we just concentrate
On changing the bitter end
If we just burn down
The fences we couldn’t mend
Do you think in the end
We will be completely excused?
While they were handing us the sky
All we were asking was why.
Same Fork
The bottles eat my plastic
The pills eat my cash
The figures in the hall outside
Are refusing me
And abusing me
Headlightsnakes in the mirror
Cross my eyelids through the night
Ice cracks in the yellowed sink
It’s frightening
Like lightning
CHORUS
In the end
Sometimes you like to pretend
There’s a road that will not bend
Drive it for a while and then
You’d come
To that same fork in the road
Carrying that same heavy load
And this time you would choose
The better one.
Don’t tell me it’s over
Don’t look me in the eye
Your ring on the souvenir
That you gave me
When you last forgave me
CHORUS
BRIDGE
See there
Underneath the ledge
They lean into each other
I don’t know why I bother
When you
Don’t know if you should run
Or if you should fight
Your head can’t stay upright
And so I’ll drink another day
And erode everything I’d say
CHORUS
Resistance (mp3)
I watch the rain spill on the floor
I’m walking down to the corner store
The soap-skinned man at the counter understands
I feel safe when the rain has dried
I think of things I haven’t tried
The planes uncurl their feet and then they land
My drink it keeps me company
Now that the rain’s abandoned me
In my head I see the things I’ll never be
Because I have no resistance
Resistance
Resistance to you, baby
No resistance to anything anymore.
There were days when I was sure
That I could find a magic cure
To get some resolve into my head
I tried the drink, I tried the smoke
I tried Jesus, but that’s a joke
Maybe I’ll be stronger when I’m dead.
She talks and it lights up the world
Her boyfriend’s gone, her hair is curled
But please, don’t smile at me, girl
CHORUS
I glance at her when she arrives
I know that tonight I won’t drive
When the thunder joins the chorus of the crowd
And the light it falls upon her face
She sees the world I can’t erase
As the music goes from haunting up to loud
In a downtown bar to an unknown song
She says we know it would be wrong
But I know I’m not the one who will be strong
CHORUS
In the Night (mp3)
I always keep my boots on hand
Through the night
You never know when you’ll get the call
From the light
It’s best to dream, that much I know
Of how it was so long ago
When our parents’ gods were trackfing stars
In mid-flight
Dreams aside, I never much liked
The dawn
My neighbors find new shit to
Put on their lawns
Not sure what I’m doing here
Far from home so close to fear
Maybe one more morning until I wake
To be gone.
Why was I not taken
With the rest?
I paid the price;
I took every test.
Please don’t keep me waiting
Another day
Come back to me
Come take me away
Ignorance upon these people
Like fog
They’ve grown so used to living their lives
Like dogs
Knock me down so I can’t see
The dealings of humanity
Or my so-called wife, lying there
Like a log.
Why was I forsaken
Left to die
Alone outside the walls
Of on high.
Please don’t keep me waiting
Another day
Come back to me
Come take me away
Never was too studious
Never too bright
But I always got behind my friends
In a fight
All the good that does me now
Picture perfect end somehow
Lies right outside mocking me
In the night.
Bitterhanded (mp3)
I’m bitterhanded yeah but it will go
I don’t remember now what I should know
Used to think I’d set her free
Tried to think of something else but me.
What are these days I string along
What are the notes left in this song
Where is the right that I can wrong?
I’m bitterhanded yeah but it will fade
You can’t lose a game you have not played.
She strokes her skin with her perfume
Masturbates in the silence of her room.
She said I won’t do what I am told.
She said I won’t falter, I won’t fold.
She said I can’t give you what I already sold.
Nothing’s wrong when nothing’s good
I never feel quite like I should
I’m bitterhanded now but it will pass
The grayest things in life is all that lasts
The sky is black over the plain
Used to side with Abel but now with Cain
All of these thoughts will go someday
Most of these plans will go astray
But be sure of what I’ll say…
I’m bitterhanded yeah…
I’m bitterhanded