The Jukebox

I was just kinda bein' a wankah -- those are Czech lyrics from avant-folk/classical violinist and singer Ivana Bittova. It's frustrating, because I've been told they are cutting, witty, and full of vivid social commentary, but even the "English" version of her website doesn't translate them. And I think having a clear idea of what she is singing about would enable me to outright like her and not merely find her "interesting." But I can't. So phooey.

[Edited 2 times. Most recently by on May 14, 2005 at 10:20am.]

Excellent Video!

What's worse than Blood on the Tracks?

"Come On Eileen."

It was Frosti's fault.  His real name is similar to one of the band members, and he was bragging about being in a band.  :)

Sarah's the kind of girl who's 3 feet tall, but she's built like an Amazon woman.
Sarah's the kind of girl who's 3 feet tall, but she's built like an Amazon woman.
And all the boys think she's pretty.
And all the girls think she dresses swell.
And all the teachers think that she's the smartest one in class,
But I think- she oughta go to Hell

Sarah's the kind of girl who pierced her ears years before anybody else.
Sarah's the kind of girl who pierced her ears years before anybody else.
And all the mothers say her mother was-
And all the mothers say her mother was an slut
And we couldn't pierce our ears till we turned 12 no matter what
And I think,
Well you know what I think, i loved her

1000 Sarahs in my head [1000 Sarahs in my head]
1000 Sarahs circling me in my bed.
I thought I got rid of her but she multiplied instead.
1000 Sarahs, 1000 Sarahs
1000 Sarahs, 1000 Sarahs

I like her, I like her,
I like her and shes gorgeous
I like her, I like her,
I like her and shes gorgeous

1000 Sarahs in my head [1000 Sarahs in my head]
1000 Sarahs circling me in my bed.
I thought I got rid of her but she multiplied instead.
1000 Sarahs, 1000 Sarahs
1000 Sarahs, 1000 Sarahs

1000 Sarahs [1000 Sarahs, 1000 Sarahs]
1000 Sarahs [1000 Sarahs]
1000 Sarahs [1000 Sarahs, 1000 Sarahs]
1000 Sarahs

[Edited by on May 17, 2005 at 11:09am.]

yo mama is so fat
how fat is she?
yo mama is so big and fat that she can get busy
with 22 burritos when times is rough
I seen her in the back of Taco Bell with handcuffs
the sad fact
yo mama smokes crack
she got a burnin' yearnin and there's no turnin' back
her knuckles drag down to the ground when she walks
spit come out that bitch mouth when she talks
sittin’ on a mountaintop tootin’ on a flizute
ridin’ on a horse drinkin’ whiskey out of bizoots
she's got the wings and teeth of an African bat
her middle name is Mud Bone and on top of all that

yo mama's got a glass eye with a fish in it
yo mama's got a glass eye with a fish in it
yo mama's got a glass eye with a fish in it
yo mama's got a glass eye with a fish in it
yo mama, yo mama, yo mama

yo mama looks like she's been in a car with some rocks
with some big butt stones suckin' dirt out of socks
held up the ice cream truck with her sleeve
got it drivin’ back up she's torn and suckin’
she's rhymin' root and toot she stole my loot and my suit
she may have the muscles but no, she's not pretty
oh what a pity
got the glass titty filled up with kool-aid just for the kiddies
on the clip butt naked tootin' on a flute
ridin' on a horsie drinkin’ whiskey out of boots
she's got the teeth and the wings of an African bat
her middle name is Mud Bone and on top of all that

yo mama's got a wooden leg that's real real thick
yo mama's got a wooden leg that's real real thick
yo mama's got a wooden leg that's real real thick
yo mama's got a wooden leg that's real real thick
yo mama, yo mama, yo mama

I'm thinkin’ about your mother doing funky things
I went to your house and she licked me on the cheek
I said excuse me lady but I remember seeing you at the Palladium
way back in September
cause you was beatboxin’ Lou Rawls
in the bright red boxer drawers
you said your moms was pretty and young
but she's old as dirt and got hair on her tongue
your mom
your mom
she uses roots
I saw her ridin’ a horsie drinkin’ whiskey out of boots
she's got the wings and teeth of an African bat
her middle name is Mud Bone and on top of all that

yo mama's got a pegleg with a kickstand
yo mama's got a pegleg with a kickstand
yo mama's got a pegleg with a kickstand
I said yo mama's got a pegleg with a kickstand
yo mama, yo mama, yo mama

yo mama is so fat
how fat is she?
we rolled up her back to get some burgers from Wendy's
and her skates went flat I got stuck in her butt crack
they thought I was lost but I was caught by the g-strap
heaven forbid a giant fart would give way cause
that would blow me round the world in a day
we drove into the drive-in and she didn't have to pay
cause we dressed her up to look just like a Chevrolet
sittin’ on the mountaintop tootin’ on a flizute
ridin’ on a horse drinkin’ whiskey out of bizoots
with the wings and the teeth of an African bat
her middle name is Mud Bone and on top of all that

yo mama's got an afro with a chin strap
yo mama's got an afro with a chin strap
yo mama's got an afro with a chin strap
I said yo mama's got an afro with a chin strap
yo mama, yo mama, yo mama

yo mama's got snakeskin teeth
yo mama was makin’ sex threats to Ricky Bell
yo mama be walkin’ down Sunset with 99 cent sign on her back
yo mama's a sell out nigga
yo mama's a pop tune
yo mama's glasses are so thick she can look into a map and see people wavin’ at her
yo mama be fishin’ with a hook and reel in the frozen foods section
yo mama got playdough teeth
yo mama be eating Daytons like now and laters and shit
yo mama was an extra on the Simpsons and shit
yo mama is so fat you can't see her legs
it just looks like she's glidin’ across the floor

Childhood living is easy to do
The things you wanted I bought them for you
Graceless lady you know who I am
You know I can’t let you slide through my hands

Wild horses couldn’t drag me away
Wild, wild horses, couldn’t drag me away

I watched you suffer a dull aching pain
Now you decided to show me the same
No sweeping exits or offstage lines
Could make me feel bitter or treat you unkind

Wild horses couldn’t drag me away
Wild, wild horses, couldn’t drag me away

I know I dreamed you a sin and a lie
I have my freedom but I don’t have much time
Faith has been broken, tears must be cried
Let’s do some living after we die

Wild horses couldn’t drag me away
Wild, wild horses, we’ll ride them some day

Wild horses couldn’t drag me away
Wild, wild horses, we’ll ride them some day

doesn't Patti Smith cover that one?

that was the song we danced to at our wedding.

you're psychic!

or perhaps I've mentioned it before.  I do love that song.

Great info, dude - thanks!
JB - Fun song for a wedding dance. :)

Sympathy for the Devil is still my favorite Stones' song - and it's up there on my top 100 from anybody.

Crossroads, seem to come and go, yeah.
The gypsy flies from coast to coast

Knowing many, loving none,
Bearing sorrow havin’ fun,
But back home he’ll always run
To sweet melissa... mmm...

Freight train, each car looks the same, all the same.
And no one knows the gypsy’s name

No one hears his lonely sigh,
There are no blankets where he lies.
In all his deepest dreams the gypsy flies
With sweet melissa... mmm...

Again the morning’s come,
Again he’s on the run,
Sunbeams shining through his hair,
Appearing not to have a care.
Well, pick up your gear and gypsy roll on, roll on.

Crossroads, will you ever let him go? (lord, lord)
Will you hide the dead man’s ghost,
Or will he lie, beneath the clay,
Or will his spirit roll away?

But I know that he won’t stay without melissa.

Yes I know that he won’t stay without melissa.

that song always makes me cry.

you need to sprawl it on out to 2112.  and put Rush on there.

I do like your list!

For the most part, I find myself agreeing - but ABBA? A little guilty pleasure? :)

So much art, so little time. What's that service run you, dude? I could do with one of them myself...

And Jen, he could always borrow or burn the Rush - and the Yes - from me. :)

Norah Jones
Feels Like Home
04/03/09

Norah Jones
Feels Like Home
11/03/09

So your list only goes to Aug 2010 and not Sept....unless of course you really want two copies of Feels Like Hometo be delivered in 2010.

It must be nice to be so steady, must be nice to be so firm
it must be nice to never move off of the mark

It must be nice to be dependable and never let anyone down
it must be great to be all the things you're not
It must be great to be all the things that I'm not

I see you in the hospital your humor is intact
I'm embarrassed by the strength I seem to lack

If I was in your shoes, so strange that I am not
I'd fold up in a minute and a half
I'd fold up in a minute and a half

And I didn't get a chance to say goodbye
No - I didn't get a chance to say goodbye

It must be nice to be normal it must be nice to be so cold
it must be nice not to have to go up or down

But me I'm all emotional no matter how I try
you're gone and I'm still here alive
You're gone and I'm still here alive

And I didn't get a chance to say goodbye
No - I didn't get a chance to say goodbye

There are things we say we wish we knew and in fact we never do
but I'd wish I'd known that you were going to die

Then I wouldn't feel so stupid, such a fool that I didn't call
and I didn't get a chance to say goodbye
I didn't get a chance to say goodbye

No there's no logic to this - who's picked to stay or go
if you think too hard it only makes you mad

But your optimism made me think you really had it beat
so I didn't get a chance to say goodbye
I didn't get a chance to say goodbye
No - I didn't get a chance to say goodbye
I didn't get a chance to say goodbye

:(

You know that one, Clue Master?

It looked familiar but not sure.  I'll need to DL it tonight.  Lou Reed has some good stuff.

It's from Magic and Loss. Not uplifting, exactly - but an interesting study into death and life. I like New York better.

We who have so much to you who have so little
To you who don't have anything at all
We who have so much more than any one man does need
And you who don't have anything at all
Does anybody need another million dollar movie
Does anybody need another million dollar star
Does anybody need to be told over and over
Spitting in the wind comes back at you twice as hard

Strawman, going straight to the devil
Strawman, going straight to hell
Strawman, going straight to the devil

Strawman
Strawman
Strawman
Strawman, yes

Does anyone really need a billion dollar rocket
Does anyone need a 60,000 dollar car
Does anyone need another president
Or the sins of Swaggart parts 6, 7, 8 and 9,
Does anyone need yet another politician
Caught with his pants down and money sticking in his hole
Does anyone need another racist preacher
Spittin' in the wind can only do you harm

Strawman, going straight to the devil
Strawman, going straight to hell
Strawman, going straight to the devil

Strawman
Strawman
Strawman
Strawman

Does anyone need another faulty shuttle
Blasting off to the moon, Venus or Mars
Does anybody need another self-righteous rock singer
Whose nose he says has led him straight to god
Does anyone need yet another blank skyscraper
If you're like me I'm sure a minor miracle will do
A flaming sword or maybe a gold ark floating up the Hudson
When you spit in the wind it comes right back at you

Strawman, going straight to the devil
Strawman, going straight to hell
Strawman, going to the devil

Strawman, strawman
Strawman
Strawman
Strawman

There's blacks with knives and whites with clubs
Fighting in Howard Beach
There's no such thing as human rights
When you walk the N.Y. streets
A cop was shot in the head
by a 10 year old kid named Buddah
in Central Park last week
The fathers and daughters
are lined up by the coffins
By the Statue of Bigotry

You better hold on
Something's happening here
You better hold on
Well I'll meet you in Tompkins Square

The dopers sent a message
to the cops last weekend
They shot him in the car where he sat
And Eleanor Bumpers and Michael Stewart
Must have appreciated that
There's a rampaging rage
rising up like a plague
Of bloody vials washing up on the beach
Itll take more than the angels
or iron Mike Tyson
To heal this bloody breach, hey, hey

You better hold on
Something's happening here
You better hold on
I'm gonna meet you in Tompkins Square

A junkie ran down a lady
a pregnant dancer
She'll never dance but the baby was saved
He shot up some china white
and nodded off at the wheel
And he doesn't remember a thing
They shot that old lady
'cause they thought she was a witness
to a crime she didn't even see
Whose home is the home
of the brave
By the Statue of Bigotry, hey

You better hold on
Something's happening here
You better hold on
Meet you in Tompkins Square

You got a black .38 and a gravity knife
'cause you still have to ride the train
There's the smelly essence of N.Y. down there
But you ain't no Bernard Goetz
There's no mafia lawyer
to fight in your corner
For that 15 minutes of fame
The have and the have nots
are bleeding in the tub
That's New York's future, not mine.

You better hold on
Something's happening here
You better hold on
Something's happening here.

Junior High School Dream

Ordered a drink when the band started to play
Music was tedious, the band just ok
But then I spotted a reason to stay
The scenery improved after they took the stage

I'm a sucker for a Midwestern guy
Who plays guitar and wears his hair in his eyes
I'm embarassed to admit it but my
Taste in men hasn't changed since junior high

He's my junior high school dream
I'm 37 going on 13
He's my junior high school dream

A certain type tends to capture my eye
Rust belt delinquent circa '79
Prominent sideburns and fitted Levis
Boots could be construction or maybe by Frye

It all sounds silly but I swear that it's true
Being a musician makes guys seem much more cute
Plus it gives you something to do
When the music gets too dull you can enjoy the view

He look like the kind of guy
That would have asked if I wanted a ride
Would I keep walking or agree to go?
Depends on if he drove a Nova or a GTO

I'd be willing to wager a bet
Your date has the same thoughts in her head
Me and my girldfriends have always said
Although we're married we ain't dead yet

I'm a sucker for a Midwestern guy
Who plays guitar and wears his hair in his eyes
I'm embarrassed to admit it but my
Taste in men hasn't changed since junior high

-- Leah Archibald of Wide Right

(make of it what you will, but her description pretty much matches the two guys in the band, so...)

The Bear

1
In late winter
I sometimes glimpse bits of steam
coming up from
some fault in the old snow
and bend close and see it is lung-colored
and put down my nose
and know
the chilly, enduring odor of bear.

2
I take a wolf's rib and whittle
it sharp at both ends
and coil it up
and freeze it in blubber and place it out
on the fairway of the bears.

And when it has vanished
I move out on the bear tracks,
roaming in circles
until I come to the first, tentative, dark
splash on the earth.

And I set out
running, following the splashes
of blood wandering over the world.
At the cut, gashed resting places
I stop and rest,
at the crawl-marks
where he lay out on his belly
to overpass some stretch of bauchy ice
I lie out
dragging myself forward with bear-knives in my fists.

3
On the third day I begin to starve,
at nightfall I bend down as I knew I would
at a turd sopped in blood,
and hesitate, and pick it up,
and thrust it in my mouth, and gnash it down,
and rise
and go on running.

4
On the seventh day,
living by now on bear blood alone,
I can see his upturned carcass far out ahead, a scraggled,
steamy hulk,
the heavy fur riffling in the wind.

I come up to him
and stare at the narrow-spaced, petty eyes,
the dismayed
face laid back on the shoulder, the nostrils
flared, catching
perhaps the first taint of me as he
died.

I hack
a ravine in his thigh, and eat and drink,
and tear him down his whole length
and open him and climb in
and close him up after me, against the wind,
and sleep.

5
And dream
of lumbering flatfooted
over the tundra,
stabbed twice from within,
splattering a trail behind me,
splattering it out no matter which way I lurch,
no matter which parabola of bear-transcendence,
which dance of solitude I attempt,
which gravity-clutched leap,
which trudge, which groan.

6
Until one day I totter and fall --
fall on this
stomach that has tried so hard to keep up,
to digest the blood as it leaked in,
to break up
and digest the bone itself: and now the breeze
blows over me, blows off
the hideous belches of ill-digested bear blood
and rotted stomach
and the ordinary, wretched odor of bear,

blows across
my sore, lolled tongue a song
or screech, until I think I must rise up
and dance. And I lie still.

7
I awaken I think. Marshlights
reappear, geese
come trailing again up the flyway.
In her ravine under old snow the dam-bear
lies, licking
lumps of smeared fur
and drizzly eyes into shapes
with her tongue. And one
hairy-soled trudge stuck out before me,
the next groaned out,
the next,
the next,
the rest of my days I spend
wandering: wondering
what, anyway,
was that sticky infusion, that rank flavor of blood, that
poetry, by which I lived?

from Body Rags, Galway Kinnell (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1967).

Punk poetry, I think.

Dear landlord,
Please don't put a price on my soul.
My burden is heavy,
My dreams are beyond control.
When that steamboat whistle blows,
I'm gonna give you all I got to give,
And I do hope you receive it well,
Dependin' on the way you feel that you live.

Dear landlord,
Please heed these words that I speak.
I know you've suffered much,
But in this you are not so unique.
All of us, at times, we might work too hard
To have it too fast and too much,
And anyone can fill his life up
With things he can see but he just cannot touch.

Dear landlord,
Please don't dismiss my case.
I'm not about to argue,
I'm not about to move to no other place.
Now, each of us has his own special gift
And you know this was meant to be true,
And if you don't underestimate me,
I won't underestimate you.

I'm just an aging drummer boy
And in the wars I used to play
And I've called the tune
To many a torching session
Now they say I am a war criminal
And I'm fading away
Father please hear my confession

I have legalised robbery
Called it belief
I have run with the money
I have hid like a thief
I have re-written history
With my armies of my crooks
Invented memories
I did burn all the books
And I can still hear his laughter
And I can still hear his song
The man's too big
The man's too strong

Well I have tried to be meek
And I have tried to be mild
But I spat like a woman
And I sulked like a child
I have lived behind walls
That have made me alone
Striven for peace
Which I never have known
And I can still hear his laughter
And I can still hear his song
The man's too big
The man's too strong

Well the sun rose on the courtyard
And they all did hear him say
You always was a Judas
But I got you anyway
You may have got your silver
But I swear upon my life
Your sister gave me diamonds
And I gave them to your wife
Oh Father please help me
For I have done wrong
The man's too big
The man's too strong

"Down to Zero"

(originally written and performed by Joan Armatrading -- currently enjoying an older-and-wiser-woman version by soul veteran Bettye LaVette)

Oh the feeling, when you're reeling
You step lightly thinking you're number onn
Down to zero with a word leaving, for another one
Now you won't put you're feet back on the ground
Down to the ground down to the ground
Down to the ground down to the ground

Brand new dandy, first class scene-stealer
Walks through the crowd and takes your man
Sends you rushing to the mirror
Brush your eyebrows and say
"There's more beauty in you than anyone"

Oh, remember who walked the warm sand beside you
Moored to your heel let the waves come rushing in
She took the worry from your head
But then again
She put trouble in your heart instead

And you fall
Down to the ground down to the ground
You'll know heartache
Still more crying when you're thinking of your mother's only son

Take to your bed
You say there's peace in sleep
But you dream of love instead
Oh, the heartache you'll find
Can bring more pain than a blistering sun

But oh when you fall
Oh when you fall
Fall at my door

Instrumental

Oh the feeling
when you're reeling
you step lightly thinking you're number one
Down to zero with a word
Leaving, for another one
Now you won't put you're feet back on the ground
Down to the ground down to the ground
Down to the ground down to the ground

You'll know heartache
Still more crying when you're thinking of your mother's only son
Take to your bed
You say there's peace in sleep
But you dream of love instead
But oh when you fall
Oh when you fall
Fall at my door

Very apropros.

Hells bells, it's got me logged in as Sparky again. Time to clean out my cookies....

yay!  where ya been, Frosti?