Favorite Lyrics

Cafe Society
21

This is Nirvana, so you have to sort of listen to the lyrics to get the full effect. They’re here.

I’m not like them, but I can pretend

I’m modestly obsessed with Kurt Cobain. From watching his interviews I imagine he feels (felt) like I often do: out of place; not quite like everyone else.

The sun is gone, but I have a light
The day is done, but I’m having fun
I think I’m dumb, or maybe I’m just happy

I was raised religiously, and the inverse relationship between wisdom and happiness is something I’m intimately familiar with. (Eccl 1:18: “For in much wisdom is much grief: and he that increaseth knowledge increaseth sorrow.”) Sometimes it’s hard to tell the difference between being dumb, and being happy.

My heart is broke, but I have some glue

My heart’s been broke a long time, but I’ve never had any glue.

*Help me inhale, and mend it with you
We’ll float around, and hang out on clouds
Then we’ll come down, and have a hangover
*

He knows the “glue” doesn’t really help anything, but sometimes a moment’s peace seems worth it.

Skin the sun
Fall asleep

“Skin the sun” is reference to Icarus.
“Fall asleep” is a reference to heroin, Kurt’s drug of choice.

Wish away
Soul is cheap
Lesson learned
Here he’s talking about his heroin addiction and the thought that life - or perhaps particularly his life - is not valuable.

“Lesson learned” is sarcastic.

Wish me luck
Soothe the burn
Wake me up

Here’s he’s talking about hoping someone will help, even though he knows what he’s doing is dangerous, and possibly fatal.

22

And the days that I keep my gratitude
Higher than my expectations
Well, I have really good days

Ray Wylie Hubbard - Mother Blues

23

I always got the impression that he was wallowing in self pity here and that he was also passive-aggressively saying that people who were happy were the dumb people but that he was too smart to be happy.
BTW I hope you’re listening to some other voices too man. Hang in there.

24

Keep your drawers on girl, ‘cause it ain’t worth the fightin’
By the time you drop 'em, I’ll be gone
And you’ll be right where they fall the rest of your life

25

*I am woman, hear me roar
In numbers too big to ignore
And I know too much to go back and pretend… * etc., etc.

26

Zip City it’s a good thing that they built a wall around you
Zip up to Tennessee then zip back down to Alabama
I got 350 heads on a 305 engine
I get ten miles to the gallon
I ain’t got no good intentions*

27

I didn’t phone you
And you didn’t phone me back

All Spring All Summer - Walter Salas-Humara

28

“A Ghost To Most” Drive-By Truckers

*Saving everybody takes a man on a mission
With a swagger that can set the world at ease
Some believe it’s God’s own hand on the trigger
And the other dumping water in the streets
Talking tough is easy when it’s other people’s evil
And you’re judging what they do or don’t believe
It seems to me you’d have to have a hole in your own
To point a finger at somebody else’s sheet

Baby every bone in my body’s gone to jumping
Like they’re gonna come through my skin
If they could get along without the rest of me, it wouldn’t matter if they did
But skeletons ain’t got nowhere to stick their money
Nobody makes britches that size
And besides you’re a ghost to most before they notice,
That you ever had a hair or a hide*

29

Twisted:

My analyst told me
That I was right out of my head.
The way he described it,
I’d be better dead
Than live.
I didn’t listen to his jive,
'Cause I knew all along
That he was all wrong,
And I knew that he thought
I was crazy, but I’m not!

30

Nothing worth having comes without some kind of fight
Got to kick at the darkness 'til it bleeds daylight

Lovers In A Dangerous Time - Bruce Cockburn

31

–Tom Lehrer Oedipus Rex
He found a rhyme for “Oedipus”

32

I close my eyes/Then I won’t see
The love you don’t feel/When you’re holding me
I Can’t Make You Love Me - Bonnie Raitt

33

Heaven help the boy who won’t reach 21
Heaven help the man who gave that boy a gun.
-Stevie Wonder-

Another mule is kickin’ in your stall.
-Muddy Waters-

Let’s go get stoned.
-Ray Charles-

34

As a musician who has written and performed many love songs, this one has always spoken to me.

I remember that time that you told me, you said
Love is touching souls, surely you touched mine
Cause part of you pours out of me
In these lines from time to time

You are in my blood like holy wine
You taste so bitter and so sweet.
I could drink a case of you
And still be on my feet, I would still be on my feet

  • Joni Mitchell from “A Case of You”
35

. Hanging on in quiet desperation is the English Way Roger Waters

36

You say that all the men you knew were dealers,
who said they were through with dealing
every time you gave them shelter.
Oh, you know that kind of man,
his golden hand dispatching cards,
But now it’s rusted from the shoulder to the fingers;
and he wants to trade the game he knows for shelter.

I’m unsure of the lyrics, but I do love Stranger Song, by Leonard Cohen.
It was used in the film McCabe and Mrs Miller.

37

Lots of things rhyme with Oedipus - the Attic noun there is pronounced like “-oos” and in English it’s usually pronounced to rhyme with piss.

My favourite lyrics are manifold - but here’s one lot from Swans - God Damn The Sun:
When, when we were young
We had no history
So nothing to lose
Meant we could choose
Choose what we wanted then
Without any fear
Or thought of revenge

38

Really, there isn’t a single word out of place in the entirety of Blue. It’s a masterpiece.

Anyway, it used to tickly my funny bone that I’d be listening to the sorrowful tones of Blue and this verse of “A Case of You”:

"Just before our love got lost you said
“I am as constant as a northern star”
And I said “Constantly in the darkness
Where’s that at?
If you want me I’ll be in the bar”

… and then move on to Gerry Rafferty’s City to City and “Right Down the Line”:

“I know how much I lean on you, only you can see
Changes that I’ve been through have left their mark on me
You’ve been as constant as a northern star, the brightest light that shines
It’s been you, woman, right down the line”

Well FFS guys, is the constancy of the Northern Star good or bad? I’m confused.

39

But he didn’t merely rhyme the last syllable – he effectively rhymed the last three, which is the entire name “Oedipus”. You’d be harder pressed to rhyme that.

40

Ken Block, Sister Hazel, simple but direct and moving.

It’s hard to say, What it is I see in you
Wonder if I’ll always, Be with you
But words can’t say, And I can’t do
Enough to prove, It’s ALL FOR YOU (title)
Ken recently had a very serious eye retina procedure, face down for a week. Full recovery not for sure.