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| 1. |
| 3:20 | 
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Downtown
My darling dime store thief In the War of Independence Rock 'n' roll rang sweet as victory Under neon signs A girl was in bloom And a woman was fading In a suburban room I said take me to the dance Do you want to dance? I love to dance And I told him They don't take chances They seem so removed from romance They've been broken in churches & schools And molded to middle class circumstance And we were rollin' Rollin' Rock 'n' rollin' Downtown The dance halls and cafes Feel so wild you could break somebody's heart Just doing the latest dance craze Gail and Louise In those push up brassieres Tight dresses and rhinestone rings Drinking up the band's beers Young love was kissing under bridges Kissing in cars Kissing in cafes And we were walking down Main Street Kisses like bright flags hung on holidays In France they kiss on Main Street Amour, mama, not cheap display And we were rollin' Rollin' Rock 'n' rollin' Downtown In the pinball arcade With his head full of pool hall pitches And songs from the hit parade He'd be singing "Bye, Bye, Love" While he's racking up his free play Let those rock 'n' roll choir boys Come and carry us away Sometimes Chickie had the car Or Ron had a car Or Lead Foot Melvin with his hotwire head We'd all go looking for a party Looking to raise Jesus up from the dead And I'd be kissing in the back seat Thrilling to the Brando-like things that he said And we'd be rollin' Rollin' Rock 'n' rolling x2 Rollin' Rollin' Rock 'n' rollin' |
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| 2. |
| 4:26 |
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Rousseau walks on trumpet paths
Safaris to the heart of all that jazz Through I bars and girders-through wires and pipes The mathematic circuits of the modern nights Through huts, through Harlem, through jails and gospel pews Through the class on Park and the trash on Vine Through Europe and the deep deep heart of Dixie blue Through savage progress cuts the jungle line In a low-cut blouse she brings the beer Rousseau paints a jungle flower behind her ear Those cannibals-of shuck and jive They'll eat a working girl like her alive With his hard-edged eye and his steady hand He paints the cellar full of ferns and orchid vines And he hangs a moon above a five-piece band He hangs it up above the jungle line The jungle line, the jungle line Screaming in a ritual of sound and time Floating, drifting on the air-conditioned wind And drooling for a taste of something smuggled in Pretty women funneled through valves and smoke Coy and bitchy, wild and fine And charging elephants and chanting slaving boats Charging, chanting down the jungle line There's a poppy wreath on a soldier's tomb There's a poppy snake in a dressing room Poppy poison-poppy tourniquet It slithers away on brass like mouthpiece spit And metal skin and ivory birds Go steaming up to Rousseau's vines They go steaming up to Brooklyn Bridge Steaming, steaming, steaming up the jungle line |
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| 3. |
| 3:38 |
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The big man arrives
Disco dancers greet him Plainclothes cops greet him Small town, big man, fresh lipstick glistening Sophomore jive From victims of typewriters The band sounds like typewriters The big man he's not listening His eyes hold Edith His left hand holds his right What does that hand desire That he grips it so tight Edith in the ring The passed-over girls are conferring The man with the diamond ring is purring All claws for now withdrawn One by one they bring His renegade stories to her His crimes and his glories to her In challenge they look on Women he has taken grow old too soon He tilts their tired faces Gently to the spoon Edith in his bed A plane in the rain is humming The wires in the walls are humming Some song-some mysterious song Bars in her head Beating frantic and snowblind Romantic and snowblind She says-his crime belongs Edith and the Kingpin Each with charm to sway Are staring eye to eye They dare not look away You know they dare not look away |
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| 4. |
| 4:05 |
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Don't interrupt the sorrow
Darn right In flames our prophet witches Be polite A room full of glasses He says, Your notches liberation doll And he chains me with that serpent To that Ethiopian wall Anima rising Queen of Queens Wash my guilt of Eden Wash and balance me Anima rising Uprising in me tonight She's a vengeful little goddess With an ancient crown to fight Truth goes up in vapors The steeples lean Winds of change patriarchs Snug in your bible belt dreams God goes up the chimney Like childhood Santa Claus The good slaves love the good book A rebel loves a cause I'm leaving on the 1:15 You're darn right Since I was seventeen I've had no one over me He says Anima rising- So what- Petrified wood process Tall timber down to rock! Don't interrupt the sorrow Darn right He says, We walked on the moon You be polite. Don't let up the sorrow Death and birth and death and birth and death and birth He says, Bring that bottle kindly And I'll pad your purse- I've got a head full of quandary And a mighty, mighty, thirst. Seventeen glasses Rhine wine Milk of the Madonna Clandestine He don't let up the sorrow He lies and he cheats It takes a heart like Mary's these days When your man gets weak |
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| 5. |
| 4:59 | 
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| 6. |
| 3:01 |
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He bought her a diamond for her throat
He put her in a ranch house on a hill She could see the valley barbecues From her window sill See the blue pools in the squinting sun Hear the hissing of summer lawns He put up a barbed wire fence To keep out the unknown And on every metal thorn Just a little blood of his own She patrols that fence of his To a latin drum And the hissing of summer lawns Darkness Wonder makes it easy Darkness With a joyful mask Darkness Tube's gone, darkness, darkness, darkness No color no contrast A diamond dog Carrying a cup and a cane Looking through a double glass Looking at too much pride and too much shame There's a black fly buzzing There's a heat wave burning in her master's voice Hissing summer lawns He gave her his darkness to regret And good reason to quit him He gave her a roomful of Chippendale That nobody sits in Still she stays with a love of some kind It's the lady's choice The hissing of summer lawns |
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| 7. |
| 3:49 |
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Down in the cellar in the Boho zone
I went looking for some sweet inspiration, oh well Just another hard-time band With Negro affectations I was a hopeful in rooms like this When I was working cheap It's an old romance-the Boho dance It hasn't gone to sleep But even on the scuffle The cleaner's press was in my jeans And any eye for detail Caught a little lace along the seams And you were in the parking lot Subterranean by your own design The virtue of your style inscribed On your contempt for mine Jesus was a beggar, he was rich in grace And Solomon kept his head in all his glory It's just that some steps outside the Boho dance Have a fascination for me A camera pans the cocktail hour Behind a blind of potted palms And finds a lady in a Paris dress With runs in her nylons You read those books where luxury Comes as a guest to take a slave Books where artists in noble poverty Go like virgins to the grave Don't you get sensitive on me 'Cause I know you're just too proud You couldn't step outside the Boho dance now Even if good fortune allowed Like a priest with a pornographic watch Looking and longing on the sly Sure it's stricken from your uniform But you can't get it out of your eyes Nothing is capsulized in me On either side of town The streets were never really mine Not mine these glamour gowns |
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| 8. |
| 6:48 |
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Heatwaves on the runway
As the wheels set down He takes his baggage off the carousel He takes a taxi into town Yellow schools of taxi fishes Jonah in a ticking whale Caught up at the light in the fishnet windows Of Bloomingdale's Watching those high fashion girls Skinny black models with Raveen curls Beauty parlor blondes with credit card eyes Looking for the chic and the fancy To buy He opens up his suitcase In the continental suite And people twenty stories down Colored currents in the street A helicopter lands on the Pan Am roof Like a dragonfly on a tomb And business men in button downs Press into conference rooms Battalions of paper-minded males Talking commodities and sales While at home their paper wives And paper kids Paper the walls to keep their gut reactions hid Yellow checkers for the kitchen Climbing ivy for the bath She is lost in House and Gardens He's caught up in Chief of Staff He drifts off into the memory Of the way she looked in school With her body oiled and shining At the public swimming pool ... * * * The more I'm with you, pretty baby The more I feel my love increase I'm building all my dreams around you Our happiness will never cease 'Cause nothing's any good without you Baby you're my centerpiece We'll find a house and garden somewhere Along a country road a piece A little cottage on the outskirts Where we can really find release 'Cause nothing's any good without you Baby you're my centerpiece * * * ...Shining hair and shining skin Shining as she reeled him in To tell him like she did today Just what he could do with Harry's House And Harry's take home pay |
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| 9. |
| 4:12 |
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Out on some borderline
Some mark of inbetween I lay down golden-in time And woke up vanishing Sweet bird you are Briefer than a falling star All these vain promises on beauty jars Somewhere with your wings on time You must be laughing Behind our eyes Calendars of our lives Circled with compromise Sweet bird of time and change You must be laughing Up on your feathers laughing Golden in time Cities under the sand Power, ideals and beauty Fading in everyone's hand Give me some time I feel like I'm losing mine Out here on this horizon line With the earth spinning And the sky forever rushing No one knows They can never get that close Guesses at most Guesses based on what each set of time and change is touching Guesses based on what each set of time and change is touching Guesses based on what each set of time and change is touching |
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| 10. |
| 4:20 |
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Every picture has its shadows
And it has some source of light Blindness, blindness and sight The perils of benefactors The blessings of parasites Blindness, blindness and sight Threatened by all things Devil of cruelty Drawn to all things Devil of delight Mythical devil of the ever-present laws Governing blindness, blindness and sight Suntans in reservation dining rooms Pale miners in their lantern rays Night, night and day Hostage smile on presidents Freedom scribbled in the subway It's like night, night and day Threatened by all things God of cruelty Drawn to all things God of delight Mythical god of the everlasting laws Governing day, day and night Critics of all expression Judges in black and white Saying it's wrong, saying it's right Compelled by prescribed standards Or some ideals we fight For wrong, wrong and right Threatened by all things Man of cruelty - mark of Cain Drawn to all things Man of delight - born again, born again Man of the laws, the ever-broken laws Governing wrong, wrong and right Governing wrong, wrong and right Wrong and right |
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