1. |
Thunder Road
02:43
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We were singing “Cowboy Song” past midnight, tinking* at Chill Dog Cove, and in a fever dream of classic LPs and punk rock 45s I could hear the screen door slam along American interstates; funny how the floor I sleep seems colder the further South we go.
Some of my friends quit drinking. Most of my friends quit drugs, but I’m just a baby. Baby, we’re punk and in love. On LSD, I saw my speed: a broken body by 23. I felt my features fading and I fixed a Bloody Mary.
Young soul, young soul, with your head out the window - see how fast that thing can go.
*Tinking is code for smoking batties.
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2. |
My Back Is Broken
02:00
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Please stay out of my bedroom. You can’t handle the truth: rolled up Abrahams and packages from you. I’ve got sheets I’ve stained with food.
Call my fucking name. Convince me that I haven’t changed.
And, with the sunrise, comes my hot flash: a souvenir of how I knocked my body out. I kind of want to take my life right now. I’ve really got to find the light right now
because the black spot’s staining my gown and the bleach don’t clear but my sinus. Mama, I’m coming down.
I can’t remember one night since September. I can’t keep hanging on you. I can’t handle the truth.
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3. |
Never Come Down
02:37
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Coffee at a park bench across from the church. Silence, just thinking about a sluggish blue Lincoln, and she turns to me, she says, “Mike, do you still get high?” I would swallow anything at all if it would help me to forget the simplest truth I know: improbability of dreams.
I’ll be the guy at the party, murmuring sad songs to no one in general. I hope, God, I hope, I hope I never come down.
Locked myself in the bathroom, swallowing anything that would do me ill. I hope, God, I hope, I hope I never come down. Came to on the front porch, covered in rain, stinking of gin. I hope, God, I hope, I hope I never come down.
Locked myself in the bathroom, face in the mirror is not my own. I hope, God, I hope, I hope I never come down.
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4. |
If You Cough You’re Good
02:35
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Midnight bottles break open, sucking from my fist. I frothed Champagne on her New Year’s dress. I looked her straight in the eyes and I said - !
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5. |
The Fear
04:03
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We chased tens with skunked Budweisers at a house party in Richmond, Virginia. It was the winter of bad knees in basements, of smashing bottles in the alleyways. We got to talking about the kind of Fear that festers in your sternum, reaches out, synapses firing, and it lodges underneath your knuckles. Can you feel them? Gotta ball them into fists, wondering if this is all just for nothing at all. What if this is all …?
You can make it go away for a little while with a well stocked medicine cabinet (make it go away), a new job and your ex-girlfriend’s smile. But time will always show those Percocets, they only last so long, and the Vicodin, it leaves those burning holes in the lining of your stomach wall, and all the while the ex-girlfriends, the mothers and the bartenders, the old friends you ain’t seen in years, they’re always saying the same goddamn thing. They’re saying “Nate, man, you gotta get yourself together son, you’ve got to clean your head out, straighten up, find yourself a decent life.”
(Never come down)
When I wake up most mornings still hung over, the ringing in my ears, the voice in my head saying always the same goddamn thing. It’s just, “You don’t deserve the things you have, and you’ll never get the ones you’ve wanted.” Tell me, what’s there left between me and the Fear?
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6. |
Brian Wilson
02:08
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From my stoop, you’re the rising sun. Dried semen on my stomach, I’m an unloaded gun. And I can swim with the best of them but I wake up like a little kid: crawling ‘round the sandbox, crying in my vomit for my mom. I need her songs. MacKaye saves lives, so does marijuana sometimes. They both saved mine when I fell on black nights. But now I can’t find the light.
Grace, you paint my face like Aldi wine. I stay up all night and smoke gets in my eyes.
High on amphetamines, riding snakes to hell on mescaline. I said I’d never disappear, child, but I’ve been killing everything that ever made you smile.
All of the flowers that you planted, mama, in the backyard, might’ve died and gone away, but they’ll come again another day.
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7. |
Labor Day
02:28
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Five dollars and my laundry money, I’ve got last check in the mail and the rent is three weeks away. I didn’t know her that well, she’s got a new credit card. I’m unemployed on Labor Day and all my friends are servers.
Turns out that I’m really bad at pinball, now I’ve got to wear my dirty clothes. Dropped out of the bar when she went to the bathroom and the neon makes me feel so alone. Crashed into a party West of Kedzie, around the time I missed your fourth call. Had my head in the sofa cushions, I was picking out the loose change when they said to get the fuck out of their house.
When you find me on Milwaukee Avenue with quarters in my pockets, baby, remind me that this is my real life. Then wrap your body around mine like a cloth. You gotta take me home. Home is a place I made up when I didn’t want to feel so goddamned alone.
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8. |
Penguins
02:50
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“Dude,” you said, “I’m getting emotional here in the grocery store again. I’m feeling old again, ‘cause all of these babies we’ve known since high school are getting hitched now.” Ain’t that a bitch now? ‘Cause I’m still flipping sandwiches and I still haven’t read half the books on my shelf. What would it help? But I’m not down. I’ve definitely got some holes in my crown, but I’m not down.
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9. |
Innervisions
03:04
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Jerry sat on a lawnchair across the street for most of that summer, sucking limes, listening to the Cubs lose again. Yeah, telling the story about the wife he left up in Idaho, outside a copper mine. He always tries to smile, he says “You do things when you’re young.” Rice and beans and Old Style tall boys got me on through to twenty-one and it all kinda fades like sailor tattoos.
That used to be my bus stop - at Clark and Grace, above that liquor store, I made my bed cold sweating on the bathroom floor. Glad I don’t live there anymore. I got a queen size mattress now so I can tuck myself in tight and cut the lights out.
Glad I don’t live there anymore. I got scars on my knuckles, opened them last night on the brick wall outside my apartment. And if I sold my books, sold my clothes, sold my blood and sold my guitar, I’d buy the cheapest car, I’d drive it out of state, yeah, you’ll chalk it up, you’ll say you do things when you’re young.
I can’t remember.
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10. |
One More For Dom
03:44
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Lice from the motel floor was our party favor, so we’re bagging up our clothes. At least I’ll sleep tonight, unlike Bloomington, where I was packing up my nose. Shivering sunrise in a parking garage where I tallied up my fears. When I get home, don’t make that phone call again or keep cutting down my years.
Tidying your name tag, you’ve got somewhere to be. You’re not answering your phone.
Rolling a joint in gridlock, an old friend’s new car. Late for the wedding, my father’s borrowed tie. Roads and faces stay the same, all the rest gets torn down.
If you see Dom, tell him, you’re never all that far from home.
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Two Houses Chicago
Triumphant sad bastard music. Reliable rock n' roll.
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