A Head Full Of Ideas That Are Driving Me Insane

Minor Joan Crawford Vehicle (Live 02-04-2009)

Cheap drapes frame the windows, no one speaks his mind Buckling asphalt up ahead, smoking wreck behind Stock footage of a ballroom nearly flooded with champagne We’re lost in the desert and it’s never going to rain

Every time in this house someone opens up his mouth All his hopes and dreams begin their dizzy journey south When the pipes began to freeze we turned on all the taps Tearing a good thing to pieces, bickering over the scraps

Fried clams from the diner, diesel on the wind Gorge ourselves on caviar when the boat comes in Wait for someone neutral to reckon up the score Grease on the walls of the kitchen, dried blood on the living room floor

You there in your nightgown, head all full of dreams All the things we’d sewn together splitting at the seams Try to cauterize the wound, just get nowhere fast Holding each other for dear life, shielding ourselves from the blast

New Orleans, Louisiana

The Young Thousands 

You drive east from the ocean with both hands tied on the wheel And you go past Garden Grove as the pleasure index rises The things that you’ve got coming will do things that you’re afraid to There is someone waiting out there with a mouthful of surprises

The ghosts that haunt your building have been learning how to breathe They scan the hallways nightly, vainly searching for a sign There must be diamonds somewhere in a place that stinks this bad There are brighter things than diamonds coming down the line

Here they come The young thousands Here they come The young thousands

from We Shall All Be Healed (2004)

“This is a song about young people on speed. [audience cheers] You say ‘woo’ now. You may have cause to reflect upon that 'woo’ in your future. Not about the song, I think the song is good. The speed itself, I’m not so sure about. I mean, it was good in terms of the quality. Morally, I’m less certain." 

In the Craters on the Moon

Well the blood’s in the water And the shark’s gonna come And we swim in the dark Until our bodies are numb

Blind desert rats in the moonlight Too far from shore In the declining years Of the long war

Empty room with a light bulb Where the phone starts to ring Everybody gets nervous Nobody says anything

The next day someone’s initials Show up on the door I think I’m gonna crack Can’t live like this anymore

Ugly things in the darkness Worse things in store In the declining years Of the long war

from Heretic Pride (2008)

“They applaud thrift in Boston. They really admire a man who knows his way around a bargain. This is a song about some people who, for them, thrift is not really an option – because they spend all of their money on, uh, on sugar and old video cassettes of "Speed Racer” and “Kimba the White Lion”. It’s working out okay for them, depending on who you talk to.“ 

The Ballad of Bull Ramos

Drive a great big truck When I’m old, when I’m old Haul the wrecks down to the wreck yard Help the boys unload Keep my hair nice and long Because I can, because I can Any of my old friends who have no place to turn to They know to call me any time they come through

Never die, never die Stand with a bullwhip in my hand And rise, rise In the desert sand

Work days, work nights Finally get laid up By a piece of broken glass On the floor of the shop And the doctor recognizes me As the operating theater goes dim Aren’t you that old wrestler with the bullwhip? Yes sir, that’s me, I’m him

Get around fine on one leg Lose a kidney, then go blind Sit on my porch in Houston Let the good times dance across my mind

Never die, never die Stand with a bullwhip in my hand And rise, rise Surrounded by friends

from Beat the Champ (2015)

“There’s a thing about the minor villain wrestlers from the local territories that was great because you’d be really scared of them and their powers, but you’d go to another territory and nobody’s ever heard of them. Just this guy who’s terrorizing Los Angeles and in San Francisco, he can’t get arrested for stealing from a convenience store. This is called ‘The Ballad of Bull Ramos.’" 

Someone knows what’s going on Someone knows, and someone’s gonna tell Someone’s gonna wrap us up in Styrofoam and paper And mail us flat-rate right down to Hell

Let’s go to Maine out on the East Coast Let’s go to Maine right now Let’s beat the retreat Let’s hop on the plane Let’s get out of here Let’s go to Maine

from Hardcore Acoustic (1993)

“So I’m going to play ‘Let’s Go to Maine’, but I want to say – but I wanted people to not hate on me for saying it’s kind of a dumb song. Not that there’s anything wrong – when I say that, people think that I mean, I think people think I mean there’s something wrong with you for liking the dumb song. Most of the songs I like are dumb songs. So it’s okay. But, but I think you won’t go far asserting that 'Let’s Go to Maine’ is sort of a philosophical treatise on the nature of regret or anything like that, because it’s not that, it’s an excuse to put Maine into the series of songs I had been writing." 

Liza Forever Minelli

Let the camera track me from the footlights to the wings Let me set aside an hour or two in memory of sweet things

Regrind the lens again and again and again and again but still the picture flips Anyone here mentions “Hotel California” dies before the first line clears his lips

Never get away never get away I am never ever gonna get away from this place Lay down on the streets my eyes toward the sun your star next to my face

from All Survivors Pack (2011)

“[on the ‘Hotel California’ line] It’s not that song, it’s that that song is about me going back to California and remembering younger times. and, uh, if you have that experience in California, you, you harbor a little bit of resentment for the fact that that particular experience of, of nostalgia for a different time in California has sort of been branded with a great big 'E’, right." 

Brandy Let’s Go

You say I’ve forgotten what being young’s all about How could you say that to me You say I don’t know how to have fun anymore Well that just may be But it may be otherwise Try me And see if it isn’t so I got a handgun, and a bottle of brandy Let’s go

You try and trace Taurus in the sky for me But I know you don’t know what you’re doing But when I turn my face toward the cold, clean sidewalk I can see the world glowing You say I’ve forgotten what love’s all about You say I don’t know how to shake the cobwebs out I look into your eyes And I see the fury grow I got a handgun, and a bottle of brandy Let’s go

Cubs in Five

The stars are gonna spell out the answers to tomorrow’s crosswords And the Phillips Corporation will admit that they’ve made an awful mistake And Bill Gates will single-handedly spearhead The Heaven 17 revival

And the Chicago Cubs will beat every team in the league And the Tampa Bay Bucs will take it all the way to the top And I will love you again I will love you, like I used to And I will love you again I will love you, like I used to

from Nine Black Poppies (1995)

“I like the song, but it really doesn’t have anything to do with the Chicago Cubs. Right? But then, when people come up and say, ‘I love that song because I love the Tampa Bay Buccaneers’, you go, 'Oh, well, then you have missed the point of the song. The song has nothing to do with any -’ and then, why don’t they ever come up and go, 'I’m a Chaucer scholar, and that’s why I like that song’? Strictly Cubs fans and Bucs fans. Now on the one hand, if I was a cynic I could go, 'That’s my fuckin’ market, I’m going to write five more 'Cubs in Five’s and I’m gonna max out and pay off the house and the car and it’s gonna be rad.’ But because I come from the indie rock world, I don’t roll like that. No, I have to fail a little or I can’t be happy with myself."