1. |
59 Dame Street
03:30
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I got an interview
So what could I do but go along and pretend to be someone else?
Curse of divine jaysus on whatever foul wind blew the objectionable thing through my letterbox
But lacking the will to leave the comfort of my nasty little rut, I said I’d go through with it
So I got the suit out of hock, but I had to get the nutter in the flat across the hall to tie the tie -
2.99 in Dunnes Stores, since I couldn’t in good conscience spend money on such an item.
It was made of dog hair or almond oil or linoleum or some such.
The nutter wished me good luck, but I made him take it back,
Then I girded my loins, steeled my resolve, and started off walking for Dame Street
But I got there far too early.
I want to bomb the central bank
How they shat upon my karma
With such questions as
“What do you view as the pre-eminent macro-economic policy goal of the EU?”
Or “How did that experience affect your mindset, Mr. Hearne?”
The truth was it made me want to get drunk on snakebites,
Same as every other experience that particular year,
But I had left my honesty, with my soul and my love of my fellow man,
Simmering on the stove in the bedsit
And I had only indigestion and fear to draw answers from.
“Where do you see yourself in 5 years time?”
I wanted to say “Standing in the rubble of a newly-cleansed Dublin”
I wanted to say “Dancing on the head of a pin”
I wanted to say “Alive. Alive somewhere.”
I want to bomb the central bank
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2. |
The Saltee Tango
04:10
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The Saltee Tango
Heave away on the poop deck!
We’re shipwrecked.
We’re washed up on the sand.
We’re dried out on the strand.
We’re accustomed to defeat, boys,
So we’ll eat, boys,
And we’ll drink our fill and then
We’ll go to sea again.
Promises of fortune and of fame
Are not what keep us in this game –
Our losses swallow up our gains.
So, with the old crew and a new plan,
We’ll gather on the shore
And go to sea once more.
What is it? What is it
That calls us all out here?
Without sextant, without compass,
A-squandering our years.
The ocean swarms and heaves and we are frozen to the bone
And Davy Jones’ locker is beckoning below.
Bail away, me boys, bail away.
This storm won’t last forever
But there’s more on the way.
Heave away on the poop deck!
We’re shipwrecked.
We’re washed up on the sand.
We’re dried out on the strand.
We’re accustomed to defeat, boys,
So we’ll eat, boys,
And we’ll drink our fill and then
We’ll go to sea again.
Promises of fortune and of fame
Are not what keep us in this game –
Our losses swallow up our gains.
So, with the old crew and a new plan,
We’ll gather on the shore
And go to sea once more.
A clear sky and a fair wind, a clean and rolling sea –
Greater joys then these are inconceivable to me.
But other occupations must yield treasure of their own –
The butcher and the cobbler seem contented in the town.
Safe and dry in bed each night
Tucked up snugly with their wives
Are they or I more satisfied?
Who knows?
Not I.
I suppose when I was still young
I lived among my family in their home,
Far from the waves and foam.
But now my memory’s faded,
I’ve a grey head,
And that time it seems
As if it was a dream.
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3. |
Nobody in Heaven
03:06
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There’ll be nobody in heaven but me
I’m the only one
I’m the only one
There’ll be nobody in heaven but me
I’m the only one
I’m the only one
Yeah
Some girl
You have reached the reconnected number of a misdirected hippy chick
Lost her cherry to a card-carrying member of the national front
Who was all skin and tattoos but he had the most beautiful eyes.
A pregnant child
Well she went unto the doctor and she had the thing aborted,
But 18 months later the doctor found Jesus
And he drew out all the names of the all the kids he’d excavated
And called round
Fuck you antiquity.
Future come and get me,
And make the time go slow.
There’ll be nobody in heaven but me
I’m the only one
I’m the only one
There’ll be nobody in heaven but me
I’m the only one
I’m the only one
Yeah
Down, down into the pit
Where the demons bicker.
And all the world is on a spit.
Who’ll be your saviour now?
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4. |
Capital
03:05
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I’ll obey your invisible orders,
Anticipate all your needs.
Heed your subtle instructions
In word, in mind, in deed.
Indoctrinate all my children –
They’ll be just like me.
We’ll serve you like only a thoroughly modern
Family
Can.
Pay me good heed my friends –
Righteous pride was never but a venial sin.
No, nor was jealousy,
And enlightened avarice it makes the world go round.
But Lucifer
Makes work for slothful hands to do.
Lose that troubled frown,
Turn your eyes to the jugglers and the clowns –
They’ve never let you down.
This is the Golden Age.
Show us more, we want spectacle -
Plenty of legroom is what we’re asking for.
Give us an outrage! Give us an ashtray!
Who could ask for anything more?
Where are my friends?
Where’s all my relations?
What happened to Hilbert?
What happened to Dave?
My calendar’s full but I’m not complaining -
It’s just the agreement that I made.
Oh lose that troubled frown,
Turn your eyes to the jugglers and the clowns –
They’ve never let you down.
This is the Golden Age.
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5. |
Acunamanacana
02:36
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6. |
Rivethead
04:35
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Oh mister please stop intruding in my dreams.
You got me afraid I’ll be turning into steam.
Your long-fingered shadows creeping round my head
Follow me into my bed.
Pin me down, don’t let me stray.
Time me up, don’t let me slip away.
You distort all my intentions and infiltrate my friends,
Drain off all my sweetness and squander it, and then ...
Oh please overlook me. Your grasping greedy hands
Drag at my heart like iron bands.
Pin me down, don’t let me stray.
Time me up, don’t let me slip away.
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7. |
Periscope Down
03:46
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Your sticky fingers in my hair,
But how your belly’s wet with sweat,
But how the sun don’t take no prisoners.
He called the policeman a fool,
Strung him up by the swimming pool,
Took all his fun and all his refreshers.
Little faces by the shoreline,
Cream and chocolate.
Crazed enough to suck up all the sunlight,
Hanging around with Jack the Freak,
Fucking it up for all the same ones.
Periscope down.
Oh when the sap don’t smell as sweet,
When the drugs don’t get you off,
When all your plans lie broken.
Oh now the freak don’t got no clothes -
He says his lad’s on fire
And baby turns to me and says
“Buy him a choc ice”.
And the night pours on like cola.
Baby whistles.
And it feels like it’s been years that we been happy,
Feeling like days since we been dry,
Feeling like months since we been sober.
Periscope down.
Mother’s pouring all the liquor down the sink
And it flows into the sea.
The ocean’s drunk.
Fill the world with starfish
Where the shark don’t venture.
Yeah you got your periscope down.
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8. |
Resistolero
04:00
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God said to Job
“You’ll tear your clothes.
You’ll hang your head and weep.
I’ll do you in.
I’ll hurt your skin.
Infect you with disease.
And when you’re on your knees
Begging me for ease,
I’ll do as I please.
I’ll say ‘Who are you
To address me like you do?
I made all that you see.’”
Kumbaya
His boots march on,
They’re in this song,
They’re never far away.
They’re in your town,
They beat the ground,
They stamp upon the clay.
We blindly follow.
We know no sorrow.
Our heads are hollow.
Submit to his will
For good or ill -
Who’s not our friend is our enemy.
Oh resistolero
Kumbaya
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9. |
Fat Pig
03:46
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Oh the rain don’t fall underneath the ground.
If the heart should fail the world will still go round.
Take a little trip to the next one,
Bury me in sight of the Cusack Stand
And it’ll be ok baby, ok in the end
As the teeth grow long, as the body breaks,
As the the mind grows soft, reason starts to shake.
Sing a little song of the next one,
See the setting sun for the final time
And it’ll be ok baby
Ok by and by
And down we go,
Down into the underground.
Singing all the marching songs,
Singing all the girls we never had to leave behind.
Der würm vortet hungrich
Sein aschiger falle
Leb wohl altes würmchen
Du krieg uns ja alle
Lah di dah di dum, lah di dy do x2
After all
The doctor bills and guilty chills and raging at St. Jude
And all of the neighbours said his heart was not that strong
Fat pig wasn’t seen outside since Christmas time of 1981.
And the kids sing “There he goes”
Slipping out of memory too soon.
There is nothing left to say about him
Bu he was a fat pig, fat pig.
Bear him on down and the kids around there say
That’s where fat pig used to stay.
(Our friend Nicky Redmond wrote the German lyrics in this, and did an amazing job complete with references to "Faust" ... but we lost where we wrote them down and only half-remembered them so they probably don't make any sense at all. Sorry!)
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10. |
Down Among The Pigs
03:56
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Better tie me up , I can never get my ease.
I’ll lose my head, get eaten by the bees.
You’ll point your fingers, accuse me of disease,
Lash me to my tiller and push me off the quays.
Tie me up, tie me up boys,
I been lusting after innocents,
Admiring my reflection in the looking glass.
Eating flesh and drinking rum and playing the cursed fiddle
And dreaming of our eminent leader’s sacred ass.
Yo ho!
I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry.
I cannot find another way to be.
If I ever come ashore, I’ll take off into the plains.
The dogs will never catch me, I’ll deceive them in the rain.
Now the thunderheads come and wash me in my bed,
I’m out among the waves with a fever in my brain.
Saw me off! Bang me in!
I been flying the flag, yes sir!
Flying the black flag above my ship.
Why not send your slaves against me? I’ll receive them with open arms.
They’ll lift me on their shoulders, kiss me on the lips.
Yo ho!
I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry.
I cannot find another way to be.
What’s the matter with me?
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11. |
Oh Happy Day
04:21
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Franco make me laugh
Cos the kids are all asleep
And the drugs begin to sing beneath my skin.
And happiness takes hold like a sickness in the soul.
It is Summer, it is high time we were gone.
So put the children into care.
Booby-trap the bedsit as you leave.
Throw the dog into the Grand Canal.
Scrawl your last words on some toilet door.
And as you go you will be borne aloft
By ducks and flying dogs,
And all the raggy dolls and amputees
Will sing about their loss.
I woke up in a shoe today.
I woke up with sticky hands and swollen glands and a blue dick
And all the peelers banging on about
The stain, the stain, the awful stain,
The stain upon my soul.
And now I’m close enough to hell to feel
The flames beneath the floor.
Tell yourself another lie.
Get drunk! What a guy!
So Franco make me laugh
Cos the kids are all asleep
And the drugs begin to sing beneath my skin.
And happiness takes hold like a sickness in the soul.
It is Summer, it is high time we were gone.
I wish I was a great big kiss.
I wish I was a brand new pair of pants.
I was I was a fresh tattoo.
I wish I was the smell of cheap perfume.
But of all the rain that ever fell down upon my bones
This time is burrowed in beneath my skin
And watered down my soul.
Happy as a pig in shit.
Happy as a pig in shit.
And Franco make me laugh
Cos the kids are all asleep
And the drugs begin to sing beneath my skin.
And happiness takes hold like a sickness in the soul.
It is Summer, it is high time we were gone.
You’re happy when the lights go out.
Happy when the hand has lost control.
And you’re happy in the wreckage after all.
Oh Happy Day.
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12. |
Celebrate Quick
04:12
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Oh the cursed air that seeps up from the scum in the canal
And it drifts down to the southside where the whiter collars dwell
And there the coppers bag it, book it, nick it and return
And they push it down the stairwell where the Store St. junkies burn.
And the Dublin city council boys are digging up the street.
“We’re looking for its soul,” they say, and the Yank says “Hey that’s neat”.
“This hole has no more soul than my own,” rejoins Beroo,
As she slips into oblivion on sensimilia’s sweet perfume.
The Yank is discommoded by the way we take him off
And he covers his disgruntlement with a dry, embarrassed cough.
“Ah these Celts are fucking crazy, they will drink the Dodder dry,
And sing and write it afterwards pretending everything’s alright”.
A bottle of champagne and a card that says “Right,
Celebrate quick before things turn shite”.
Ballybough is baking, it’s congealing in the heat
With dehydrated dogshit the consistency of peat.
The Iberians are laughing at some secret airbrushed joke.
Beroo she bites back curses, she is dying for a smoke.
And the wagtails on O’Connell St. are behind in the rent
But when the bailiff comes around they shit upon his head.
He fumbles for his hankie, says “If it were up to me
But I don’t make the rules, lads”.
Is this a dagger I see before me boys?
Skewering the sky where the trees lie down.
Beroo is feeling homesick and she’s thinking of her Da.
She says “He will not last the winter,
The pigeon-lunged, cabbage-ridden, pig-shaving, chicken-chasing, five-toothed, nine-fingered, half-arsed, broken-mouthed, arthritic, cross-dressing, cross-mullioned, gutless, chinless, feckless, spineless, legless
Oul fucker”
The Yank got caught in rain, and he is shaking like a dog
And he’s cursing our fair climate with its sunny rainy fog
And he’s thinking of his mot who’s fat with someone else’s child
Back home in Saratoga where the weather’s always mild.
Now Beroo is horny, but she’s fearful of disease
And she sizes up the American with his skin like cream cheese
And he’s re-reading the letter that came from Yankland today
About the child that is not his.
And the rain comes down
As the American slides into a new skin.
Oh nothing’s really broken, or nothing you can see.
“It’s just as well I’m dumb,” he says, “and cannot really feel.
But what’s this thing that empties out and shrivels up inside?
And whispers in the nighttime as the revellers go by.”
Oh faith is being tempted and faith is feeling weak
As Beroo and the American fall together in the heat.
Oh stinking is the city, but it never doesn’t stink.
At least it’s the smell of life, not death.
Yeah.
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Stoat Ireland
Stylistically inconsistent indie / pop / rock music from Ireland.
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