Frank Zappa – “I Don’t Wanna Get Drafted” (1979)
A pretty funky single from Zappa in 1979…never came out on any album. Featuring Dale & Terry Bozzio, who later went on to form Missing Persons.
The JB’s – “The Grunt (Parts 1 & 2) (1970)
James Brown’s great 1970s funk backing band. This is one of their greatest instrumentals and was sampled by Public Enemy years later.
When it came to funk music, NOBODY could touch The JB’s – they were the masters!
Michael Stipe – “Living Well’s the Best Revenge” (2008)
It’s only when your poison spins into the life you’d hoped to live
That suddenly you wake up in a shaking panic – wow!
You set me up like a lamb to slaughter
Garbo as a farmer’s daughter
Unbelievable, the gospel according to who?
I lay right down
All your sad and lost apostles hum my name and flare their nostrils
Choking on the bones you toss to them
Well I’m not one to sit and spin
‘Cause living well’s the best revenge
Baby, I am calling you on that
Don’t turn your talking points on me, history will set me free
The future’s ours and you don’t even read the footnote now
So who’s chasing you? Where did you go?
You disappeared mid-sentence
In a judgement crisis I see my anecdote for it
You weakened shell
You savour your dying breath
Well, I forgive but I don’t forget
You work it out, let’s hear that argument again
Camera three… GO NOW!
Chuck D – “Don’t Believe the Hype” (1988)
Back,
Caught you lookin’ for the same thing
It’s a new thing check out this I bring
Uh oh, the roll below the level
‘Cause I’m livin’ low next to the bass, c’mon
Turn up the radio
They claim that I’m a criminal
By now I wonder how
Some people never know
The enemy could be their friend, guardian
I’m not a hooligan
I rock the party and
Clear all the madness, I’m not a racist
Preach to teach to all
‘Cause some they never had this
Number one, not born to run
About the gun…
I wasn’t licensed to have one
The minute they see me, fear me
I’m the epitome – a public enemy
Used, abused without clues
I refused to blow a fuse
They even had it on the news
Don’t believe the hype…
Yes,
Was the start of my last jam
So here it is again, another def jam
But since I gave you all a little something
That we knew you lacked
They still consider me a new jack
All the critics you can hang’em
I’ll hold the rope
But they hope to the pope
And pray it ain’t dope
The follower of Farrakhan
Don’t tell me that you understand
Until you hear the man
The book of the new school rap game
Writers treat me like Coltrane, insane
Yes to them, but to me I’m a different kind
We’re brothers of the same mind, unblind
Caught in the middle and
Not surrenderin’
I don’t rhyme for the sake of of riddlin’
Some claim that I’m a smuggler
Some say I never heard of ‘ya
A rap burgler, false media
We don’t need it do we?
It’s fake that’s what it be to ‘ya, dig me?
Don’t believe the hype…
Don’t believe the hype – its a sequel
As an equal, can I get this through to you
My 98’s boomin’ with a trunk of funk
All the jealous punks can’t stop the dunk
Comin’ from the school of hard knocks
Some perpetrate, they drink Clorox
Attack the black, cause I know they lack exact
The cold facts, and still they try to Xerox
Leader of the new school, uncool
Never played the fool, just made the rules
Remember there’s a need to get alarmed
Again I said I was a timebomb
In the daytime the radio’s scared of me
‘Cause I’m mad, plus I’m the enemy
They can’t c’mon and play with me in primetime
‘Cause I know the time, plus I’m gettin’ mine
I get on the mix late in the night
They know I’m livin’ right, so here go the mike, sike
Before I let it go, don’t rush my show
You try to reach and grab and get elbowed
Word to herb, yo if you can’t swing this
Just a little bit of the taste of the bass for you
As you get up and dance at the LQ
When some deny it, defy if I swing bolos
Then they clear the lane I go solo
The meaning of all of that
Some media is the whack
You believe it’s true, it blows me through the roof
Suckers, liars get me a shovel
Some writers I know are damn devils
For them I say don’t believe the hype
Their pens and pads I’ll snatch
‘Cause I’ve had it
I’m not an addict fiendin’ for static
I’ll see their tape recorder and grab it
No, you can’t have it back silly rabbit
I’m going’ to my media assassin
Harry Allen, I gotta ask him
“Yo Harry, you’re a writer, are we that type?”
Don’t believe the hype
I got flavor and all those things you know
Yeah boy, part two bum rush and show
Yo Griff, get the green black red and
Gold down countdown to Armageddon
’88 you wait the S1Ws will
Rock the hard jams – treat it like a seminar
Teach the bourgeoise, and rock the boulevard
Some say I’m negative
But they’re not positive
But what I got to give…
The media says this.
Bob Dylan – “Desolation Row” (1965)
They’re selling postcards of the hanging
They’re painting the passports brown
The beauty parlor is filled with sailors
The circus is in town
Here comes the blind commissioner
They’ve got him in a trance
One hand is tied to the tight-rope walker
The other is in his pants
And the riot squad they’re restless
They need somewhere to go
As Lady and I look out tonight
From Desolation Row
Cinderella, she seems so easy
“It takes one to know one,” she smiles
And puts her hands in her back pockets
Bette Davis style
And in comes Romeo, he’s moaning
“You Belong to Me I Believe”
And someone says,” You’re in the wrong place, my friend
You better leave”
And the only sound that’s left
After the ambulances go
Is Cinderella sweeping up
On Desolation Row
Now the moon is almost hidden
The stars are beginning to hide
The fortunetelling lady
Has even taken all her things inside
All except for Cain and Abel
And the hunchback of Notre Dame
Everybody is making love
Or else expecting rain
And the Good Samaritan, he’s dressing
He’s getting ready for the show
He’s going to the carnival tonight
On Desolation Row
Now Ophelia, she’s ‘neath the window
For her I feel so afraid
On her twenty-second birthday
She already is an old maid
To her, death is quite romantic
She wears an iron vest
Her profession’s her religion
Her sin is her lifelessness
And though her eyes are fixed upon
Noah’s great rainbow
She spends her time peeking
Into Desolation Row
Einstein, disguised as Robin Hood
With his memories in a trunk
Passed this way an hour ago
With his friend, a jealous monk
He looked so immaculately frightful
As he bummed a cigarette
Then he went off sniffing drainpipes
And reciting the alphabet
Now you would not think to look at him
But he was famous long ago
For playing the electric violin
On Desolation Row
Dr. Filth, he keeps his world
Inside of a leather cup
But all his sexless patients
They’re trying to blow it up
Now his nurse, some local loser
She’s in charge of the cyanide hole
And she also keeps the cards that read
“Have Mercy on His Soul”
They all play on penny whistles
You can hear them blow
If you lean your head out far enough
From Desolation Row
Across the street they’ve nailed the curtains
They’re getting ready for the feast
The Phantom of the Opera
A perfect image of a priest
They’re spoonfeeding Casanova
To get him to feel more assured
Then they’ll kill him with self-confidence
After poisoning him with words
And the Phantom’s shouting to skinny girls
“Get Outa Here If You Don’t Know
Casanova is just being punished for going
To Desolation Row”
Now at midnight all the agents
And the superhuman crew
Come out and round up everyone
That knows more than they do
Then they bring them to the factory
Where the heart-attack machine
Is strapped across their shoulders
And then the kerosene
Is brought down from the castles
By insurance men who go
Check to see that nobody is escaping
To Desolation Row
Praise be to Nero’s Neptune
The Titanic sails at dawn
And everybody’s shouting
“Which Side Are You On?”
And Ezra Pound and T. S. Eliot
Fighting in the captain’s tower
While calypso singers laugh at them
And fishermen hold flowers
Between the windows of the sea
Where lovely mermaids flow
And nobody has to think too much
About Desolation Row
Yes, I received your letter yesterday
(About the time the door knob broke)
When you asked how I was doing
Was that some kind of joke?
All these people that you mention
Yes, I know them, they’re quite lame
I had to rearrange their faces
And give them all another name
Right now I can’t read too good
Don’t send me no more letters no
Not unless you mail them
From Desolation Row.
David Byrne – “I Get Wild/Wild Gravity” (1983)
Fooled around enough with numbers
Let’s not be ourselves today
Is it just my imagination?
Is it just someone’s fave?
Pleasantly out of proportion
It’s hard to hold on to the ground
Now I didn’t come to run
And this is everything
And gravity lets you down
I get wild, wizing up
I just can’t let go
I get wild when I get ready
I can hardly talk
Living lights
Special lights
Yellow turns blue
I get wild
It’s automatic
I can hardly move
Go ahead and pull the curtains
Check to see if I’m still here
Let me lose my perspective
Something worth waiting for
Somewhere in South Carolina
And gravity don’t mean a thing
And all around the world
Each and ev’ryone
Playing with a heart of steel
I get up climbing out
How did I get home?
I’ll survive the situation
Somebody shut the door
Beautiful
Beautiful
Climbing up the wall
I get by on automatic
No surprise at all
No one here can recognize you
Here is ev’rything that you like
Feelings without explanations
Somethings are hard to describe
The sound of a cigarette burning
A place there where ev’rything spins
And the sounds inside your mind
Is playing all the time
Playing with a heart of steel
I get wild, wizing up
I just can’t let go
I get wild when I get ready
I can hardly talk
Red ‘n’ white black to gold
Yellow turns blue
I get wild It’s automatic
I can hardly move
I get up pushing up
How did I get home?
I’ll survive the situation
Somebody shut the door
Shut the door
Shut the door
Climbing up the wall
I get by on automatic
No surprise at all.
Leonard Cohen – “If there were no paintings” (2007)
If there were no paintings in the world,
Mine would be very important
Same with the songs
Since this is not the case, let us make haste to get in line,
Well towards the back
Sometimes I would see a woman in a magazine
Humiliated in the technicolour glare
I would try to establish her
In happier circumstances
Sometimes a man
Sometimes living persons sat for me
May I say to them again:
Thank you for coming to my room
I also loved the objects on the table
Such as candlesticks and ashtrays
And the table itself
From a mirror on my desk
In the very early morning
I copied down
Hundreds of self-portraits
Which reminded me of one thing or another
The Curator has called this exhibition
Drawn to Words
I call my work
Acceptable Decorations.
Leonard Cohen – “Because of a Few Songs” (1999)
Because of a few songs
wherein I spoke of their
mystery,
women have been
exceptionally kind
to my old age
They make a secret place
in their busy lives
and they take me there
They become naked
in their different ways
and they say,
“Look at me, Leonard
look at me one last time”
Then they bend over the bed
and cover me up
like a baby that is shivering.
Leonard Cohen – “Tower of Song” (1988)
Well my friends are gone and my hair is grey
I ache in the places where I used to play
And I’m crazy for love but I’m not coming on
I’m just paying my rent every day
Oh, in the Tower of Song
I said to Hank Williams: how lonely does it get?
Hank Williams hasn’t answered yet
But I hear him coughing all night long
A hundred floors above me
In the Tower of Song
I was born like this, I had no choice
I was born with the gift of a golden voice
And twenty-seven angels from the Great Beyond
They tied me to this table right here
In the Tower of Song
So you can stick your little pins in that voodoo doll
I’m very sorry, baby, doesn’t look like me at all
I’m standing by the window where the light is strong
Ah they don’t let a woman kill you
Not in the Tower of Song
Now you can say that I’ve grown bitter but of this you may be sure
The rich have got their channels in the bedrooms of the poor
And there’s a mighty judgement coming, but I may be wrong
You see, you hear these funny voices
In the Tower of Song
I see you standing on the other side
I don’t know how the river got so wide
I loved you baby, way back when
And all the bridges are burning that we might have crossed
But I feel so close to everything that we lost
We’ll never have to lose it again
Now I bid you farewell, I don’t know when I’ll be back
There moving us tomorrow to that tower down the track
But you’ll be hearing from me baby, long after I’m gone
I’ll be speaking to you sweetly
From a window in the Tower of Song
Yeah my friends are gone and my hair is grey
I ache in the places where I used to play
And I’m crazy for love but I’m not coming on
I’m just paying my rent every day
Oh, in the Tower of Song.
Bob Dylan – “Sad-Eyed Lady of the Lowlands” (1966)
With your mercury mouth in the missionary times,
And your eyes like smoke and your prayers like rhymes,
And your silver cross, and your voice like chimes,
Oh, who among them do they think could bury you?
With your pockets well protected at last,
And your streetcar visions which you place on the grass,
And your flesh like silk, and your face like glass,
Who among them do they think could carry you?
Sad-eyed lady of the lowlands,
Where the sad-eyed prophet says that no man comes,
My warehouse eyes, my Arabian drums,
Should I leave them by your gate,
Or, sad-eyed lady, should I wait?
With your sheets like metal and your belt like lace,
And your deck of cards missing the jack and the ace,
And your basement clothes and your hollow face,
Who among them can think he could outguess you?
With your silhouette when the sunlight dims
Into your eyes where the moonlight swims,
And your match-book songs and your gypsy hymns,
Who among them would try to impress you?
Sad-eyed lady of the lowlands,
Where the sad-eyed prophet says that no man comes,
My warehouse eyes, my Arabian drums,
Should I leave them by your gate,
Or, sad-eyed lady, should I wait?
The kings of Tyrus with their convict list
Are waiting in line for their geranium kiss,
And you wouldn’t know it would happen like this,
But who among them really wants just to kiss you?
With your childhood flames on your midnight rug,
And your Spanish manners and your mother’s drugs,
And your cowboy mouth and your curfew plugs,
Who among them do you think could resist you?
Sad-eyed lady of the lowlands,
Where the sad-eyed prophet says that no man comes,
My warehouse eyes, my Arabian drums,
Should I leave them by your gate,
Or, sad-eyed lady, should I wait?
Oh, the farmers and the businessmen, they all did decide
To show you the dead angels that they used to hide
But why did they pick you to sympathize with their side?
Oh, how could they ever mistake you?
They wished you’d accepted the blame for the farm,
But with the sea at your feet and the phony false alarm,
And with the child of a hoodlum wrapped up in your arms,
How could they ever, ever persuade you?
Sad-eyed lady of the lowlands,
Where the sad-eyed prophet says that no man comes,
My warehouse eyes, my Arabian drums,
Should I leave them by your gate,
Or, sad-eyed lady, should I wait?
With your sheet-metal memory of Cannery Row,
And your magazine-husband who one day just had to go,
And your gentleness now, which you just can’t help but show,
Who among them do you think would employ you?
Now you stand with your thief, you’re on his parole
With your holy medallion which your fingertips fold,
And your saintlike face and your ghostlike soul,
Oh, who among them do you think could destroy you
Sad-eyed lady of the lowlands,
Where the sad-eyed prophet says that no man comes
My warehouse eyes, my Arabian drums,
Should I leave them by your gate,
Or, sad-eyed lady, should I wait?
The Beat Patrol 