1. |
Lucinda
06:49
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Lucinda was a girl I'm told
Her hair was black and her heart was cold
Her lips were red and her eyes were dark
She lived in an old amusement park
I've heard folk say in the dead of night
She roams the scaffold neon lights.
Looking for her home
Lucinda was a girl I saw
Her hair was red and her heart was raw
Her nails were black and her eyes were green
She was old at 17
She walked one night in the evening air
To the carousel at the boardwalk fair
She never made it home
Lucinda vanished late one June
On a balmy night and a harvest moon
On her way to meet an older man
Or a college boy in an old Trans-Am
She slammed the door, did not look back
Hurried down the dusty track
She never made it home
Lucinda was a girl I met
In a '55 Blue Flame Corvette
Her eyes were brown and her hair distressed
She told me she was headed west
She gunned the engine to the floor
And disappeared for evermore
She never made it home
Lucinda cast a shadow black
They found her down by the railroad track
On the wonder wheel, on the ghost train ride
In the ebb and flow of the sunset tide
On the carousel, in the old arcade
On the Santa Clara esplanade
She never made it home
Lucinda was a girl I knew.
Her hair was blond and her eyes were blue
Her heart was warm and her smile was wide
They found her on the ghost train ride.
I've heard folk say on a quiet day
You can hear her cries from miles away
Finding her way home
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2. |
Travis Hedges
03:55
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Travis Hedges was born at sea
In for a life of infamy
To a girl from a dusty market town
In a torn and soiled bridal gown
As the seas leapt up and the waves crashed down
Sought his fortune in London Town
At a trading post of world renown
Sold golden eggs from a market stall
Then journeyed beyond the city's walls and
Founded the town of Bedford Falls
He founded Camden's finest zoo
The sort of thing boys ought to do
And filled it with the wildest beasts
From north and west and south and east
Then set them free on day release
Travis filled a room with balloons
To capture April's fullest moon
He launched a lasso to the night
Brought down the moon with all his might
And locked it up, as was his right
Thought of him the other day
When his oldest foe done passed away
No longer know where he resides
Somewhere out beyond the tides
Take your glasses one and all
A toast to mighty Travis's call
We'll come running when he shouts
And follow him into the mouth
And never ever ever shall we doubt
They say his father a psiren met
And tore his body from his head
But not before the seed was sewn
That made young Travis fully grown
His legend carved in living stone
Travis climbed a mountain high
And poked great Zeus in the eye
Then got drunk on Roman wine
Just to pass the evening time
With Aphrodite's daughters fine
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3. |
Tattoo Flash
04:13
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When Tattoo Flash was young and brash he was sent to meet the jailer
I've heard it said he killed him dead and was sentenced to hard labour
In 1810 with other bad men, board the Neptune to Australia
He returned one spring as a different thing on the body of a sailor
Now the sailor's name was Steven, a lad from Plymouth town
He'd retained his innocence though he sailed the world around
In Singapore he went ashore to mark his skin with art
The piece he chose was sinister but Steven thought it smart
It took two weeks for the piece to heal, in that time Steven changed
He turned from an innocent sailing boy, to be bitter and deranged
When they cast him off in China, the crew was ten men down
Steven Smith had killed them all, then terrorised the town
I am dust I am bones I am ink on your skin
I am evil and wrong and insane
I am lines in a book won't you give me a look
I am ink in your blood and your brain
Once there was a parlour near the new York city port
A man named Sam O'Reilly was the artist they all sought
The guvnor tattooed customers who'd come from far and wide
People from the boroughs, people swept in on the tide
When people came into the shop without a clear idea
O'Reilly showed them pieces he'd collected down the years
And so it came to pass he inked a man from Illinois
Who ended up a murdering a hundred orphan boys
In Jamaica, in Japan, in Korea and Bhutan
In New Zealand and Samoa and a hundred other lands
In a dusty book of work there lurks a glimpse of darker times
And woe betide the bastard who is drawn to that design
When Tattoo Flash was five years old, his daddy held him still
And marked the flesh of his innocent boy
With an evil as old as the hills
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4. |
Like I Held You Down
05:07
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Got a suitcase in my brain
And a raven in my hand
My thoughts ran out the door
And my hands are flecked with blood
Since you were everything to me
I’m grieving all the time
My carousel flight eyes
No sharper than a butter knife
My legs are out of stock
And my hair has said good night
Since you were always the focus
I’m crying like a child
Hold me down
Hold me down til I’m gone
They said that I was cured
But in this room I’m just preserved
Late at night when I’m alone
The years how they’ve flown
Since you were everything too me
But I never got your name
Hold me down
Hold me down like I held you down
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5. |
Dybbuk
04:01
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I’m just an idea roaming the land
And everywhere I go, I’m a different man
Looking at the world through different eyes
The flesh is the best disguise
Living a life that is not my own
Trapped in a body, all alone
Seeking to put right what once went wrong
With a feeling that I don’t belong
I don’t know what I did
Or what I didn’t do
What I wouldn’t do to be with you again
And in my own skin
I had a sweetheart in my old life
We couldn’t be parted with a switchblade knife
But now I exist on a different plane
I may never see her again
We had a love that was strong and sound
Perfect kids and a basset hound
A great big house with a picket fence
Now we live in a different tense
Oh how I hate that I’m on this track
Oh how I long for my old life back
Oy gevolt! How I curse these bones
And a constant stream of clones.
But there’s a girl who I met this week
Makes me glad of my new physique
When she smiles, I am someone new
A man with a brighter view
It was all going fine
Until I fell for her
Now I long to stay in this new life of mine
And not my old skin
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6. |
And You Dance
05:12
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Well you're drunk and you're dressed
In your Sunday best
By the grave on burial day
Folks say that you're coasting
Cos you're brazenly boasting
The deceased was a beast anyway
Now they say they need closure
And demand your composure
For the generous man we have lost
But the truth they've contrived
How he touched all our lives
Is a crock I would mock and riposte
Now you're shaking maracas as they shovel the dirt
Playing the trumpet as they're sullen and hurt
And your melody's lilting while their dreams are left wilting
And you dance as their rhythms are cut-off and curt
Now you're drunk and you're dressed
In your Sunday best
The day after burial day
And you're no longer coasting
Cos you're tipsily toasting
Here's to pissing your whole life away
Now you're sober but you're swaying
While your host lies decaying
Still hellbent on causing a scene
But the moment has finished
And your prospects diminished
And it's only yourself you demean
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7. |
The World Thunderstruck
01:56
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The town is fed on lonely souls
My body is out with the flowers
Smiling down on house and garden
Put in the grave you left behind
So mute the vase and love the vase
Love the vase and love, love god
Save me
Hold me
My heart aches I know
It’s a world for you
The times we’d leave in old boats and sorrow
Mutated for tomorrow
It’s all old guard you know where to put it
It fits all wrong so go on and stick it
You love the vase and hate all wrong
Your god’s out of luck you can’t go on
I must replace my hand in the glove
It’s too late now the wheel’s come off
The wheel
Shut
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Penny Orchids UK
tall tales, tragedies, cheap sideshow distractions
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