Songlines

Despite listening to my music over the last couple of decades, I can honestly put my hand on my heart and claim I do not know the words of any song in their entirety – not even my national anthem! What follows below is a jumbled collection, in no particular order, of lines from a variety of song, singers and bands that pop into my head now and then and which I am prone to bellow raucously as I drive down the freeway. Even better when I can manoeuvre a conversation around so that I can then mutter an appropriate line or two. 

Someone might comment on a sunset and I could chip in with Dylan’s line – ‘Look at that sun / sinking like a ship’. I remember back in my old student days, a lawyer friend and I would, in an attempt to entice female company(!) exchange roles in a pre-scripted dialogue (originally, I think, between Gladstone and Disraeli two British Prime Ministers.) as in

“You sirrah, will die of the pox or upon the gallows”

“That would depend, sir, if I were to embrace your mistress or your principles’.

Don’t know what all these random spurts of memory say about me. What if … these random selections mean something in the context of my life?

Anyway, welcome to my music. I know the bare words are only half the music but the technology of ‘lifting’ a few lines from my music  and then pasting or uploading or whatever still eludes me, I’m afraid. A learning curve to which I can look forward?

Apologies to Bruce Chatwin, whose novel (?) Songlines refers to the connection between the dreaming tracks across the land and sky of Australia, where the ancestral spirits created the land’s features and lore during the Dreaming, and Aboriginal songs of wandering ‘creator-beings’.

1. I like the smile in your fingertips / I like the way you move your hips

2. Lord of Mercy, I think its the cops / And Amelie drops everything she gots / down into the street below.

3. Just do the steps that you’ve been shown / by everyone you’ve ever known / until the dance becomes your very own

4. You smiled at me like I was young / it took my breath away

5. I need something strong to distract my mind / I’m going to stare at you until my eyes go blind.

6. I was raised in the country / been working in the town / I’ve been in trouble ever since I put my suitcase down

7. Two worlds and in between / Love lost, fire at will / Dum-dum bullets and shoot to kill

8. I’ve got money in my pocket and I’ve time to kill

9. Look at that sun – sinking like a ship

10. Put your make up on and fix your hair up pretty / Meet me tonight in Atlantic City.

11. House boy knows that he is doing allright / Shoulda hear him just around midnight

12. One thing I did wrong / Stayed in Mississippi a day too long

13. Like a river that don’t know where it’s flowing/ I took a wrong turn and just kept going.

14. Mister I ain’t a boy/ No, I’m a man and I believe in the promised land

15. The Johnny Walker wisdom running high / she’s rubbing up the world against her thigh … /

16. Ran into a chum with a bottle of rum / and we ended up drinking all night

17. Oh, we can be heroes / just for one day

18. I went home with a waitress, like I always do / How was I to know she was with the Russians too? Send lawyers, guns and money / the shit has hit the fan.

19. You don’t need a lawyer / I’m not making a claim / You don’t need to surrender / I’m not taking aim

20. I see you standing there / doing nothin’/ Go on an’ do the work’

21. What kind of fuckery is this?

22. I got up this morning  / and had myself a beer

23. And a pair of brown eyes were looking at me.

24.Sprung from cages on Highway 9

25. We only said goodbye in words …

26. I was fighting with temptation / but I didn’t want to win /a man like me / don’t like to see temptation caving in.

27. Life is a series of hellos and goodbyes / I’m afraid it’s time for goodbye again.

28. These changes in latitudes, changes in attitudes / Nothing remains quite the same.

29. Yankee sailors dressed up nice, take the sub up / so they can get on down / to that jukebox in Siberia / If you are CIA or KGB / They might let you in for free

30. I know you’re right, you always are / you’re right about the blues / your lips on mine you’d never choose

31. We live and we die, we know not why / But I’ll be with you when the deal goes down.

32. I put my hand upon the lever / to make it rock and roll

33. I don’t need any guide / I already know the way

34. It looks like freedom but it feels like death / it’s something in between, I guess  / And I lift my glass to the awful truth / which you can’t reveal to the innocent youth /‘cept to say it isn’t worth a damn

35. I’ve got the pork chop, she’s got the pie / She ain’t no angel and neither am I

36. Sad to say, I must be on my way / so buy me beer and whiskey / ‘cause I’m going far away 

37. Even though she sleeps upon your satin / even though she wakes you with a kiss / do not say the moment was imagined / do not stoop to strategies like this

38. Everybody’s going and I want to go too / Don’t want to take a chance with somebody new

39. Why do you have to be so undemanding? / I need more / and I need all the love that I can get

40. ‘Cos I’m an anyway the wind blows rider / with a grin like a river getting wider

41. it’s just another tequila sunrise

42. Let nothing come between / a simple man, simple dreams

43. I turned my back on the devil / turned my back on the angel too

They ought to give my heart a medal / for lettin’ go of you

44 Why try to change me now?