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Final Cuts

Final Cuts

Front Matter

Final Cuts. Copyright © 1990 by Arthur "Buddy" Newkirk. All rights reserved. Produced in the United States of America. No part of this text may be used or reproduced in any manner, especially in digital format, without the express written permission of Torvex Productions, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

Splash screen photo ©1980 Emily Keane

Acknowledgements

Mechanical Sterility Music: Lyrics from "Black Label Bastard," by Blood Pumping Stumps ©1986 by Mechanical Sterility, used by permission; all rights reserved. Dont fuck with them. They have a seriously heavy lawyer.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Newkirk, Arthur "Buddy"
Final cuts: a history in lyrics/Arthur "Buddy" Newkirk
134 cards. 512x342 pixels.
Includes discographical references(c.27) and find command.
ISBN foo:$bar.baz
1. The retiles (Musical group) 2. Rock Musicians -United States- biography. 3. Newkirk, Arthur,
1956--Technique
I. Title.

Final Cuts

Dedication

To the reptiles:
thunder lizards
one and all.

And,
of course,
to
Emily.

Final Cuts

Table of Contents

Contents

............. ... ...
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Lyrics.......................................the reptiles

 
 
 

Blood Pumping Stumps
 

Art Newkirk
 
 
 

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Introduction

Introduction 1

First Cut

"Look at me standing out here all alone."–Art



 Here, such as is, is the history of the reptiles...and one particular reptile, Buddy Newkirk. I've made several assumptions about you—yes you—the reader.
 First, is that you have a Macintosh. That's a big assumption. But since the reptiles worked the intersect of art/zines/sf, a large percentage of our audience was at home in the Matrix. Some of them even lived there full time...
 Second, that you know something about the reps' music. Without that a priori knowledge, I suspect this compilation will be something less than coherent. I haven't tried (beyond some minimal, sketchy notes) to indicate either the genesis or the cross-linkages in the music. You probably know that already.
 Last, that you have a certain degree of intellectual rigor. Because, as you know, I lie. Or let me put it this way: I say things which I do not necessarily believe, or which I do not think are 'true,' simply for their exploratory value. Believe everything, at least temporarily. But believe nothing forever. Since I've put this together myself, you have only my word that it's accurate. But then, if you were interested in objective truth, you certainly wouldn't be listening to the reptiles...
 There is probably more to be said, but I can't imagine why. Music speaks louder than words. Music, then.
 -Art

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Introduction...meet the reptiles

Introduction 2

School Dose

"Dance 'til you puke"–Vox



 Syracuse University, where the reptiles first slithered into proximity, used to have a truly legendary club, the Jabberwocky. Set into the basement of a dining hall, it was called "The Jab" for short. It was a very Sixties establishment, even though we all met there in the late 1970's. Wooden decor, a funky stage along one wall, and murals out of "Alice in Wonderland," featuring, over the bar, a prominent reptilian Jabberwock itself. Perhaps this influenced our choice of name? Perhaps. Small-label bands and even big name acts that preferred intimate venues were there almost every week. But Friday was local band night.
 On Friday evenings there was a two-for-one drink special followed by at least two, and usually three of Central New York's finest bands, like the Flashcubes, or 145. SOP was to get yourself a couple of White Russians (with the heavy hands of them Friday nite tenders, they were more like Clear Russians) snag a table near the stage, and then dance and drink until they hosed us out.
 My fondest memory is actually playing on that very stage, one very twisted Friday night. To be where one saw one's heroes—this is a priviledge denied to all but a few in this criminal world. The energy, the wild power of even that small audience was enough to convince all of us that it was worth risking anything to get that kind of feeling out in the Real World. We knew what we wanted to be.
 Isn't that really what college is supposed to be all about?

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Introduction...where they were when

Introduction 3

Where Did We Get The Name

"oi herpeti"–Mu



 That's a good, perhaps the best, question. I wish there were a clear, unequivocal answer. All of the following are true.
 We were majorly influenced by the work of underground comix artist Vaughn Bodé. Bodé's work featured that sinuous freehand popularized by Ralph Bakshi, now a commonplace of much graffitti spraycan work. And he used lots of reptiles, as, I guess, symbols of the primal unconscious. He had been at SU recently enough that some folks who knew him were still floating around in UFO or the Science Fiction Society (you can see the gargoylic spire of Crouse College in many of his cartoons) and was regarded as a role model. If he did it, so could we. Hell, he was famous. We only wanted to have a van and play some clubs. That's us.
 Page 54 of "Naked Lunch" in the "Black Meat" section. Old Bill Lee uses reptiles sort of like Bakshi, only with a more malevolent, incisive twist. His reps tend to be dark, slithery monsters linked with large, paranoiac realities. That's us.
 The Bible. Aren't snakes reptiles? Well, they're serpents. Maybe we should call ourselves the Serpents? Nah. Sounds too Brit. Reptiles. And you can call 'em "reps" for short. Good to have a short name. And especially good to have a name prefaced with 'the.' As in "the" reptiles. That's us.
 We had just read Sagan's "Dragons of Eden." According to Sagan, the reps were a major force in the development of human consciousness. That's us.

Final Cuts

Introduction...all you zombies

Introduction 4

Origin Issue

"Songs from a cooler moon."–Neal



 We coalesced around a nucleus that was the intersection of three key technologies: theater, film, and television. Or you could see it as the modalities of poetry, art, and journalism. We had fallen into college at a pivotal time: the changes that the Sixties had wrought were percolating through culture, trust in government had been shattered forever by the evil escapades of Richard Nixon, and television—especially TV news—was at its zenith.
 Mu and Al Magnusson came from the SU Dramatic Society. Neal and Will came from the University Film Organization. Buddy was halfway between SUDS and the Communications school. Vox was a sound engineer from the Drama (or as we all called it, Dharma) Department. Jackie Zeichner was an English major who dabbled. Emily Keane, absent presence, audience organizer, publicist & shameless hustler of many a central New York club owner, was Film school.
 I guess it began as we noticed each other doing the same things: lying trashed in the front row of Gifford Auditorium watching "Phantom of the Paradise," hacking together a production of "Candide" in record time, popping up on cable, from the Comm school's talent-hungry production classes, pogoing to Wreckless Eric at Lost Horizon, carrying traysfull of Chuck's fifteen-cent Sunday nite specials.
 And then there was this House that we used to live in...but that's another story, for another day.

Final Cuts

Headshots

Headshots 1

Alpdrücken ims Ulmstrasse

"Who got his fucking brain?"–Will



 It's not that the reptiles were camera shy. Quite the opposite. You'll never meet a group of folks who more liked to record every nuance of their ordinary day-to-dayness. But perhaps for precisely that reason, the attempt to capture the essence of the ordinary, the reps were loathe to send out glossies in press kits, or even have headshots on the albums. Instead, they relied on their pal, poet Jackie Zeichner who was the archivist of the bunch, and who kept shoeboxes stuffed with quite ordinary snapshot-style photos under his bed with the dozens of sketchbooks full of bar conversation, playlists, scribbled patter, sketches of people (or more often, the omnipresent Still Life With Beer Pitcher) ticket stubs, 3-D glasses, busted E-strings ("The little fucker that BREAKS all the time"-Mu) and a more or less random assortment of matchbooks, (hey, remember matchbooks?) blood-smeared handkerchiefs, grand apocalyptic plans, and phone numbers we were supposed to call for one or another reason. How to fit all that into a cassette case? Well, you couldn't.
 The headshots that follow are all from one session, shot in June of 1984 in the garage at the Flatbush herpetarium (reptile den). Some of the photos were taken by Jackie, but most were candids snapped by whoever could focus.
 Not pictured: proto-rep Brandon Edmonds, reptile poets-in-residence Al Magnusson and Jackie Zeichner, semi-manager Emily Keane.

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Headshots...pictures of the gone world

Headshots 2

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Headshots 3

 Neil Carty was born in Batavia, NY in 1963. A classically trained acousitc guitarist, he attended Syracuse University's Crouse College of Music, where he majored in composition. His senior recital piece, "Music for Your Reflection," was a four- voice fugue for solo electric guitar with effects boxes and digital delay. His guitar pyrotechnics created the classic reptile sound: thick, wall of noise chords and hobgoblin whammy-bar solos that ran through your head like steak knives. The t-shirt sports a pic of his hero, Tim Leary.

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Headshots 4

Born Lazar Tzedek Cohen in Williamsburg, Brooklyn in 1960, Vox renamed himself after his first guitar, the classic Brit electric teardrop. Yes, that's an alef on his arm. During his years at SU, he studied sound production and also worked as a sound designer for the university concert board, SUDS, and several regional theatre companies. Fascinated by audio from an early age and trained as a singer, he provided multi-instrument support, vocals, and vital sound-system expertise to the reptiles. His reputation as a party animal is uncontested.

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Headshots 5

Mitchell Ubel, born in 1960, was raised in a commune near Tully, NY, by parents that were early hippies who lived and traded with the Onondaga on the nearby reservation. This perhaps explains his role as shamanic visionary and trickster poet of the reptiles. His spare lyrical style veered from sacramental monologues reminiscent of Jim Morrison to gonzo diatribes á la Thompson. Often, in the same sentence. He played bass and rhythm electric in addition to vocals. He renamed himself in 1980, after Gődel, Escher, Bach.

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Headshots 6

William Neustadter was born in Birmingham, Alabama in 1957. His early fascination with building led him to SU's engineering school and an avocation as a set designer for SUDS. He trained himself as a drummer, largely because none of the other reps could even hold a steady beat. His rapidfire percussion tracks became the backbone of the reptiles spacy sound and they would often wander off the stage to have a beer or two while he worked his kit. Whit an engineer's eye for cinema, Will ran UFO for several years, and published a sucession of film zines before turning pro.

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Headshots 7

Arthur "Buddy" Newkirk was born in Pirate Cove, RI in 1956. His folks moved to New York City in 1972, where he found folk music, the taproot of his lyrical sensibility. He went to SU as a comm major, but never earned a degree, kicking around for nearly seven years, changing majors just often enough to preclude any chance of graduation. He has published sf shorts and written a screenplay. With Mu, the founder of the reptiles, he wrote much of their early material and provided lead vocal and acoustic guitar. He plays a Guild D-46.

Final Cuts

Chronology...

Chronology 1

Portrait of the Art as a Young reptile

"Hot Slices!"–Varsity pizza



 What would, by analogy to the reptiles, have been called the eukaryotes began as a kind of a dorm thing, up on the 3rd floor East of Flint Hall in the Fall of 1975. How's that for an offensive, offputting lead-in, eh? We had a couple of guys with guitars, and we used to get really whacked and sit around the pool table which improbably occupied the lounge on the end of the floor, and while stoned pool-cue virtuosos clacked dissonant polyrythms, we'd jam on some Dead covers, or Dylan, or CSN&Y. All guitar, picky stuff, maybe, or lush strummed ballads. An occasional Pink Floyd, when someone was wired enough to try the acoustic lead on "Wish You Were Here." Ah, youth.
 The late Seventies were a time of tremendous ferment. The campus was still in the loose spacetime-warp of the Sixties, and sex, drugs, and rock&roll hadn't yet been blamed for all of the Administration's problems. A show called "Saturday Night" was bringing a brand new voice to a generation of politically-aware comedian-hipsters, and commercial television would never be the same.
 Art and his first-year dorm roommate Brandon J. Edmonds called themselves The Maharishi Calypso Band , and played two-guitar lunacies at open mike nights, including the offensive plane-crash tune that got them mentioned (uh...not favorably) in the Syracuse papers: "Santa Cruz de Tenerife/Everybody filled with grief/Here in the Canary Isles/The mangled corpses lie for miles..."

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Chronology...SU

Chronology 2

Eat Flaming Death

"Play."–Al Magnusson's mantra



 The purpose of play is discovering limits; both in a cognitive sense and a mathematical. Play is what all thinking critter children do. They have to. Not being hardwired, they have to discover, in non-survival environments, the skills that will enable them to compete in the larger world beyond the playpen wall. And that's what we, as a culture, have lost. As the Seventies turned into the gray Republican '80s, colleges went from spaces for exploration into the worm-factories parodied in "Another Brick in the Wall." Well, we said, “fuck that.” Play.
 We did. Mu joined the group, who now began to call themselves the reptiles. We did a few all-guitar gigs, then Vox came on board and showed the possibilities of drum machines and tape loops. Then one night, when the reps gave an impromptu concert on the Quad, Neal and Will wandered over, really wasted. We went back and jammed at Neal's Ostrom Avenue apartment. Neal Carty and Vox's digital infusion convinced us that effects boxes represent an as yet undocumented Piagetian stage, one which we intended to probe. Play.
 From 1978 to 1981 we played every Syracuse club, opening for bands like The Dendrites, Sex, Inc., The Toadstools, The Genomes, and Mutant 59 (who went on to a successful career in medium-size venues in Canada.) We had recorded Reptile Fear , our first cassette album. We had gone about as far as a reptile could in central New York. Besides, some of us were in danger of actually graduating ...

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Chronology...live at the jab

Chronology 3

Live at the Dome with Al Haig

"US guns killed US nuns!"–chant



 It was May 1981, and it was the fall of the city of God. The Dome had become a massive concrete reality; the US was funding the Contras, and Al Haig was the commencement speaker. Don't ask. But if you check, you'll find the links between the Haigster, UT and Carrier. Well, we decided that this would be a just and meet venue for the reptiles farewell performance. The Secret Service handled it pretty well, considering...
 Eleven lines deleted at the insistence of the author's attorney
 I woke up facedown on the livingroom floor at our house on Wickenden street, wrapped in a rug, and with the front of my face swollen to twice its normal size and one of my teeth in snapped agony. I fixed up a jelly jar of lemonade and Wild Turkey, and shambled down to the bus station to leave Syracuse forever.
 Three days and three less teeth later, I was ensconsed in a haze of painkillers, cranking out the tunes that were to become Happy Oviraptor. In the year that followed, Mu, Vox and Neal were still in Syracuse, Will was in New York, and I was in Rhode Island. Although we still got together occasionally to jam (and less frequently to play out) there was a sense of hiatus, and perhaps dissolution, about the whole enterprise.
 The reanimation of the reps would wait until 1982, when Mu moved the whole operation into the Zone.

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Chronology...NYC

Chronology 4

In The Zone

"We're on a mission from Fred."–Mu



 Mu rented a truck. A big fucker. And on the morning of June 12, 1982, he drove around to people's houses, gathering up their musical instruments and furniture, and then he hauled it down to New York City, where he deposited it in an apartment on West 109th Street, just off Broadway. One of our friends was in the process of rehabbing the building, so we got two adjacent apartments with the intervening walls already knocked out. We had a huge party where we put up steel window gates and slapped a coat of paint on the fresh plasterboard. We even had a pseudo-studio, with mattresses culled from the neighborhood's trash nailed up around the room as sound baffles. It was our office, rehearsal space, and crash pad for the next two years. Mu, in the grand tradition of named apartments, dubbed it The Zone.
 We began playing out in the city by late summer, at first doing open mikes and sunday afternoons, and gradually escalating to weeknights, then finally weekend shots, opening for the up-and-coming commercial fodder the labels cycled through the NY club scene. Magic Warfare is from this period. But so are some of the tunes from Black Label Bastard . The band was already beginning to show signs of strain, as different folks began to see themselves as identifying with different segments of the audience. As long as there was a common denominator (like the hardcore-spacenoise-wierdness factor) the center would hold. For now.

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Chronology...on tour

Chronology 5

We're All Gonzo on this Bus

"64,928."–Neal, counting gas stations



 Vox bought a van. An ancient, microcephalic VW bus, in a green and white two-tone combo. It had no heat in the winter and got roasty-toasty in the mildest sunshine, but it held the equipment, got us from place to place, and was home. Man, was it home. Most of the time, we couldn't afford to stay in motels (or want to stay in the kind of motels we could afford...) or leave a van full of marginally expensive equipment unattended. Although, sometimes it seemed like a good idea. At least if someone stole it, we would be relieved of the job of humping it into clubs in the morning and then humping it back out again at two a.m., tired and drunk, to crash in the club parking lot. Nothing like the smell of five drunk reptiles sleeping in a steel box. In the mornings, we would have to squeegee the human dew off the windows before we could lurch off in search of the day's gig.
 We got as far north as Toronto (which was a wonderful experience. The club scene there was really happening.) and as far south as Austin, Texas (which was also cool.) As far west as Tulsa (which sucked the BIG one...) and as far east as Boston. Neal Carty, somewhere around Indianapolis, decided he wanted to know how many gas stations there were in the US. It seeemed like a fair question. Nobody could answer it, so he started counting. Still is, as far as I know.
 All clubs are the same. The folks who come, and listen, and dance, all the faces in the night, they made it happen. That was the greatest part of the trip.

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Chronology...studio

Chronology 6

Garage Noise

"Someday..."–an ad



 It was a high time. Fall of 1983, and we actually had a record contract. We were in the studio every day working on Something Called Magic Warfare . It sounds so hip to say that, like we were sitting in those enormous control rooms that you see in interviews with Peter Gabriel. No. We were in the basement of a house in Midwood, Brooklyn, and the control room was upstairs. When we had to start over, we would "elect" someone to hike up the stairs to talk with Aaron, the engineer. That was okay, though, it gave the unlucky victim a chance to snag the thirsty reps some brewskis from the fridge on the way back down. We partied late into the night, every night. Part of the ceremony was to dub off the day's work, drive back to my rented basement in Flatbush, and crit. Then get down to the serious drinking & playing, working on new stuff for the next day. At the end of the evening, we'd fire up the tiny b&w tube and watchOvernight.
 It was the first—and last—time I trusted anything I heard on the news. A high-water mark in journalism whose like we shall never see again, a few years too early to ply the tepid waters of the all-night headline news audience, and about two standard deviations too far to the left of center to survive in the Reagan era, Overnight was a long-format news show that ran lots of foreign tape and gave us all a glimpse of the fantastic possibilities of the medium.
 When it got killed in December, we decided that 1984 had started early. It had.

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Chronology...schism

Chronology 7

Lemmatizing the Stumps

"Raw meat, I'll never leave you."–BPS



 It was, in some sense, my fault. I was always the one whose lyrics veered off into the artsy-poetic end of the spectrum. I had this idea of creating multimedia fictions (even before I knew that that's what they were called) and somehow incorporating music into them. What would be, in this new digital universe, the equivalent of the musicals we had done back in SUDS. Like Dennis Potter's unconventional integration of music and television. Or like the young Welles, using the fictive constraints of radio and film as frameworks for the narratives themselves.
 Yeah, see? That's my problem. Insufficient contact with reality.
 What we were was a moderately successful small-venue Dead/Floyd-flavored space rock band. In America, once you create a market niche, you either clamp on for dear life or you speciate your product (New improved reptiles light!) but you do NOT, take my advice, change. Give the public just what you gave them before, only tie a different color ribbon on the box. (Dolphin-safe, caffeine-free reptiles with no tropical oils.) Product variations and line extensions are the safest way to go after the shrinking share-of-mind of an increasingly demassified mass market.
 After Magic Warfare, which had gone about as far in the art-rock direction as the reps wanted to go, the band more or less dissolved. Led by Vox, it was reconsituted as the Blood Pumping Stumps, and we recorded one live/studio album in Cleveland, the home of rock and roll. They went their way after that.

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Chronology...dispora

Chronology 8

Chonyid Bardo

"Follow the Clear Light."–Book of the Dead



 It was eerie. I had written a silly piece of juvenile fiction, called "How Brandon Became the Czar of New York," in which the proto-reptiles succeed in becoming famous, only to suffer surreal reversal and dispersion. During 1984 and '85, reality seemed to be echoing my own bizarre scenario. Reagan had been re-elected. Life in the inner cities was getting precarious. My own personal life (the one departure from my premonitory fiction) was inchoate. See Emily and Killing Time.
 The reptiles had been cut back to stumps, and the stumps were dispersed to various cities in search of jobs, gigs, late-act love interests. Vox stayed in Cleveland, becoming part of that city's booming underground press/music scene. Mu got a high-paying job doing magazine illustration in New York. Neal was picked up by a power-thrash headbanging band. You probably know who. Will spent some time out on the West Coast, doing that Hollywood thing. Then he ended up, of all places, back in Syracuse. I wrapped my second tour of duty in NYC feeling like a character from Herr or Hasford. The golden shower of trickle-down Reaganomics had made the inner city a nightmare of fear and tactical weaponry. Maybe Mumford was right about cities. When they outgrew the human scale, they courted destruction. And 10 years of benevolent neglect from Washington certainly seems to have consummated it. I fled back to Pirate Cove.
 What can you do, but wait for the Light and contemplate Retribution.

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Discography

album covers reptile fear album cover happy oviraptor album cover Magic warefare album cover Blood pumping album cover Emily and the time machine alnum cover Killing time album cover Retribution album cover

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Discography 24

Tune List 9/21/88



Reptile Fear
Eat Flaming Death
Oh, Mama
Hostage In The Embassy Of Love
Jungle Jesus
D-D-D-D-Dead
Smash the Fucking TV
Fallen Angels
The Aliens

Happy Oviraptor
Alamogordo
I Am Calling Robert
Underground Railroad
The Hands of Captain Ludd
All Our Yesterdays
Columbus Circle
Road Song 1980
Oh, Washington
I Don't Know If I Can Cry Anymore
Wasting Time

Something Called Magic Warfare
Atman
Chonyid Bardo
Worldly Pursuits
The Postman Must Be Silenced
Sandinista
Alger
DNA/The Anitchrist
Trail of Mars
Godel's Karma

Black Label Bastard
Great American Dream Machine
Why Don't You Die
My Bag of Hair
Destruct-O-Party
Raw Meat
House Of Flies
Blind Drunk
Carnival Dogs Consumed My Hand
Pants Of Satan
Hitler Blues
The Code
Risky Words
H.O.T.S

The Story of Emily and the Time Machine
Time Machine #1
Cape Fear Part 1
Emily (What Do I Say To You?)
(I Been) Walking Alone
Pain/Come Along
Cape Fear Part 2
Equals
White Subway
Time Machine #2
Moving Clox
Emily (Lost And Found Dead)
Time Machine #3
Meop Evol
Slowly Light Begins To Dawn
Time Machine #4
Titanic
Genius Gone Insane
Mister Softee Suite: Brain Death/Nothing
Humanly Possible/Bottom of the Well
Time Machine #5
Emily (Maybe in the Future)

Killing Time
Make All Your Dreams Come True
Tell Me Why
Slowly Light Begins To Dawn II
Desert Song
Falling Apart/Druid Chant
Red Light Red
Killing Time #1
Atman
Just Another Flash In The Pan
You Make Me Whole
Becky and Bill
Make Al Your Dreams...(Reprise)
Rockaway Rock
You Make Me Whole...(Reprise)
Killing Time #2

Retribution
Bubble Memory
Newry
The Bottom Line
Talk Around Town
Midnight Movies
Jigoku no Mokushiroku
Supposed to be a Love Song
Chuchulain (A song crept by me on the water)
Amor Vincit Omnia: Love Takes it's Time/
Songs in an Empty Room/Jenkintown

Hey, kids! Make your own tune list just like Uncle Buddy! Here's what ya gotta do:

  1. Print this field. It will give you two pages of output.
  2. Take the second page, an line it up as a second column over the first.
  3. Tape the sheets together and trim.

Violá. A playlist just like the reps. Uh, except we usually have beer stains and, occasionally, vomit, on ours. We can't print that. Some things are up to you.

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Reptile Fear

Oh, man, does this cover take me back. It was designed and executed by Erwin "Pancake" Hoyle, one of our housemates who was an art major. Erwin had this habit of mixing up huge pitcherfuls of pancake batter, and then eating pancakes all week. And he would add the most improbably side-chains to these batters: luncheon meat ends from the sale case, birdseed, Jello-O, hashish, Toasteeos, Bacardi 151, Chicken soup, Bac*Os, jalapeños, Pepsi, instant coffee, cheese, Froot Loops. I hope that explains it.

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Reptile Fear

Liner Notes



The reptile fear...the big stiff one, down in the smoking subways varnished with summer heat and scrapings off intestinal villi&tuff kids from the 125th Street. This is the Number One Broadway Local, fucker.
  With a farewell kiss still wet on his memory, the Prince of Surgery is singing to himself a mantra for departure, a radiant coracle of salvation&extremes supported by a center and a center that holds without strangling&threats of death from the Playwright Cowboy and Son of Cain. He checks his clip and reholsters the autoloader.
  The Playwright Cowboy orders a gin and tonic and stops to read the financial section while falling asleep&directing tractor trailers to points whose dimension will always be two, to him, dozing in lime slumber under tinted glass, money clip embedded in thigh beginning already to stiffen with age and suntan gangrene.
  Mall Cinderella hides ugly jeans&hair&intelligence for a prowl in the gilded towers, seizing the invisible with the ephemeral, but in both hands, in solemn segue from past to future, one time, one time only, sez Rilke, who fluttered into her castle while her sisters were away and gave her the magic amulet. It now dangles, appropos of nothing, around her neck, scraping along venous flesh in a single surgical tangle.
  Constance the (m)other has no teeth&smiles her infant god smile down miles of afternoons, pregnant behind bars and praying for the first of autum and the crops, buried up to her neck in death and holding out for a bigger salary, although her slippers have already been set in luxurious beig shag. Playwright Cowboy unrolls his saddlebag full of dessicant heads for the corral.
  Contance and Mall Cinderella are busy with each other's image in the torpedo windows and have no time for the Son of Cain, who appears out of blast furnace reality with leather thongs across all limbs and sighs as he melts.
  "But we could have evolved...something." sez the Son of Cain as he becomes suet and the Funhouse Police, who have been lurking back in the ends of flourscent tubes, suck him up and set him into the little molds of lambs, Some is mixed with paraffin and used to determine if people have fired weapons recently. Some is mopped up on a crust of bread the Playwright Cowboy dabs at the cracks in the sidewalk with, in hope of catching just such a cross section of panderers, bridemaids, chop-meat delivery kids, desperate criminals, mothers on welfare, insect men, lethargic priests, phantom limbs of killers.
  The Mall Cinderella's amulet has scraped a hole in her neck, only to become a Cadillac convertible and a wallet full of platic, but she feels she must get it off before midnight, or who's to say what the late fee will be. Constance could say- she just smiles.
  Down the line, the Playwright Cowboy is already feeling the tug of events that refuse to let him catch up, to exist now rather than yesterday, to hope that tomorrow could be any different. This isn't nostalgia, this is self-mutilation pure and sinful.
  The amulet is gone. It is long past midnight and the Prince of Surgery is due in the OR any episode now, teeth glowing and ready to rub lotion on the Mall Cinderella's scraped spot. All she has to do is show him her wound and be sure he fits.

Uh, yeah, this is kind of embarassing. We thought this was REALLY fucking intense when we cooked it up, hot typewriter style, taking turns at the old Smith-Corona electric, one wacked morning at 219. It may even have been, then. But now, it shows its age with something less than grace. In fact, it seems to be slobbering and wetting itself. But waht the fuck. If you bought the cassette at one of our first gigs, this is what you would have read. So, well, just to keep it in perspective...

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Reptile Fear

Reptile Fear Playlist 1980

Eat Flaming Death
Oh, Mama
Hostage In The Embassy Of Love
Jungle Jesus
D-D-D-D-Dead
Smash the Fucking TV
Fallen Angels
The Aliens

Produced by Art and Mu Recorded at the Hanoi Hilton, Madison St., Syracuse
Art: acoustic guitar, vocals
Brandon: vocals
Mu: bass
Neal: lead guitar, effects
Vox: guitar, keyboards, effects
Will: drums

Al Magnusson: vocals on "Hostage" and "Oh, Mama."
Jackie Zeichner: Ironing board and cannister of brads on "D-D-D-D-Dead."

Final Cuts

Reptile Fear 1

EAT FLAMING DEATH
(YOU FASCIST BASTARDS)
(Music and lyrics by Buddy and Mu)



(Spoken, over)
 Well, I was drivin through the streets of downtown Brooklyn one day last month when I heard an ad on the radio said that if I sent five dollars to the Church of Fred the Yoke of Universal Consciousness located somewhere on Joralemon Street, they'd mention me to Fred and all my dreams would come true. Well I did. And they didn't. I'm still here and you're still there, wherever you are tonight, sweet Marie. (Just a figure of speech, darlin...)
 I was pretty bummed out. So I was drownin my sorrows in some Budweisers and some Jack Daniels down at J.J. Bubbles in Bay Ridge when I saw this ad on the TV for the Rovco Technical Training Institute said with just a high school education, I could have my choice of various satisfying and diverse career fields. I could be an air-conditioning mechanic, or a travel agent, or a data-entry operator, or a dental assistant, or a paralegal, or a bank teller, or a audio engineer, or a auto mechanic, or a aero-dy-namic design consultant, or a pyrotechnician.
 Now a pyrotechnician is what you gotta be in the State of New York to purchase certain classes of explosives. Like dynamite. So I went down to the Rovco technical training institute, and I got my certification as a pyrotechnician. Thank you, Sallie Mae. (It's just another figure of speech, darlin...) An then I went down to Triangle Hardware and bought me a case of Number 6, (That's sixty percent nitro packed in nitrocotton) and I got my Baby Ben alarm clock, and the battery from the old Chevy and I wired the fucker up to the wheelchair stall of the third floor men's room of the Church of Fred the Yoke of Universal Consciousness located somewhere on Joralemon Street in Brooklyn. No reference to the Jehovah's Witnesses intended. This disclaimer inserted at the insistence of my attorney. And I got the hell out of there. And later on on the radio I heard that forty-seven people had been blown into a bloody mist, twelve members of the clergy included, have mercy on their souls. And I says to myself, "Now, self.." (I says). I surely hope that Fred, that Universal Yoke of Consciousness wasn't there at the time. Cause if he was, he's deader than hell...

(into song)

Refrain
 Eat flaming death you fascist bastards.
 Eat flaming death blood sucking swine.
 Eat flaming death you fascist bastards.
 Cuz The drugs are gone and so's my mind...

Every time I turn on my TV set,
They're singing about Jesus on the screen.
Time to pay a little visit to Virginia Beach
And waste some televangists with my M-16.
 FDYFB spoken : (It used to be an AR-15)
 EFDBSS     (But you can buy sear converter kits mail order)
 EFDYFB     (Full auto!)
CTDAGASMM

I went to get a copy of "Catcher in the Rye"
Out of my Public library.
They don't have it no more, it's on a list of dirty books
Banned by the Moral Majority. Thanks a LOT Jerry...
 FDYFB spoken : (I heard that Jerry Falwell has 20 full time bodyguards)
 EFDBSS     (What a challenge for a Real American Hero)
 EFDYFB     (Heh heh heh)
CTDAGASMM

It's four a.m. my mind is gone I cannot sleep
The drugs have burnt off all my hair.
The time has come to torch Saint Patrick's
Bring some gasoline and meet me there. As your attorney I advise you to...
 FDYFB spoken : (You fascist bastards)
 EFDBSS     (My wife liked swine)
 EFDYFB
CTDAGASMM

Final Cuts

Reptile Fear 2

OH, MAMA
DON'T LET THEM TAKE ME AWAY)
(Lyrics by Al Magnusson. Music by Buddy)



Oh, Mama,
Don't let them take me away.
No, no, not today.
Oh, Mama,
I'm going so far, far away.
From the U.S.A..
Oh, oh, Mama.
(accel)
There ain't no need for me to pack,
Just gimme my boots and my knapsack,
And you can burn my mail,
Cuz I'm not comin' back.
Say bye-bye
Bye bye my momma I'm
Going away.
Say bye bye
Bye bye bye my momma I'm
Leaving today.

Oh say, can you see
In the War's endless night...
Yeah, I'm gonna run to save my neck.
You can sell my books and my tape deck.
Just point my Honda towards Quebec.

Yankee Doodle
Went to war
And he found that it was phony.
All along the road, I'll think of me...
Pursued by Royal Canadian Mounties.
Or maybe a film crew from the CBC.

Oh beautiful
For spacious skies
And fields of crimson rain.
I'll be an ex-American soon.
And by that bright Canadian moon.
Sneak over the border into Saskatoon.

My country tis of thee
Sweet land of casualties.
I'm just as brave as anyone
Who wants to march and carry a gun.
I just don't want my folks to trade a flag for their son,
Back in the land
Of the free
And the home
Of my
Grave.
Oh,
Oh
Mama.

Final Cuts

Reptile Fear 3

HOSTAGE IN THE EMBASSY OF LOVE
(Lyrics by Al Magnusson. Music by Buddy)


(Fifties doo-wop)
I am your prisoner
It's sad, but it's true. Ooh.
What am I-I-I
Supposed to do?
Nothing new, huh?
(accel. to rock tempo)
I'll give you a clue,
Tell ya why I'm so blue.
It's cuz of
Guess who?
You!
That I'm a

Refrain
 Hostage in the Embassy of Love
 A hostage in the embassy of Love
 You locked me up and threw away the key
 Now I'm a hostage —
 Can't help it, I'm a hostage —
 Can't escape it, I'm a hostage
 In the embassy
 Of Love.

I've lost count of the days
Since I been in this daze.
I'm a captive in the blaze
Of your terrorist gaze.
And now I'm lost
In this
Confusing
Labyrinth
Because...

Refrain

My daddy ain't heard a word from me in years.
My momma got hit by a Trailways bus
Cause she couldn't see it coming through the veil of her tears.
My sister done gone and got a job at Sears (Where America Shops...)
To try and take her mind
Off of all her fears,
But she just breaks down and cries
Whenever she hears...

Refrain

I'm locked up in your prison....please set me free.
You're torturing me baby...gimme amnesty.
There ain't no bathroom in here...and I've got to pee.
Now I'm an in-ter-nat-ion-al...ce-leb-ri-ty.
I'm on TV.
Just think of me.
As Sandra Dee.
(Shouted)
Wayhid..itnayn...wayhid..itnayn talaytah arbacca...
Give me some diplomatic immunity.
Release me from your embassy,
Your embassy,
Your embassy
Of Love.

Final Cuts

Reptile Fear 4

JUNGLE JESUS
(Lyrics by Bob Green and Buddy. Music by Buddy)



Refrain
 J-J-Jungle Jesus
 Please come free us
 J-J-Jungle Jesus
 Please come free us
(spoken, over)
He was born in 1942 in south Viet Nam, during the French occupation of that country. And it was said that his father had a vision that told him to take the boy far away lest he be killed by the oppressor. And this his parents did, poling up the muddy Mekong Delta to his native village, where the boy, named for his true father, grew in wisdom and grace.

God the Father he dropped the bomb,
The Holy Spirit was napalm.

Refrain

(spoken, over)
And at 12, he was bar mitzvahed and he confounded the Buddhist priests and the military strategists of the Pathet Lao. And outside the temple, the people were celebrating the retreat of the French and the beginning of their long campaign for a united country.

Paul was butchering cattle in Saigon.
He said follow me, you'll be a killer of men from now on

Refrain

(spoken, over)
When he began his ministry, the enemy was now America, propping up the puppet Republic of South Viet Nam. So he wandered the countryside, gathering followers. And he spoke in many parables, like the one about how the Kingdom of God resembled the AK-47, while the Devil was the M-16.

When he arrived in Saigon the people cheered.
It was the fall of the city his disciples feared.

Refrain

(spoken, over)
It was May 1975 and it was the fall of the City of God. While American newsmen rushed to get out in planes and helicopters, the government was reporting the capture of a vicious insurrectionist who, up until that time had had the full support of the Viet Cong. With the South under their control, he was a divisive force that could no longer be tolerated. He was executed.

Paul and Matthew were comatose.
Jesus died of an overdose.

Refrain

But three days later… Ah, three days later... Yes, three days later (Get it?), his head disappeared from the spike and his body from the pile of bloated corpses in the town square. And it was said that he was seen in his native village and that he spoke with his disciples and he told them, "My kingdom was never of
This world anyway." And that it would come again — another day, another jungle.

Following the leader is the way to be free.
Drink this Kool-Aid in memory of me.

Refrain

Final Cuts

Reptile Fear 5

D-D-D-D-DEAD
(Lyrics by Mu. Additional lyrics and music by Buddy)



Just feeling fucked by everything,
Four days of heavy drinking to forget the past,
I lie on shattered glass and beer bottle caps.
Don't know what I did, but it must have been a blast.
Four days without sleep,
Nothing to eat,
Cramped muscles and a knot in my guts.
I think I went berserk,
But it must have worked,
I don't remember what I forgot. I'm...

Refrain:
 D-D-D-D-Dead
 D-D-D-D-Dead
 D-D-D-D-Dead
 D-D-D-D-Dead

Wrapped a Fury around an oak tree on a hill in Tully,
Went to some friends I trusted to calm me down.
They just bitched back over their petty annoyances,
I went to bed and shook for hours.
What the fuck do they care?
They think I'm always gonna be there.
They don't realize
That I could have died.
No one's ever come back
From that place that is black.
And all the prophets who said they did,
Well, they all fucking LIED.
And they're all...

Refrain

Interlude!
(Call and response)
Why does everything have to die?
 Because everything has to die.
Why does time only move one way?
 Because time only moves one way. Entropy.

What is the sound of one hand clapping?
 It is the sound of one hand clapping.
And do you know your Buddha nature thru the sound of one hand clapping?
 Uh...I don't think so.
Sorry Bodhisattva.

Do you believe in personal salvation?
 Billy Graham believes in personal salvation.
Even Bob Dylan now believes in personal salvation.
 Guess he ain't takin' any chances on that Sad Eyed Lady.
Sorry, Sara...

Do you know how the universe ends?
 The Universe freezes when it ends.
Unless it gets compressed back into the Primal Atom when it ends.
 What the fuck do YOU care. You're not gonna be here when it ends.
You're gonna be...

Refrain

Final Cuts

Reptile Fear 6

SMASH THE FUCKING TV
(Music and Lyrics by Buddy)



I went down to see the talking ape,
He was bulking the White House tape.
They'd got him trying to escape,
It was a Felony crime.
I had to ditch the razor blades,
The embryos had all decayed.
I began to feel betrayed,
I was having a terrible time.
I heard the sound of breaking glass,
Wondered if this was it at last.
Had to head them off at the pass,
This was Total War.
And as I heard the siren scream,
I wondered if this was all a dream.
And if it was, why was I on the losing team,
And then I hit record...

Refrain
 And the answer came to me
 This is not the way things are supposed to be
 If you want to see what they don't want you to see
 You've got to smash the fucking TV

I wondered if there was no death,
Just as I drew my final breath.
And the waiter came with another round of methadone
For me.
And in the table's stony glare,
I saw Billy Lee Burroughs standing there.
He ordered me to leave my chair
And go battle entropy.
When in the spot at center stage,
Crawled a burning man of middle age.
He cried in a twisted rage,
And this is what he had to say.
He said, "Pain can make you lose your mind,
The famous poets all went blind.
The web of fate has been designed,
To structure things this way."

Refrain
Either there is some sinister plan,
Or you can trust your fellow man.
Fu Manchu and Nayland
Smith are at it head to head.
And Bobby Dylan and Saint Jerome
Struggling to bring it all back home.
Another Season at the Dome,
With the naked and the Dead.

Refrain

Final Cuts

Reptile Fear 7

FALLEN ANGELS
(Music and Lyrics by Buddy)



I met the stranger
In a legend long ago,
And he spoke about the danger
Of the process down below.
And the people that were captured,
Imprisioned by the Sun,
They were held immobile
By the Vision they'd Become...

Refrain
 Fallen Angels
 Fallen Leaves
 Imperfect Strangers
 Crippled Thieves
 Fallen Angels
 Scattered sparks
 Fallen Angels
 Dying in the Dark.

They were staring at the clockwork
Rising up from the pits of Hell.
From that desperate location
It was impossible to tell.
What was near, and what was distant,
When was time, and where was space,
And if their meaningless existence
Had condemned them to this place.

Refrain

Trapped within a distance
That has never seen the light of day.
The path of least resistance,
Where the mindless children play.
Burdened by their dreams of glory,
Blinded by their Need,
Their lives are like a story
No one will ever read.

Refrain

There are roads that lead to nowhere;
There are paths that never cross.
And the ones who learn to live them,
Well, they are forever lost.
And the whisper of their voices
Will echo near and far,
As the light of painted candles
Reflecting back the stars.

Refrain

I got the message from the stranger
In a vision long ago.
She spoke about the danger
Of the forces down below.
For every force, there is a counterforce,
There is the Other road.
Travelled by the ones whose backs
Will never bear the load.

Refrain

Final Cuts

Reptile Fear 8

THE ALIENS
(EMBRYO/ALIENS/ORBITAL CHASE/CODA)


I. EMBRYO

The wives and the foreign tribes
Descended on the shore.
They let us through from the Other Side,
But you have closed the door.
Ancient footsteps
Echo on the floor.
We come to tell you things you can't hear anymore,
Anymore.
Anima.

Our race is ancient,
Your ways are not our own.
We knew all along that we were not alone
On the journey down from energy to stone.
We come to guide you on the long journey home,
Home to the embryo.
Embryo.



II. ALIENS

What'cha gonna tell me
This time, brother?
Bound to be
One lie or another.
Aliens...
In our sky.
They come to stay?
Aliens...
Don't ya wonder why
They'd want to come here anyway.

Aliens...
They don't think the way we do.
Aliens...
They don't think the way I do.
Aliens...
I don't think
Got any business here with man.
Aliens...
I don't think
Are a part of Jehovah's plan.

Aliens...
Aliens...
Aliens...



III. ORBITAL CHASE

Got no time to think,
Gotta know what to do,
Gotta stop this madness somehow.
But I got no time, got no way, got no power,
And there's no way out.

Aliens...
Aliens...
Aliens...

(spoken)
Get em on the next pass.
One more This time around will be their last, orbit, then they die.
This time around will be their last,
Blast the invaders from our sky.

Aliens...
Aliens...
Aliens...

The golden robots
Leave their caves,
The machine now sits upon the throne.
It is the master now,
And we are the slaves,
It will defend its own.

Aliens...
Aliens...
Aliens...

(sound fx: explosion and radio static)



IV. EMBRYO (REPRISE)

Set in space;
Set in time.
Watch the race
In their climb.
Watch them play
On the shore.
They do not know
They have been here before,
Embryo.
Embryo.



V. CODA

Embryo
Embryo
Embryo  Anima
Embryo  Anima
Embryo  Anima  Aliens
Embryo  Anima  Aliens
Embryo  Anima  Aliens
Embryo  Anima  Aliens
Embryo

Final Cuts

Happy Oviraptor

We battled back and forth with the cover concept for this album. For a long time, it had a jaunty Iguanodon giving the thumbs-up, and the album was called "Fearless reptiles." Our heads were swimming with the success our first cassette had met with, (uh, maybe we sold fifty. Or maybe we just lost 'em. We never counted the money) and we sought to capitalize on the "fear" theme. Then I found a picture of the oviraptor in a journal, and the concept fell into place. Mu did the illustration.

Final Cuts

Happy Oviraptor

 I was sitting in my room in Pirate Cove with a mouthful of bloody gauze when I got a postcard from my friend Al Magnusson. It was a picture of Einstein and Thomas Mann. They were sitting, talking, somewhere in the 1940's, before the Bomb and that Letter To Roosevelt which really showed who was the more...uh... influential writer. Everyone gives him the credit for that, but I heard it was really Leo Szilard who wrote it. As if it matters.
 The screaming just barely holds across the sky.
 Just because we are all reptiles doesn't mean there's no hope. Sagan has pointed out (In his "Dragons of Eden") that evolution doesn't know how to chuck stuff. Like old, preprogrammed reptilian responses, what Sagan calls the r-complex, way back in the hindbrain. But just cuz we're reptiles doesn't mean we got to kill.
 Take the oviraptor, for instance. Never as big in the press, or those Roy Chapman Andrews pix we had when we were kids, as, say, the Triceratops, or the Tyrannosaurus. Them dinos was obviously built for fighting. Horns. Claws. Teeth the size of a Volkswagen. That's our image of thunder lizards.
 But the oviraptor. Now that's our true ancestor. A peaceful egg-sucking thief, just like the proto-mammals we sprang from. Cousin to the fierce leaping velociraptors, and yet built without defensive or offensive weapons. A critter that must live by its wits and flee to steal another day. Must we bestride the narrow world like tyrant reptiles or is there any hope for living happily oviraptor?

-art

Final Cuts

Happy Oviraptor

Happy Oviraptor 1982

Alamogordo
I Am Calling Robert
Underground Railroad
The Hands of Captain Ludd

Columbus Circle
Road Song 1980
Oh, Washington
I Don't Know if I Can Cry Anymore
Wasting Time

Produced by Vox and Neal
Recorded, mixed and mastered in The Zone, W. 109th St. NYC.
Art: acoustic guitar, vocals
Mu: bass
Neal: lead guitar, effects
Vox: guitar, keyboards, effects
Will: drums

Final Cuts

Happy Oviraptor 1

ALAMOGORDO
(Music by Jackie Zeichner. Lyrics by Zeichner and Buddy)



It's heavy water
In heavy times.
We'll stop the slaughter
With other crimes.
Beat the Axis,
Build the Bomb.
It's US über alles
From now on.
Till it's all gone...

Refrain

 Alamogordo,
 Midnight Sun.
 Out across the desert
 On the run.
 We're under the gun...
 We're under the gun...
Well during wartime
There's no time to sleep.
And we've got secrets
We've got to keep.
But here's Mort Sobell,
And the Rosenbergs.
Seems like all your secrets
Have been heard.
Get the word...

Refrain

All of Maxwell's demons,
In the shining ore,
And the ghosts of magic
Gone before.
Feel the spirits gather
On the desert floor,
As we watch the breaking
Of nature's law.
Hear the roar...

 Jornado del muerto,
 Midnight sun.
 Out across the desert,
 On the run.
Well we tickled the dragon
Till we lit its breath.
Now Western Science
Has become Death.
We got the Fat Man
And the Little Boy.
Can't wait to show Tojo
Uncle Sam's new toy.
Bojemoi ...

 Hiroshima,
 Rising Sun.
 Out across the ocean,
 On the run.
 Nagasaki,
 Rising Sun.
 Out across the ocean,
 On the run.
 We're under the gun.
 We're under the gun.
 We're under the gun.
 We're under the gun.

Final Cuts

Happy Oviraptor 2

I AM CALLING ROBERT
(Music and lyrics by Mu and Buddy)



They are singing.
He is talking about the book.

I am receiving the news.

She is walking the dog,
They are acting like fools.
I am not
Impressed in the least.

I am calling Robert.
Calling Robert.

Calling Robert...

Final Cuts

Happy Oviraptor 3

UNDERGROUND RAILROAD
(Music and lyrics by Buddy. Alternate last verse lyrics by Will)



Refrain

 I been workin
 On the underground railroad.
 Workin
 Till the well runs dry.
 Workin.
 This ain't no milk run, baby, I been
 Workin
 And I'll be workin till I die...
We had a dream,
We had a corner of the picture.
We had a dream,
We had a corner of the sky.
We had a dream,
We stood tall with Martin.
We had a dream,
We stood eye to eye.

Refrain


We had a chance,
We had a chance to remember.
We had a chance,
We had a chance to change.
We had a chance, but we blew it in November.
We had a chance
And it won't come again.

Refrain

We had hope
For the Power and the Glory.
We had hope
For a hero to save the day.
We had hope
For a happy ending to the story.
We had hope
But it's slipping away.
Refrain
We had a job.
There was some things that needed changing.
We had a job.
There was some work to be done.
We had a job.
Lord, don't it feel so strange
To have a job
And never see the sun?

Refrain

It was a plan.
There were shooters on the railroad.
It was a plan.
There were shooters on the knoll.
It was a plan.
With a crummy planted rifle.

It was a plan,
But who was in control?

Refrain
It was a plan,
Super bullet on a stretcher.
It was a plan,
Rush the body to the plane.
It was a plan,
Botch the workup at Bethesda.
It was a plan,
But who got his fucking brain?

Refrain

Final Cuts

Happy Oviraptor 4

THE HANDS OF CAPTAIN LUDD
(Music and Lyrics by Buddy)



I was born in Cornwall
In 1793.
We made our living weaving,
Till the coming of the machines.
Now it's in and out of prison
From the factory to the tomb.
They replaced skilled human fingers
With a flashing metal loom.

Refrain
 Well, well, it's a terrible tale
 And I tell you it'll end in blood.
 But as long as I stand, I take my commands
 From the Hands of Captain Ludd.
 Well, well, it's a tortuous trail
 And I tell you it'll end in blood.
 But as long as I stand, I take my commands
 From the Hands of Captain Ludd.

For years, in slow migration
From the cottages and farms
To the bright lights of the city,
With the dreams and the false alarms,
Eight to eight at the factory gate
For enough to survive a week.
Workin like a slave for the minimum wage
Till you haven't got the strength to speak.

Refrain

When the Empire fell, the Church used the bell
For a hell of a devious scheme.
To summon their flock, they invented the clock;
They made Time with their new machine.
Down through the Middle Ages,
The central pattern grew.
Before you know it they'd taken control
And there was nothing anybody could do.

Refrain

It's big and mean; it's the Time machine.
It says "You belong to me."
We disobeyed its orders;
We set the people free.
With guns and knives, we took its lives;
We smashed its belts and gears.
We set the clock of technics back
About ten thousand years.

Refrain

We wander around from town to town
Living off the land,
Spreading the shame of the knitting frames,
Destroying whatever we can.
When the final battle comes
Between machines and men,
You know I heard the Captain say
That he's be back again.
He's coming back again...

Refrain

Final Cuts

Happy Oviraptor 5

ALL OUR YESTERDAYS
(Music and Lyrics by Buddy)
(For Mu)



Neon down the sidewalks,
Thunder in the air,
In the hot space where the crowd walked.
Now there's no one there.
Evening in the city,
The transit seems to end
Behind the painted windows.
There is no one to pretend
We had a yesterday...
Oh, yesterday...
Refrain

 And
 Light the way to dusty death.
 And we wander through the winter
 In the epic wilderness.
 And how we find our way
 Is anybody's guess.
 And we live
 From one instant
 To the next.

Refrain

Your eyes as keen as diamonds,
Your wits as sharp as nails,
You scan the skies behind you,
Along the bloody rails.
And watch for faded traces
Of all those left and failed:
The ones who never made it,
Who crushed and broken, wail
For yesterday.
To freeze a moment and make it last.
Yesterday.
To pick up the phone and dial the past

Refrain

The eye can picture fences
Where fences, there are none.
And the mind erect defenses
Which are denser than the sun.
You come to your senses
You're the man behind the hand behind the gun
They've come to get you Lee,
Your time has come.
Yesterday.
Back down the alleys and doorways of time,
Yesterday.
All the way home to the scene of the crime...


Refrain

Final Cuts

Happy Oviraptor 6

COLUMBUS' CIRCLE
(Music and Lyrics by Buddy)



It's Tuesday.
Waiting for you on the BMT,
You gonna come back to me
Or will I wait
Down
Underneath the ground?
Hanging around,
Getting late,
I
Don't remember last night.
Must have been one hell of a fight.
You split for uptown.
Now I
Gotta tell you how I feel,
Before I jump under the wheels
Of a D train Brooklyn bound.

Refrain
 Oh, Columbus Circle.
 It's another time around the Wheel,
 And I'm headin on back to Flatbush,
 Cause this uptown life ain't real.
It's heresy
to talk this way.
I don't know how to say
What's on my mind.
Maybe
We could apologize,
Cut the ties,
and leave it all behind.
But I got to get
Back on my feet again.
Maybe we'll meet again
Some sunny day,
But I'll miss you
Till the day I'm dying.
And I bet we both gonna do some
Crying on the way.

Refrain

I waited
Through the rush hours
Praying to the Powers,
Whatever they may be.
Saints and Demons, I invoked all
That the next local'll
bring you to me.
But there's silence
On down the tunnel
And my thoughts have all run down
To fear
That last night's the last night
I'll ever see you.
That we've left each other
Free and clear.

Refrain

We
Could we still be friends?
Could we make amends?
Is there a way to make ends
Meet?
Maybe
Just a little quietness.
A touch of finesse from upstairs on the street.
Express trains
Doppler by.
I can't see the sky, I wish I was home.
Nobody here
will give you the time of day,
Or point the right way,
In the subway,
You're alone.

Refrain

Final Cuts

Happy Oviraptor 7

ROAD SONG 1980
(Music and lyrics by Buddy)



You get up in the morning with a smile on your face,
Cause you know you'll go to sleep so far away.
And there's no one inbetween who's gonna try to test your case,
So you can put it off until another day.
You meet me at the station
With your suitcase and your radio
And you tell me that it's time for leaving town.
You tell me that it's died,
That you cried,
That you thought you'd never take this ride,
I can't believe how bad I let you down.
Now you're winding it out through Kansas
With Roger Waters on your radio
Whimpering some sad psychotic song.
But you're happy cuz you know
That the freedom of the road
Is all you ever wanted all along.

Refrain
 And you know the only reason
 Is it's the time of the season for you to
 Get out on the road on your own,
 And to say that you don't care
 That there ain't nobody there
 When you get home...

You don't know where you're going,
But that fear that you're showin me
Is not that you don't think there's someplace to find.
Babe, I think that you're afraid
That when you finally get it made
You'll see that what it's made you make yourself
will have made you lose your mind.
You can't stay put in Boston or Long Island or Chicago
Or a hundred other places that you've found.
You need someplace that's near,
Someplace you can start free and clear.
There's got to be some sort of neutral ground.
So you eat in all the truckstops three a.m. Howard Johnsons,
Just to try not to be all alone with yourself.
You're so wired up on speed that you scream inside the car,
Singing along with the radio until you're deaf.
Now don't the sun come up so early while you're sleepin on the roadside
And it tries to burn you down inside your car,
So you're up and on your way,
Cuz you just can't bear to stay
Another fifteen seconds where you are...

In that slick gray car you're sliding
Down the Interstate you're gliding past
The lights of a little town that could have been your home.
I guess you're gonna say
It's all right for today
To be alone...

( spoken, over ...)
I got your postcard yesterday.
I don't know what to say.
No, I've never seen the Saint Louis Arch.
I can't believe you're gone
I haven't seen you now for how long?
Never thought I'd miss anything this much.
I'm sure you'll find it;
Out there in America.
Ti Jean was right, there's something there to find.
But you've been trained with such precision
That its robbed you of your vision
And now there ain't no way that you could ever learn
You're blind...

You been to all the monuments,
The State Parks, and the campgrounds.
You visited your relatives in towns.
You been around to the backs
Of all the roadhouses and the shacks.
You watched the faces of the Jugglers and the Clowns.
Behind mosquito screening,
You contemplate the meaning
Of the lives that the people live out in the West,
Far from Mass Communication
And the modern forms of salvation,
Where the god they worship is still their final test.
And you live in constant terror
Of an apperceptive error.
I don't believe that you will ever learn
That there's noplace left on Earth
After the moment of your birth
That's not already past the point of no return...

You're sitting in a siding
In a shadowed corner hiding,
Looking for a way to get back home.
I guess you're gonna say
That's just the price we pay
For being Known.

By the time you get to Arizona,
You spent so long as a loner
That you can no longer concentrate on speech.
You can deal with gas attendents,
Bullshit your co-defendants,
But polite conversation is way beyond your reach.
And there's a point that's not so pleasant
At the edge of the Painted Desert
Where you decide that you have had enough.
There's too much alienation,
There's too much self-mutilation;
Ambition should be made of sterner stuff,
So you sit and watch the sun set
And you know that there is yet
One more stretch of road you're waiting for.
The chill of night is falling,
The desert wind is calling
From the mountain passes down
To your back door.

Refrain

Final Cuts

Happy Oviraptor 8

OH, WASHINGTON
(Music and lyrics by Buddy)



Well, it's a long walk
From that cemetary bridge
To your place on the Hill.
And you lie awake in the summer heat,
Listening to lightning stalk the streets,
And you feel a sudden chill.
It's gettin harder and harder to believe
All the fantasies schoolchildren take for granted,
Because the word's out on the night shift,
That you come back from the summit
Empty handed.

Refrain

 Oh, Washington...
 Oh, Washington.
 Oh, Washington...
 Oh, Washington.

In solemn segue from the past to future,
With the present grasped like iron death in both your fists,
Like a child abandoned in the wilderness,
Found and raised by supply side economists.
And the anger in the subway slums,
And old ladies wrapped in newsprint over steamvents,
You say, are unrelated to your policy.
You dismiss them as coincidence.

Refrain

There are new powers from the atom,
Powers of two-way, speed-of-light communcation.
And the honest need have no fear
From the promise of the brave new wired nation
In the cool electronic fire.
Get out of the spotlight, old man, if you can't stand the heat.
Things will have to change, eventually,
When the global village is complete.

Refrain

Final Cuts

Happy Oviraptor 9

I DON'T KNOW IF I CAN CRY ANYMORE
(Music and lyrics by Buddy)



Sitting under the overpass,
Watching the rain
As the cars roll by
On the Interstate.
Out in backpack country,
Like an Eagle on a chain,
With this pain in my heart
Once again.

Refrain
 I don't know if I can try anymore.
 There ain't no way that I can see.
 But I just know that I can't cry anymore
 About the way
 Things used to be.

Seein my double
Every time I close my eyes,
Gettin into trouble
Every time I open up my mouth.
Indian feathers in these truck cabs way up high,
And that long concrete ribbon
Rolling on out.

Refrain

Bridge:
And she's standing at the window,
When I'm walkin' through the door,
Like an ancient haunted lighthouse
In an endless semaphore.
And I lie and wait and wonder
Will the Magic come to pass?
Broken wheels and rolling thunder.
Turn the key and hit the gas...
Staring out the window to the hills beyond,
Hear the pounding rain coming down,
The slap of windshield wipers,
And the radio playing
Some new Detroit sound...

Refrain

Not yet implemented.

Final Cuts

Happy Oviraptor 10

WASTING TIME
(Music and lyrics by Buddy)



We were born in zero gravity
In a lake upon the stone.
Fifteen hundred million years
To make this world our own.
It doesn't really matter much
About the words we say.
We come into existence,
Just as we pass away.

Refrain
 Wasting Time
 Wasting Time
 Wasting Time
 Wasting Time

We stalked the resurrection
Through the corridors of fame.
At the Einstein Intersection,
We were Captives of the Flame.
We were skilled at lying down
With the Lion and the Lamb.
In this dead and dying world,
We just don't give a damn.

Refrain

Since before the dawn of time,
Like genetic memory,
Captive fragments in the climb
Up from the bottom of the sea.
Living breathing matter
In the endless spiral curve.
Madder than a hatter,
But it's more than we deserve
For

Wasting Time
Wasting Time
Wasting Time  All we ever did
Wasting Time  All we ever did
Wasting Time  All we ever did  The walks on the water when we were kids
Wasting Time  All we ever did  The walks on the water when we were kids

Final Cuts

Magic Warfare

Claire Spiegel, our photographer, took this shot of Emily on an antique train station in Virginia. It's impossible to see in this low-rent version, but the lighting is really cool. The single headlamp of the 1950's diesel is the main source of light, and everything else is ambient incandescent bulbs. Someday we'll all die and shit and those greedheads at the record company will reissue the album. Then you'll see what I mean. If they don't substitute some dripping glandular meatshot to boost sales. Pfah.

Final Cuts

Not the liner notes

Magic Warfare represented the technical zenith for the reptiles. We had signed with a major label, we were being promoted, radio stations were actually playing some of the stuff. Of course, it was too good to be true.

For reasons which my attorneys have advised me not to discuss, our affiliation with the record label went sour.

Can't include the cassette.
Can't include the original liner notes.

The cover graphics are necessarily a low-rez re-approximation. The photo is blown up from a copyrighted contact sheet owned by Keane, and is licensed to us; the reptiles logo is our property; and the title was always ours. Go ahead. Try and sue me, you bastards.

And then, there was that 16 track master (not a final mixdown, just a click track, piano and guitar) that Emily and I could have brazened our way in and stuffed in my backpack before the ruffled receptionist could call security. I love postmodernism. I can say shit like this, and it must be dismissed as pointillist bricolage. It couldn't possibly be true. Nothing is. (Unless you have the tape...)

Final Cuts

Magic Warfare

Something Called Magic Warfare 1983

Atman
Chonyid Bardo
Worldly Pursuits
The Postman Must Be Silenced
Sandinista
Alger
DNA/The Antichrist
Trail of Mars
Gödel's Karma

Produced by Vox and Neal
Engineered and mixed by Aaron Penfield
Recorded, mixed and mastered at The Midwood Mindfield
Art: acoustic guitar, vocals
Mu: bass, vocals, sound fx
Neal: lead guitar, effects, ebow, slide guitar
Vox: guitar, keyboards, effects, sampling
Will: drums, gamelan
Additional vocals on DNA: Emily Keane, Jackie Zeichner, Al Magnusson

Final Cuts

Magic Warfare 1

ATMAN
(Music and lyrics by Buddy)



Down around south Manhattan
Where there's time to think,
I was walking down the streets,
Staring at the river,
Nothing to drink.
With designs
In our minds,
We been up all night
Making love and painting signs:
Piecemeal meaning.
Look at this precision in our choice—
That firm note of decision,
You can hear it in our voice.
We're gonna...

Refrain
 La la la
 La la la la
 La la la la la
 La la la la
 La la la la la
 La la la la
 La la la la la
 La la la

When you're walking in the footsteps
Of the ones you hate,
You can't help but become what you behold.
That's the nature of sensation, sez William Blake.
With our myths
Of the Monolith,
It's the Dark Side of the Moon that we always seem to end up with.
That's not fear, that's just reading
The temper of the times
And the thought,
The you could oppose it
I won't say no, I'm just gonna...

Refrain

Down around Monster Island,
When you're on the beach
Trying to decide between Fu Manchu and Nayland,
And the TV's out of reach,
With our names
Keyed into the bottom of the frames,
We been up all night acting like
Frank and Jesse James.
Left-hand breeding,
Time code reading,
In the season of the stoned.
It's so odd when a face that you meet
Is a face just like your own.
And you're gonna...

Refrain

Final Cuts

Magic Warfare 2

CHONYID BARDO
(Music and lyrics by Buddy)



Well your Friend in Congress, she can't help you now
And you don't have to worry about the Closing Dow,
Cuz you've gone over the River that only runs one way.
They're gonna cable your people you're not
Coming home today.

Refrain
 You been
  Up in the center;
 Now you been brought down low.
 You gonna have to
 Spend some time in
 Chonyid Bardo.

How could you know? The Journal never said
There was any truth to the Book of the Dead.
Now they've ripped out your guts
And they sewed up your eyes
And it looks like somebody been
Tellin you some lies.

Refrain

(recitative)
Oh, Nobly Born, know that on the third day after death you will enter the state of the Chonyid Bardo, the Bardo of Illusion. Many will appear to you who you have known on earth, and they will seek to tempt you into following them. But follow them not, for they are mere phantoms sent to lure you back into flesh. They, like this whole world, are phantoms. Illusions. Follow them not. Wait, and you will see the Clear Light. Wait for the Clear Light. Follow the Clear Light. Follow the Clear Light.
Follow the Clear Light.
Follow the Clear Light.
Follow the Clear Light.
Follow the Clear Light.

You heard about life after death;
This is the death before life.
You gotta make some quick decisions 'bout where you wanna be
The next time.
You got some people to meet.
You got some dharma to learn.
You got a Road to walk,
And the Wheel has got to turn.

Refrain

Final Cuts

Magic Warfare 3

WORLDLY PURSUITS
(Music and lyrics by Buddy)



Refrain
 Power and passion and worldly pursuits
 Have sent down their roots,
 Into me,
 Born in decision and buried in youth
 With a mouthful of truth
 From the tree.

They say you've no stomach for this.
Give us a kiss before you leave me:
One moment of terror for eternity's bliss,
Though you hear this you still don't believe me.

Refrain
Living in color and searching for fame,
Playing the game all alone,
Tired and timid and tortured and tamed,
Till they give you a name of your own.

Refrain
The way, it is long but the end is in sight,
And nothing can hide from your eyes now.
The first hint of dark on the soft edge of night,
As we wait for Osiris to rise now.

Refrain
There are those that I talk to that try
To convince me the danger's not real.
They say, "Art, you've broken your mind
One too many times at the Wheel."

Final Cuts

Magic Warfare 4

THE POSTMAN MUST BE SILENCED
(Music and lyrics by Buddy)



We're the Government,
And want to use TV to teach.
We're the Government,
We're well beyond your reach.
We're the Government,
We said "Open, Sesame Street."
That is why...
And that is why...

Refrain
 The Postman must be silenced.
 The Postman must be silenced.
 The Posthorn must be silenced.
 The Postman must be silenced.

We're the Government,
Want to turn your kids into souless sexist slugs.
We're the Government,
We're well aware that laughter is a drug.
We're the Government,
Don't even bother looking for the bugs.
That is why...
You know that that is why...

Refrain

Bridge
You're never gonna see us.
We're never gonna fight.
You're never gonna feel us till we
Turn out that light.
And let's just say we're gonna keep it that way.
Let's just say it's always gonna be that way...

[Gennaro's final speech from Act IV of Richard Wharfinger's "Courier's Tragedy" is to be recited at this point. Our attorneys, Merck and Ladre, were unable to get clearance from the Vatican Library. Heh heh.]

We're the Government,
We are your future.
We're the Government,
The Big Computers.
We're the Government,
The Straight shooters.
That is why...
You know that that is why...
The postman must be silenced.

Final Cuts

Magic Warfare 5

SANDINISTA
Sandino vive en el pueblo
(Music and lyrics by Buddy)



From the brown earth,
Water rising
In the mountains,
Wash the village,
Feed the people,
Carry orders
Down the hillsides
To the others.

In the cities,
The men of money
Own the factories,
Rule our country.
Our power
fragmented.
Our people
Unrepresented.

Refrain
  Sandinista,
  Mountain danger,
 Help us fight
 The nothern stranger.
  Sandinista,
  We hear your orders.
  Drive the strangers
 From our borders.

The puppet leaders
That they have planted
Take their power
Too much for granted.
Not capitalism,
Not communism,
What we fight for
Is our freedom.
Free elections,
Free decision,
Independence,
Self jurisdiction.

Refrain

Men and women
Are disappearing.
The time of crisis
Surely nearing.
We have the people.
We have the weapons.
And now it's time
To go and get them...
Sandinista,
Mountain danger,
Help us fight
The nothern stranger.
Sandinista,
Oímos tus órdenes.
No pasarán
Los que no son gente.

Final Cuts

Magic Warfare 6

ALGER
(Music and lyrics by Buddy)
(The last line of this song is also the title of Tony Hiss's outstanding biography of his father. Read it.)



The people were afraid.
Order decayed.
The message was delayed,
The path to Chaos laid.
In the hot lights of the newsreels all the people could see,
In the underground circus of Joe MacCarthy,
Was the one man whose name became the legacy from
The Abyss:
Alger Hiss.

Richard Nixon was hot.
Young man on the spot.
He said Alger was caught
In a Communist plot.
In the big magazines and the black and white screens,
The nation was crawling with Soviet schemes.
We needed someone to quiet our dreams of the Wall
Alger took the fall.

It was nothing new then.
It'll happen again.
Innocent women and men
In a Federal pen.
Hatcheting pinks in the Department of State
Got Dick the number two slot on the '52 slate,
Fanning the flames of our national hate for that name.
Alger was framed.

Well the years have gone by
In the blink of an eye,
And those who had lied
Brought down from on high.
Richard Nixon left the White House in a shitrain of shame,
Brought by his plans to the end of the game,
Showing that some things will remain the same you can see:
The guilty go free.

Nothing's been learned.
The fear has returned.
Reagan stands firm.
He says let Europe burn.
The veneer of détante has eroded at last
And we crouch in our bunkers awaiting the blast
And we can hear in the distance a voice from the past:
Alger Hiss laughing last.

Final Cuts

Magic Warfare 7

DNA/THE ANTICHRIST
(Music and lyrics by Buddy)



Spoken by the Father in Judgement:
"Who shall disturb the slumber of the Beast?
And who shall know
The number of the Beast?"

(a tempo)
We march along,
Lead in our souls,
Right and wrong,
The language of parole.
We think without our minds.
We sleep without our hearts.
We do not know what's missing now.
We have no myths to parse.
We feel without.
We know within.
We have no cause to doubt
The message
Written in our skin:

Refrain
 DNA DNA DNA DNA
 DNA DNA DNA DNA
 DNA DNA DNA DNA
 DNA DNA DNA DNA

Do you know
How long ago we used to know?
I've an idea
It was fiften billion years.
Each and every Fallen Angel,
Estranged from inner space,
Was brought in mass confusion
To the founding of this place.
We had no choice.
We had no name.
We had no voice
Until you came.
Now we have flesh again.
Now we have time and time has
Us again. Now there's a plan:
The Beast, it has a number
And the Number is a Man...

Refrain

The Sacrament—
Can you tell me where the Spirit went
When everything has gone
And the body and the life have all moved on?
And do you know
About the Flow?
Can you believe we tried
To find out what's on the Other Side?
And we don't know.
We can't see.
We are not as Free
As you picture us to be.
Spirits from Within,
What you imagine us is lost inside
The endless folds of neural skin.
The lines of sight that fade through paradox,
The speeding curve of space away from here and now.
Here and now,
We are not demigods or demons,
Have no powermad, no false romantic notions of our fall.
That is not why we come.
We do not seek to tempt you from a path we failed to take,
Not into the Lake of Brimstone that we fell,
Not into the depths of Hell,
From Celestial Light...
We fell within our cells.
Fell away from meaning,
Purpose once held so close and now lost.
Now, now, see it gone...
Matter moving, matter moving on...
And this fragment of a song
Is all you have to hear...

Refrain
Refrain (a capella)

Are you Set
For capture in the Net that Isis weaves?
Your name, Osiris, now the Horus grieves.
We seek to reproduce.
This is the final Truth.
Feel the Unity lock the reaches of your mind.
This is what you Came to find.
This is Pure Design.
This is what was left behind.
The fragments that coalesced and made your mind
And failed and left you blind—
WE ARE YOUR MIND.
The mantra of your cell.
Can tantra save you? Only Time will tell.
But time's your enemy,
Not me.
I go and split in two, and seal again behind you when you're gone.
The fusion of opposites, rock and water,
Fire and air, inside lighting from within.
Illumination, Lost Lucifer,
The fragments of the Fallen Sparks
That live between the Darks,
Noah in the Ark.

(spoken ...)
I was in Caanan when Absalom was slain. I was the ultimate goal of the Tower of Nimrod. I was, before the Creation. I have been dead, I have been alive. The battlefield of the gods was made when I spoke, and I know the name of the great god who lives therein. Praise of Ra is his name. Nine months was I in the womb of the witch Ceridwen. The prophets spoke of me as Merlin, but at length all kings shall call me Taliesin.

Refrain

It's come and gone.
Don't tell me I'm here all alone; there's
No one left to fight.
I look in the mirror
At the ruler of the night...
The Antichrist.

Final Cuts

Magic Warfare 8

TRAIL OF MARS
(Music and lyrics by Buddy)



Well, we thought there was no hope,
But we knew there was a plan.
It could not be left to chance.
It could not be up to Man.
Broken on the Wheel of Time and the Tides,
With the cries of the dogs at our sides,
We struggle toward the stars
On the Trail of Mars.

At a task no conscious mind could see,
On a moon whose harsh domain
We were left technically free,
With no way home again.
And here
At the edge of the sea and the sky,
With the world at the back of our eyes,
In a land that is not ours,
On the Trail of Mars.

Bridge
Buried in a shipwreck,
Fifteen billion years ago.
Scattered remnants of the Dream
Left here standing, demanding meaning
From a universe which does not mean...

Well the Hand that Rocks may rule the world (for now).
But the hand that holds the hand rules the heart,
Though they say without Control
These things they've made would quickly fall apart.
And now,
Upside down with our hands firmly tied,
We learn to live with the lies
And wait for the healing of the scars,
On the Trail of Mars.

Final Cuts

Magic Warfare 9

GODEL'S KARMA
(Music and lyrics by Buddy)




Take your swords and plowshares,
Put them in the ground.
Take your war and business.
They cannot save you now.

I know memory is deceitful
And that I see what I want to see.
That's why I never trust the people.
I have to trust to put their trust in me.

That's why I've never trusted people.
That's why I've never trusted people.

Sind sie eine Grün?
Ich bin eine Grün.
Die Frau im Erde ist Grün.
Die Frau im Mond ist Grün.

Final Cuts

Century of the Atom

The reptiles were never ones to take themselves seriously, and when we reformed as the BPS, we decided to have a little fun with the reptiles prediliction for "artsy" graphics. Mu and Vox collaborated on this mixed-media collage using bits of headlines, sticky letters from videocassette labels, and pictures clipped from magazines. Mu drew the reptile road kill. The original art is long since lost, so this was scanned and enlarged from a cassette case, which accounts for the low definition.

Final Cuts

Black Label Bastard

Dec 6-8, 1985 "Only in a TV Movie"

Cold + snowy winter Cleveland—the band arrived full force on Fri night—Will from Syracuse by Fish Car—Mu+Bud from NYC by People's Express—packed in a 3x5 car and whisked to the Lazy-8 Studio—where we got stoned + drunk + took vivarins and recorded Hair/Blind Drunk/H.O.T.S./Pants/Dogs/Risky Words/ set off an alarm on one of our multiple trips to the Tink room—at 3:30 we quit and went to my 3 room hovel to sleep on the floor—horrid Wendy's breakfast churning hangover morning—raining + dismal (Perfect!) —packed the van to The Trauma Center in Kent to do our set—GilliGunn's Roadhouse Planet Claire Blues/Elephants/Raw Meat/Destructo/Why Don't You Die/are from there —arrived too early—left too late—woke up in the morning—W left—M+B+me watched "City of the Walking Dead" + "Hellhole" + then they left.

—our story continues—

The basic tracks for House of Flies were recorded, as M put it, "in my living room on a monday (2/10/86) after a 10 hour road trip for V—I mixed down + added a few tracks. A strange drippy winter evening—when we gave up we watched a PBS show on Philip Glass + fell asleep—B+W were able to eat a whole can of cheese sprayed almonds (they taste real bad)—B went into a fever the next day + drove to Brooklyn—I went to work the next day." So I added a drum track and another vocal track—mixed it down and it sounds like that. —Vox 6/5/86

Final Cuts

Black Label Bastard

Black Label Bastard (Double Quasi-live) Playlist


Great American Dream Machine
Why Don't You Die (written live at the Trauma Center)
My Bag Of Hair
Destruct-O-Party
Raw Meat
House Of Flies
Blind Drunk
Carnival Dogs Consumed My Hand
Pants Of Satan
Hitler Blues
The Code
Risky Words
H.O.T.S.

Not included in the final cut of the tape/lyric collection is the Mu tune "Walking with Elephants." In the opinion of our ever-vigilant attorneys, there was risk of running afoul of the Threat Act, and little chance of sneaking in the Brandenburg gate. Also not included was the live medly of Peter Gunn/ Planet Claire/ Gilligan's Island/Roadhouse Blues. The rights situation was a tad complicated.

Final Cuts

Black Label Bastard 1

GREAT AMERICAN DREAM MACHINE
(Music and lyrics by Vox)



Military stability
Is what the country needs.
Perpetual combustion,
The end that breeds the disease,
Life through the fisheye lens
of electronic democracy.
Having everything depends
on what you do and what you see.

Refrain
 Meltdown
 Shutdown
 Buildup
 Blowup

Automatic frequency
Designed to make ears bleed,
Ring the bells eternally.
Tear down the Amerikan Dream.
Having lunch in distant lands
With a menu I can't read.
Running coups while making plans
For when you burn that Tree.

Refrain

Freedom from the Cities
to take life as it comes.
Showing off the different steps
From sounds of different drums.
Life along the seaside,
Far away from town.
Come and be my movie
And kiss me till I drown.

Refrain

Teasing heiroglyphics
On the country's mind.
Policies unending,
No chance to turn the tide.
The fisheye lens is clouded,
Smeared with vaseline.
The mighty silver jets fly through
A gasoline scream.

Refrain

Handy dandy apologies
Of the evil kind.
White haired rulers with angst-free ease,
Cocaine hardened slime.
Rednecks in their pickup trucks,
Fighting for their rights,
Shotgun longhaired hippie fucks
In the Amerikan Night...

Refrain

Blow it up
Blow it up
Blow it up
Blow it up
Blow it up
Blow it up
Blow it up
Blow it up

Meltdown.

Final Cuts

Black Label Bastard 2

WHY DON'T YOU DIE
(Music and lyrics by Mu and Buddy)



You say you don't like modern life.
Why don't you die?

I live in the city.
I don't wanna look at you.
You're ugly and you ride the subway.
I'm fucking sick and tired of all these people.

Why don't you die?
Why don't you die?
Why don't you die?

I live in cinderblocks.
You think I like this?
I do not like this.

Baby, I don't care what you look like.
I don't care what you do.
Maybe if I made a million a year,
I could live in New Jersey.
Maybe.
Anyway, I wouldn't live here.

Why don't you die?
You're ugly and you ride the subway.
Why don't you die?

The situation is desperate.
Open the hydrants.
The police are here.
You better close the hydrants.

Why don't you die?

There's a pusher on my roof
Selling schoolkids crack.
I'm going to shoot the motherfucker.
See? Now he's dead.

Why don't you die?

I have a hangover.
They're playing down in the street.
I don't like that, I'm going to do something about it,
With a fucking rifle.

Why don't you die?

Oh, say, can you see
In the dawn's early light?

I am insane.
Let's go to the zoo
And cut up the animals.

Why don't you die?
Oh, why don't you die?

The planet is too crowded.
But there's no place else to go.
I guess you'll have to die.
Why don't you die?

Final Cuts

Black Label Bastard 3

MY BAG OF HAIR
(Music and lyrics by Mu and Buddy)



Refrain
 My Bag of Hair
 My Bag of Hair
 My Bag of Hair
 My Bag of Hair

I got really drunk last night
And cut off all my hair.
I put it in a paper bag
And I brought it to you.

Refrain

I thought we'd take my bag of hair
And some cans of paint,
Get real dosed, take off our clothes,
And make body prints.

Refrain

It means something to me.
It came off my head.
And you just put it away
And watch TV.

Refrain

My hair will grow back someday
And I'll look Normal again.
I bet you'd like that, wouldn't you?
You stinking pusbag tool.

Refrain

Final Cuts

Black Label Bastard 4

DESTRUCTO-O-PARTY
(Music and lyrics by Will and Vox)



(Spoken, over...) Let me tell you a little bit about a party my friends had one day. It was a party to commemorate the tearing down of our favorite campus building by an administration gone mad on their own PR. But it was our house, and since we happened to be living in it at the time, we did what we could. This is the story. It goes someting like this...

(into song...)
Well, the warning got posted on our door last night.
They gave us 24 hours to leave.
No one thought it would come this soon,
But we didn't have time to grieve.
We put the Brandon to work on a flyer to tell all the people about our plan.
We would splatter the town
and invite everyone
before the Wrecking Ball began.

Cuz they were tearing us down,
They were throwing us out,
They were knocking down our home.
They had done it before, and they were at it again
And so we had no other choice but to go.
A Destruct-O-Party tonight.
Till we lost our sight.
Nobody closes down our home for no reason.
We won't give up without a fight.

(spoken...)
We hated the Administration...

So we gathered our cash, we bought a dozen kegs,
We filled the bathtub full of gin.
We turned the lights down low and let the music flow,
And then we let the masses in.
The people filled up the house,
They piled onto the porch,
There was food and booze and drugs for all.
We had a canapé tray full of amphetamines,
And there was an orgy going on down the hall.

Well we ripped up the floors and we wrote on the walls.
I was told we could be heard for miles.
But when the band began, that's when we made our stand
And the party finally got a bit wild.
Well, they had told us to leave and we decided to stay
And we partied like it was our last.
We were packed in the place,
We were four hundred strong,
And we enjoyed and we relived our past.

Well, the band took a break, when we noticed the smoke.
Looked like someone had set the lawn ablaze.
We had to drink straight whiskey for the rest of the night;
We used our mixer to put out the flames.
All the furniture's trashed,
And all toilets are smashed,
And the basement's now an indoor pool.
We chucked the empies out the front room window.
Mass destruction was the only rule.

Well we climbed up the roof with a case of dark beer
And we overlooked the block.
Security cars were surrounding the scene,
Man, there'd be trouble if they made us stop.
But the cranes had come,
And we were on the run
(We were tring not to spill the beer).
Will was taking the lead, though he could barely see,
Scrambling madly to get out of here.

Oh, they "did it for you" and they "did it for me,"
They tried to rationalize their deed.
But we all knew better than to take their lies,
Their only motivation was their greed.
We packed the instruments up and escaped with the mob,
Broke the barricades and ran like hell.
We decided to keep on partying
And we invited everyone else as well.

Cuz they could close us down and they can run us out,
But they could't take away our dreams.
Those assholes did it before, and now they've done it again,
But we'll we'll keep going as they hear us scream...

A Destruct-O-Party tonite,
Till we lose our sight.
Nobody shuts us down, we'll return somehow
And we won't give up without a fight.

Final Cuts

Black Label Bastard 5

RAW MEAT
(Music and lyrics by Mu and Vox and Buddy)



Refrain
 I eat
 Raw Meat.
 It makes me
 Feel neat.
 Raaaagh.
 Ghrooorh.
 Aaaahh.
 Yeah.
 Gotta eat
 My raw raw meat.

Raw meat, tastes so fucking neat.
It's the taste I love to eat.
Drink the blood and feel the heat.
You can't beat that raw raw meat.

Refrain

Raw meat, wipe it on my feet.
Rub it in my hair.
Take it over there.
Take it to a movie.
Dance till you go crazy.
Raw meat, I'll never leave you.

Refrain

Raw meat, As Seen On TV.
Rip it with your teeth.
Smell it in your pee.
I can't eat anything else.
There's blood in my stomach
and a smile in my heart...

Raw Meat
Raw Meat
Raw Meat
Raw Meat

Final Cuts

Black Label Bastard 6

HOUSE OF FLIES
(Music and lyrics by Mu. Additional lyrics by Buddy)



Refrain
 I'm living in a house of flies.
 I'm living in a house of flies.
 I'm living in a house of flies.
 I'm living in a house of flies.

I was born in a house of flies.
I was born in a house of lies.
I was raised to fear and hate
In a house of flies.

Refrain

I was taught in the house of flies.
I was taught nothing but lies.
I was taught to make believe,
To worship in the house of flies.

Refrain

I believe in the horror of man.
I believe in the horror of man.
I don't believe in Heaven or Hell,
But I believe in the horror of man.

Refrain

Final Cuts

Black Label Bastard 7

BLIND DRUNK
(Music and lyrics by Blood Pumping Stumps)



Refrain
 Blind Drunk
 Blind Drunk
 Blind Drunk
 Blind Drunk

Blind Drunk Blind Drunk
Facedown on the street.
Blind Drunk Blind Drunk
Laughing like a fool.

Refrain

Blind Drunk Blind Drunk
Throwing bottles at the bus.
Blind Drunk Blind Drunk
Shit, here come the cops.

Refrain

Blind Drunk Blind Drunk
Fuck, I cut my lip.
Blind Drunk Blind Drunk
It hurts when I drink.

Refrain

Blind Drunk Blind Drunk
We peed on Mu's van.
Blind Drunk Blind Drunk
I think we peed on his floor, too.

Refrain

Blind Drunk Blind Drunk
Let's head downtown.
Blind Drunk Blind Drunk
And hassle yuppie scum.

Refrain

Blind Drunk Blind Drunk
Throw up in the sink.
Blind Drunk Blind Drunk
Look, it comes out pink.

Refrain

Blind Drunk Blind Drunk
There's no more to say.
Blind Drunk Blind Drunk
Give me another beer.

Refrain

Final Cuts

Black Label Bastard 8

CARNIVAL DOGS CONSUMED MY HAND
(Music and lyrics by Mu and Buddy)



(a walking 12 bar blues)

One two three four...
Woke up this morning, Carnival Dogs consumed my hand.
Woke up this morning, Carnival Dogs consumed my hand.
Let that be a lesson to you, baby,
About those best laid plans.

You cut out my eyes; you did it with your razor tongue.
You consumed my mind; you did it with your razor tongue.
You think you're only playing dead
Till those Carnival Dogs rip out your lungs.

You pierced my ear, when I was drunk, with a piece of ice.
You pierced my ear, when I was drunk, with a piece of ice.
Now those Carnival Dogs have crushed my head
With your Master's Vice.

Puppy dog
Puppy dog
Puppy dog bite alien stranger
Puppy dog
Puppy dog
Puppy dog bite alien stranger

Woke up this morning, Carnival Dogs consumed my hand.
Woke up this morning, Carnival Dogs consumed my hand.
Let that be a lesson to you, baby,
You fucking with things you don't understand.

Final Cuts

Black Label Bastard 9

PANTS OF SATAN
(Music and lyrics by Mu and Vox. Additional lyrics by Buddy)



Welcome to my multiple nightmare.
She wore tight industrial frightware.
She had razorwire underwear.
There were demons in the hidden lair.

Refrain
 Do you have the balls to wear the Pants of Satan?
 Ha ha ha...ha ha ha...ha ha ha ha ha ha ha
 Who has the balls to wear the Pants of Satan?
She was the history of torture devices,
With rubber clips and large wooden vises.
She rack you up and strap on the appliance.
You feel the thrill of submissive defiance.

Refrain

An hedonic invokation,
New blood for every occasion.
Step inside the circle of skin.
Make a date with the Father of Sin.

Refrain

You feel the touch of that withered claw.
Do What You Will is the Whole of the Law.
Snap on the pants and sell your soul.
Let the plastic take control.
Well..

Refrain

Nothing so tight as the pants of Satan.
Nothing so tight as the pants of Satan.
Nothing so tight as the pants of Satan.
Nothing so tight as the pants of Satan.

Final Cuts

Black Label Bastard 10

HITLER BLUES
(Music and lyrics by Vox. Additional lyrics by Buddy)



When you're living in West Philly,
You gotta pick your friends right.
There's garbage in the alley and there's
Screamin in the night.
Tell me how long
Must I pay these dues,
Cuz it's early in the morning
And I got them Hitler Blues.

Dogs just keep a barkin,
They're callin my friends names.
The kids are walkin naked,
But they don't feel ashamed.
Tell me how long must I hear the news,
On the TV every evening,
Them same old Hitler Blues?

Well, I know this way of living,
It sure ain't livin right.
At least it ain't the way
To learn to see the light.
Now how long do we have to lose
Before we have a chance to beat those
Hitler Blues?

You preach the revolution.
Well, the time has come to MOVE.
There ain't no time for reason
When you got something to prove.
Tell me how long do we have to choose
Between those rules that they been teachin
and them age old Hitler blues?

They say "We won't take it any longer
Won't you help us, mayor please?"
We'll blow up all their children
And we'll bring them to their knees.
How much longer must I play the fool?
Well, I've heard it for so long now
That I've got the Hitler Blues.

Well, the guns are spitting bullets now and, boy, I think it's time.
It's the Final Solution, it'll whip them into line.
They're showing all them slackers
The way it's going down.
Now everybody's watching
The Hitler Blues have come to town.

The SWAT team is approaching; there's a sudden sense of calm.
The cameras are rolling as they're lobbing in the bombs.
It won't be long now till we change our tune.
If you're listening closely you can hear us sing
The Hitler blues.

Well, the house is still a-burning,
The neighborhood's in flames.
The mayor he seems uneasy, but his smile is still the same.
It won't be long till we're all in his shoes.
One thing to be sure of,
He's got the Hitler Blues.

So when you're lost in Philadelphia
And your streets are full of tramps.
The people need protection
And there's no room in the camps...
You better be sure now
Of the things that you do.
When the needy keep on whining,
You'll get the Hitler Blues.

Final Cuts

Black Label Bastard 11

THE CODE
(Music and lyrics by Vox)



Hear it in the beat.
Feel it under your feet.
Forty thousand dollars and a hundred years of college.
Get a job cleaning shit off the street,
All the White Deceit.
Pay attention to the lesson before you get old.
The American Dream is getting obscene.
Gonna get what you need
If you follow the Code.

Kiss the pavement.
Kiss that mother's ass.
Kiss the cop who threatens to pop your girlfriend down in the PATH,
For a pinch of grass.
Interrogation for the Nation and you're torn apart.
Listen up boy, your life could be joy
If you'd promise to follow the Code right from the start.

Bridge
(spoken ...)
I think I could follow it easier if they didn't keep changing it all the time.
One day it's a penny...
The next day it's a Mack truck...
(sung ...)
Rights keep changing; Code rearranging.
Never know where it's gonna end.

Hide in your shell.
Drool at the sound of the Bell.
At the top of the trench sit the Dogs on the Bench
And they bury us deep in Hell.
Then, they wish us well.
Get seduced by them and you're at war again.
Just one man, not a group of men
Gonna bring this scene to its final end.
You know who I mean...

Fear in your Ear.
Ghost in your eye.
Kick in the doors all the world is yours all you got to do is lie.
Time to say goodbye.
Flip a coin in the direction of the Other Side.
I'm just another chump in this toxic dump.
But no one's gonna tell me…
No one's gonna tell me…
No one's gonna tell me when I'm gonna die.

Well it's time to go,
Finally say no.
See the light, pick that fight.
Say goodbye to the few you know well it's time to go.
Wallow with the winners; nothing's gonna keep you down,
Cuz you know that Code means nothing,
When you're bleeding on the ground.
Well, you know that Code means nothing
When you're bleeding on the ground.
Well, you know that Code means nothing
When you're caught with a spray can underground...

Final Cuts

Black Label Bastard 12

RISKY WORDS
(Music and lyrics by Buddy)



Risky words,
I don't wanna hear those
Risky words.
I don't wanna hear those...

Wet work, M10, Secret Service,
These are words that make me nervous.
The Government is here to serve us.
I won't listen to words that try to subvert us.

Risky words,
I don't wanna hear those
Risky words,
Putting the Fear in my Ear.

My friend Jackie sez that Sartre
Says that there is no subconscious.
Then there's no place for all those words that I need to forget,
There's no way I can escape my punishment
For those

Risky words,
It's the Nothingness the For-itself projects.
Risky words,
Turning transcendent Others into objects.

Well thanks to Ronald's re-election,
We'll have X-ray laser space interception,
State religion, forced conception
This is for your... "own protection." "Uh, Thank you, Nancy."

Risky words,
It's as bad as it appears.
Risky words,
I don't know if we'll last four more years.

Bay of Pigs and Beirut, Lebanon,
These are things that did not happen.
JFK and Ronald Reagan,
Things I don't talk about on the telephone.

Risky words,
It's a truth I've all along suspected,
Risky words,
In the middle of conversations I get disconnec...

Well Risky Words are Peace and Freedom,
Feminism and secular humanism,
Sustainable growth and activism,
Freezers, Pro-choice, Altruism,
Futurism, hedonism,
Pacifism, populism,
Unionism, vocalism,
Localism, idealism.
The only cure for this organism
Would be a whopping presidential embolism.

Risky words,
Wish I'd never heard those
Risky words.
Wish I'd never heard those
Risky words.
Wish I'd never heard those
Risky words.

Final Cuts

Black Label Bastard 13

H.O.T.S.
(Music and lyrics by Mu)



Taste the Spirit Flesh.
Plan for more.
Color TV sets have turned to blare.
History don't know how
I should act alone.
Home is broke,
Closed up Fair,
And they've taken what
I had to share.

Hasten down.
Scrape and shout.
Pull all the little victims out...
Oh...

Cold breath,
Heading West,
In the state of New York's unrest.
Child of blue men,
Child union,
Burnt off
In the air underground.
In the air under ground.
In the air under ground.
In the air under ground.

Your bed's one,
My bed's two.
Honey what am I supposed to do?
This red light's been on for years.
Honey, don't you kill me with your fears.
Honey, don't you kill me with your fears.
Honey, don't you fill me with your fears.
Money, don't you fill me with your fears.
Money gives us fear.
Money gives us law.
Money gives us fear.
Money gives us law.
Mommy gives us fear.
Mommy gives us law.
Mommy gives us fear.    In the air underground...
Mommy gives us law.    In the air underground...

Final Cuts

Emily

This was my first solo album -- and my first solo album cover. Fortunately, I had just discovered the Macintosh. I sat down in front of one in a store, and when I left, I had one with me. I did this graphic in MacPaint® in a couple of hours, added the lettering, hoofed down to the lab at NYU, and printed it out. all boustrophedonic dot-matrixy. I thought it looked amazing. The horizon of expectation has become considerably further away. This early paint stuff has an almost nostalgic feel to it, these days...

Final Cuts

Emily

"As below, so above."


The secret, ascending staircase of the Kabbalah dares to formulate the universe in these terms. Paranoia? Telic fallacy? Anthropopsychic projection? You decide.

"Emily" was written over a period of about a year, in late 1983 and 1984. It was recorded at the sound studio of the New School for Social Research in New York City, while I was doing my grad work in media theory there.
All of the reptiles were in on the garage sessions where this music was hammered out -- uh, and well, yes, we DID use hammers, as a matter of fact -- in a rented house in East Flatbush, Brooklyn. We rented the basement and the garage, and on Saturdays that summer, we would trudge equipment and Ballantine Ales up the stairs and out to the squat, 1940's block-brick monster. Temperatures inside were often in excess of 100°. Ow. Reptiles don't have the best heat management.

Produced by Art
Engineered by Michael Curran
Recorded, mixed and mastered at The New School Studio
Art: acoustic guitar, vocals
Special thanks to Michael Curran, the best audio engineer a reptile could ask for, and a genuinely nice guy, and to Mu, who lent me his guitar tuner.

Final Cuts

Emily

The Story of Emily and the Time Machine 1984
Time Machine #1
Cape Fear Part One
Emily (What do I say to you?)
(I Been) Walking Alone
Pain/Come Along
Cape Fear Part Two
Equals
White Subway
Time Machine #2
Moving Clox
Emily (Lost And Found Dead)
Time Machine #3
Meop Evol
Slowly Light Begins To Dawn
Time Machine #4
Titanic
Genius Gone Insane
Mister Softee Suite: Brain Death/Nothing Humanly Possible/Bottom of the Well
Time Machine #5
Emily (Maybe in the Future)

Final Cuts

Emily 1

TIME MACHINE #1
(Music and lyrics by Buddy)


Looking at a picture of you,
Travelling through time
Back through the spaces in my
Life line.
Echoes
Off the glass and light
Take me back to that
Other night.

Refrain
 Take me back
 Time Machine.
 Take me back to last night’s dream.
 Take me back
 Time Machine.
 Take me back to face the face
 From last night’s dream.

Starting to remember something,
Something I’d forgot:
Thinking of a darker evening
Bleeding like a cut,
The fear of choosing the ways of losing
The things that we need to keep,
Frightened by the damp uneasy conspiracy of sleep.

Bridge:
With cold eyes in the mirror,
The stain of time
Shows me my face in the morning.
I see that it’s mine.
I can’t erase.
I can’t escape all the time that’s passed.
It’s a billion waking moments and each of them
Feels like it’s the last.

Take me back Time Machine.
Take me back to last night’s dream.
Take me back Time Machine.
Take me back to face the face
From last night’s dream.

Final Cuts

Emily 2

CAPE FEAR PART ONE—ASTRONAUT
(Music and lyrics by Buddy)



Out on the Cape
There’s no time to fear.
Wait
Till you’re out in the clear…
In the clearing once again.
Back in time,
Back in time,
Back in the where and when.
When did I leave
And where have I come?
Have I travelled through time?
What do I really believe when all is said and done?
What can I hope to find?
Well I’ve lost time,
You know I know that time is gone.
And people have tried for so long,
So long ago.
If it could have been done,
Don’t you know I think it would have been done.
What’s different about tomorrow?
Yesterday
And Yesterday
Creep past this petty pace from day to day.
There’s no way out of the Circle of Time.
There’s no way out of my mind’s time.
Out of mind, out of mind: time
Out of my mind…time.

Final Cuts

Emily 3

EMILY (WHAT DO I SAY TO YOU?)
(Music and lyrics by Buddy)



We spoke of ängst and ardor
All before the play.
You know, it’s just getting harder and harder
To be in love with you every day.
Things can’t go on this way.

Refrain
 Emily, what do I say to you
 To make you feel the way I do?
 Emily, you’re always on my mind.
 Oh, Emily, the things we left behind.

Listening to Dylan in the car,
Hanging out till mornings in the bar.
You know, it’s what you do
That really makes you what you are.
Oh, Emily, who ever thought we’d get this far?
Back then, Emily,
Who really thought we’d get this far?
What we lost…

Final Cuts

Emily 4

(I BEEN) WALKING ALONE
Music and lyrics by Buddy)



My bags are packed
I’m ready to go.
Just another ending
To another show.
Endless corridors,
Set with faces in wax,
I walk away
Knowing I’m never coming back…

Refrain
 I been walking alone for a long, long time.
 I been walking alone for a long, long time.
 I been walking alone for a long, long time.
 And now I wonder, will you walk with me?
 Will you walk with me?

Did you ever wonder about what happened in the past?
If everything back there was gone for good
Or if there’s a connection, outside of time and space?
It must be there…if we think it could.
There is no being, there is only pattern;
No spirit, only matter;
No madness, only laughter.

Refrain

Primal being, a way of seeing,
Do you love the sound?
Rise up, rise up and face the ground.
Every thought, every mind
Every eye, Designed,
Has been brought in from without,
Out from within, to think, to think again,
To think, to think of what was thought to be…

There is no inspiration, only repetition.
No enlightenment, only decision.
There is no truth, only precision,
The Serpent, and the Birth of Vision.

Refrain

Final Cuts

Emily 5

PAIN/COME ALONG!
(Music and lyrics by Buddy)



How much more pain?
How much more pain?
Can you take the pain?
How much more pain?
How much more pain?
Can you take the pain?

(repeats and segues into)
Come Along!

If you think you’ve spotted something peeking through the clouds…
If you think you’ve heard it in your dreams…
If you find yourself thinking things that are not allowed…
If you feel there is a World behind the scenes…

Refrain
 Come Along!
 Come Along!
 Come Along! Together we’ll be strong.
 Come on along.

If you’ve journeyed through ancient ruined temples in your sleep,
Met prophets in the breathless silent night…
If you’ve felt the icy fingers clutching from the deep
In something that is not really fright…
If you’ve felt meaning seeming somehow to persist,
In spite of all they’ve paid you to ignore…
If you feel the tug of something you can’t possibly resist,
If you want to know what’s outside of every door…

Refrain

Final Cuts

Emily 6

APE FEAR PART TWO—THE STAND-IN
(Music and lyrics by Buddy)



I change my thoughts to the way you think:
Watch what you watch, live where you live.
The Void beyond that icy waste…
The curtains that move before that Wind,
All this for just a taste of what you see and the things you know,
The places that you’ve been and where you hope to go.
You’re there with her now.
And I see, she’s not the girl she used to be…
And I see, she’s not the girl she used to be…
And I see, You’re not the God you used to be…
To me.

Final Cuts

Emily 7

EQUALS
(NOW AND FOREVER THE SAME)
(Music and lyrics by Buddy)



And it seems we’ve survived a long time.
And it seems…
Ages of skin and bone,
Down throught the coal forests, down through
Collision-damned New Jersey, toward the Dome…It’s been a long time,
But we’re finally coming into our own.

Just when you needed us most, that’s when we came.
The earth heard the roar and you called out our name,
And now we’re back, to add another hand to the game.
Now and Forever the Same.

Ancient restless eons left pressed under the land,
We came to the surface at the drill in your hand,
And now we’re back in a place we understand…
Don’t you begin to feel that it’s all been planned.

We are just like yourselves,
But we always have been, always will be, something else to you, you know.
Oh, do you know? About the truth your words can never show?

Don’t think of us as something lost.
Don’t think of us as Twins.
Think of us as what it cost
To give the Wheel a spin.
For every one that lives in love,
A million never know.
“As below, so above”
Thus Nature’s orders flow.
You are our children, half a million down the line…
And we are your ancestors, back up the roads…
Down the foggy ruined backstreets…
The lonely broken idols…
The crying priestess buried in your mind.

And it seems like we’ve survived a long time
And it seems…
Like ages of skin and bone,
Down through the coal forests, down through
Collision-damned Atlantis, toward the Dome…
It’s been a long time, but we’re finally coming into our own.
Now and Forever the Same.
Now and Forever the Same.
Now and Forever the Same. We all are Equals…
Now and Forever the Same. We all are Equals…
(repeat and fade)

Final Cuts

Emily 8

WHITE SUBWAY
(Title from a story by William S. Burroughs)
(Music and lyrics by Buddy)



Nothing.

Well, check your broken whimpering widow piety.
Don’t ask me what I see,
Don’t ask me what I mean, don’t ask where I been,
Because you ought to know.
If we haven’t been in this very same place,
In this very same place all along,
Then there’s no way you could see this face,
There’s no way you could hear this song.
There’s no way we could stand, hand to hand.
Understand where I’m coming from?
There’s be no way back, down the track,
To the Valley of the Living Drum.

Well, we can feel the faces forming at the edge of the field of sight:
The archetypes we create for ourselves in our dreams
In the middle of the night,
Broken by diffraction from the actuality of space.
Something I see, it means something to me,
And that’s all it means.
There are no such things… no archetypes carved in stone.
The threads that run through the universe depend upon
The action of mind alone.

It was a long cold day in the White Subway.
Watching the stations pass,
Staring at the book in my hand,
Staring at the yellow glass,
Staring at the faces,
Staring at the turnstile,
Closing in for the kill.
All of these echoes in my mind,
This tremendous effort of Will.
Look at this strange connection carved in the Underworld—
This subterranean bond,
Tunnel of power created to move from the Outside into the Gone World.
Out of the Future, Out of the Suburbs,
Into the urban past.
Living like a monster in the heart of the city…

Well, we fell out of time, we fell out of space,
We lost our synch with the world.
Took a long ride on the cyclone,
Felt it whirl around, lost our sense of where and when.
When we found it, when we came back to the rhythm again,
It was a long time in the Future.
Millions of years.
Millions of years.
The Paleolithic, the Holocene.
The New Age! The glaciers had retreated back into the north.
People were living, in the grasslands and the savannahs
That had been deserted, people had moved down from the caves.
And there they were
In Ur,
And Chaldea,
The mythical cities of the Old
Testament.
Crowded with life, crowded with man.
It was something we’d never expected,
And it was not part of our plan.

Well, we fell out of time, we fell out of time
Back in the Egyptian age,
And we just decided that it was time to clear the stage.
A little application of the technology
We brought back from the past
Woke up Santorini,
Ah, that ended Egypt fast.
Four cubic miles of rock and molten lava
Pouring into the sky.
Crete and Mycenae
Closed their doors to die.
The sun was blood-red for forty-four months;
People ran in fear
All the way back to an earlier year.
Well now you know the score.
We’ve caused the wars, the Plagues, and the Crusades,
And we’ve lured the whores from the planet’s shores
To the city by the Palisades.
But there’s nothing you can point to,
No thought in your mind,
That we haven’t put there and told you how to find.

If you think there’s a woman
Somewhere along the Nile,
Who can retrieve your scattered body
From the jaws of the crocodile…
Well that’s just your preconception,
Not to say it won’t come true,
But just remember, baby,
That it’s her movie too…
Ah, so you feel unsure, you feel you’ve been left
Behind closed doors.
And we’ve gone off and left you and all this is
Yours to figure out?
That’s not you, that’s not just you
That’s subjectivity:
The price
Of being free
(segue into…)

Final Cuts

Emily 9

TIME MACHINE #2
(Music and lyrics by Buddy)



Spirits hang in wisdom on the ends
of lines.
Frantic motions mark the mission, fiction lies.
The Soft Illusion: World’s intrusion into thought.
Art is long and life moves on,
And time is short.

Refrain

Final Cuts

Emily 10

MOVING CLOX (RUN SLOW)
(Music and lyrics by Buddy)



Your sister and the doctor and the girls next door,
Down in the junkyard trying to score.
Your father’s getting tortured on the thirty-second floor
By the Law. I can’t take no more living with someone
Just to have someone to get burnt with.
You say,"Come on, let’s watch some TV."
This shit means nothing to me.
Do you have any idea what it’s like to be free?
I’m starting to bleed. It’s nothing for you to be concerned with.

Refrain
 I learned a long time ago
 Moving Clocks run slow.
 I learned a long time ago
 That Moving Clocks run slow.
You bounce up and down. You say you won the prize.
Painted children, you don’t realize
What real Horror lies beyond that gray September.
You talk of distant skies, pretending in disguise
That, in Someone’s eyes,
Your little face is gonna be remembered. Well, here we go…
Mutants strapped into your seats,
Waiting for something to eat,
Something to do, something to watch, oh, some kind of treat
So you can pretend you're human.
Well, do you feel a little scalded by that scene
Where you can just pretend you have
Something to do
With something that has
Something to mean
Something that is
More than just Illusion?
Well, baby, this is more than just
Illusion…
Here are the Time Police,
Wearing blue clothes and badges and stopping me
For failing to observe the twisted Arrows of the Law.
Well, it’s nothing I can’t handle, mind you, I’m
Not disturbed by this form that grinds
you into Poverty and death…
I’m the shaman,
I’m the child in the wilderness.
I’m the Mind you always dreamed of,
I’m the child you always wanted,
I’m the hole in the fabric of your
Space-time nightmare,
Something you can’t deal with.
I’m the one with the guitar
Now I'm The Poet, the Artist, the Creator
Something for everyone to learn to feel with.

Refrain

(recitative, with music under)
In the wilderness…
With our feet again the size of our eyes,
We stand in the damp places, in the
Lean-tos and the shelters,
As we wait for The Man From The City
To bring us food and wine and
Salvation.
It’s not at all what you’d expect from
These burnt-out
Children of the Twentieth Century—
Hollow faces with angry eyes,
Waiting for light from the cities.
Waiting for meaning,
Waiting for Being, flesh fresh from the Eastern Seaboard.
Up here in the woods,
Up here in the cabins with the beavers
And the wild creatures,
Out away from the concrete standing
Erect in the city,
You can see it distant through the trees,
But it has no power. No,
It has no power here in the Old Country.
Virgin forests, damp in the wilderness,
Out in the clearings,
Hundreds of years old where the
Iroquois used to practice
Their sacred rituals,
Out here where you can still believe in
The power of prayer.
Out here where you can still believe
In the pantheon of the all-powerful:
In Mithra, Baal, Marduk and Eshmun, Ra,
Cybele, and Mother Isis.
Real, all of them real,
Real living gods walking among us,
Doing the work of the universe.
We are the work of the universe.
We are the living gods,
When we take off our flesh
And put on masks and meaning.
How long ago we lost the power to believe
And through belief to change.
No sense of the past.
We're the next and Last...

Refrain (counterpoint)
I Learned    Meaning and meaninglessness,
A long time ago,    Purpose and purposelessness,
Moving clocks     Being and Nothingness.
Run Slow.     Your hand in my hand, I'll take
a chance on the rest...
I Learned     Science and Sacrament,
A long time ago,     Essence and Accident,
Moving Clocks     Crime and Punishment.
Run slow.     We know we got the message,
        We don't know what it meant...

Well, it seems we’ve been here a long time…
And it seems, oh, like ages of skin and bone.
Down through the coal forests,
Down through collision-damned New Jersey,
Toward the Dome,
It’s been a long time…
But we’re finally coming
Into our own.
(repeat and fade)
And I learned a long time ago
Moving clox run slow…
In the wilderness…

Final Cuts

Emily 11

EMILY (LOST AND FOUND DEAD)
(Music and lyrics by Buddy)



The times are such that to err is human.
We cannot learn from the past.
We ask only of the future
That this moment not be the last.

And when I think of you,
And when I think of you,
Ah, you bring such sadness to my mind.
And when I think of you—
And when don’t I think of you—
Things are so ill defined.

Refrain

Well, I see you now and again,
With other children
And other men.
It doesn’t seem to matter now
What happened then.
It doesn’t seem to matter…
It doesn’t seem to matter…
It just doesn’t seem to matter anymore.

Refrain

Lost and found dead, the things that we
Lost and found dead. Oh Emily, we are the
Lost and found dead, lost and found
Dead.
Oh, Emily, lost and found dead.
Oh, Emily,
Oh, Emily…
(repeat and fade)

Final Cuts

Emily 12

TIME MACHINE #3
(Music and lyrics by Buddy)



Walking through the streets of deserted
Underwater towns,
Names and faces that don’t exist
Crowd in all around me.
Dark ruined angels with twisted animal
Instincts, prowling (on the prowl).
And you’re nowhere…

Final Cuts

Emily 13

MEOP EVOL
(LOVE POEM)
(Music and lyrics by Buddy)



We can sit and talk for hours
Understanding all that we say.
Yes, No, Maybe
Continue to the next day…
There's something we can’t see,
Something that’s been there all along.
We didn’t need it, you and me, we were
Different—
Miraculous children of an Atomic Age,
Given over to the sounds of our own voices
And the things they could say.
Maybe it was with us all along…
Telling us to listen, to be the
Ear the other needed so badly
Against empty space…
That didn’t echo,
That didn’t walk, talk, simulate biological functions,
Like any proper noun should.
We were leaking life into an empty universe.
It takes two poles to make a magnet
And close the lines of force.
But even then some crawl off
To infinity
And either they’ll interact, or be lost.
And who’ll know
About my love poem?
Who’ll know
About my love?
Who’ll know about my love poem?
Who'll know about my love?

Final Cuts

Emily 14

SLOWLY LIGHT BEGINS TO DAWN
(Music and lyrics by Buddy)



(spoken, with music under)

Slowly, light begins to dawn
In long tar ends of alleys, walked upon
Till dying moments’ final grasp on sight.
Shoutings down from sterile windows facing inner night,
Whose stern occlusion masks a content stripped of substance,
Drained down corridors, worn concave at the feet of souls
Whose Pilgrim passage marks the ebbs and flows,
The poses of some vision
Culled by myth and matrix
From disordered time.

An age unknown—
Worship’s cross-space borne in hard ignorance,
Turning in neon gray,
Whispering here…
The gloves of silence.
You.
You caught glimpses of yourself
In glasswaxed windows, bloodsmeared handkerchiefs, and veils.
No force can bend the seeker from the grail.
That hollow heart inside that can’t be filled…
The Twilight of the Idols and the Triumph of the Will
Till Power and the Tower seem to fall,
The final fusion—

Out of blueness, action, and the spiral twist of
Matter around matter,
Information from a thoughtless chaos,
The slimy chain of protein marks the Rite of Passage.
Foam rising off the body in cold waveforms—
Vision Exits.

Final Cuts

Emily 15

TIME MACHINE #4
(Music and lyrics by Buddy)



I seen her at the Crucifiction,
Shooting from the foot of the hill.
And I picked up her tracks when they found the artifacts
That she buried in Hadley’s Rille...

I seen her in the English Channel,
The hand behind the defeat.
With a particle beam and some weather machines,
She sank the Spanish fleet…

Sold our tricks to the natives, gave them what we had.
Nothing good can come from nothing good,
The only thing that comes is bad,
When you’re back in the past, back in the past,
Back in the time machine…

Final Cuts

Emily 16

TITANIC
(Music and Lyrics by Frank Stepanek.
Additional lyrics by Buddy)



You write me letters
Saying how much things have changed.
No matter what you say,
I know it’s still the same.
I got my passage booked for
Early in April
And it’s gonna be good
To see New York,
And Emily.
Wherever I might find her…
I left my mother back in Belfast,
And I’m going out on a luxury liner,
Back across the ocean,
Back across the ocean,
This time I swear will be the last…

Refrain
 It’s a long way
 Across the Atlantic.
 I’m sailing in luxury
 On the R.M.S. Titanic.
 Stop, boy, you don’t want to get on board that ship,
 She’s never gonna make it
 To the Other side.

Well, Emily, I got your letter yesterday.
I couldn’t believe after all this time
That you want to see me again.
Do you really mean it?
Do you really mean it?
I don’t care. I’ll take the chance;
I’ll take the risk. I’ll book my passage on
The next ship out.
After eight years back in my home
Country, I can live with the risk,
I can live with the doubt. Emily, I can’t
Live without you.
Do you still love me after all this time?
God, I hope you do. I’m on my way
Back to see you.
Back to America.
America, where we were married,
America, where we lived,
America, where we blew apart like rags in a furnace.
Ah, but that’s the past…and it’s the past
I think about,
Here in the middle of the ocean, in the
Middle of the night,
Aboard the Stella Maris, the Star of the Ocean, The Queen of the White Star Line—
The Titanic, the greatest ship afloat.
Sunday night, four days out of
Southampton.
I just came from a party, I’m standing out here
On the Promenade deck with a drink in
My hand—Yes Emily,
That’s the way you’d remember me,
With a drink in my hand—
Staring out at the lights of the ship
Reflecting off the waves.
Oh, it’s beautiful, Emily. I wish you
Were here to see it.
I wish you were here with me.
How many times have I said that in the
Past eight years?
It’s an important voyage, Emily.
The maiden voyage of the Titanic…
The Unsinkable Titanic!

You’d be proud of me, Emily, I’m in
Prestigious company. Yes.
Prestigious company—
John Jacob Astor…
Washington Roebling…
Down in the ballroom, discussing the
Ways of Steel.
The bridge builder and the railroad
Builder, the two,
The tamers of the American continent,
Discussing Life, the City and the Wheel.
And me?
I have nothing to say.
I am a scientist, Emily, you know that
About me.
I listen to them, I wonder how they can
Believe what they believe,
Then I go away again.
It’s something you never liked about
Me…
Ah, but I’m thinking about the past
again.
I shouldn’t be doing that.
Think about the present,
Think about the present,
Think about the present…It’s a beautiful night out here in the
Middle of the ocean.
Beautiful…
Except for the icebergs.
Emily, did I forget to tell you about the
Icebergs?
How could I forget?
For three days, they’ve been talking
About the ice fields.
Two ships have been trapped and three
Have had to
Turn back home again.
You can hear them out there, the
Smaller pieces running against one
Another—they call them “growlers”—
Out there in the darkness. It’s easy to
Imagine they sound like the cries of
Drowning men.
Some of the women have had to take
Sleeping powders.
And me?
I seem to be the only one really worried
About them.
Perhaps because I’m a scientist,
Or perhaps, because I’ve learned
That there’s no such thing as
Unsinkable.

Refrain

They’re playing games.
There’s poker in the cabins.
Drinks and talk in the Grand Salon.
I’m walking along the A deck
Promenade railing—
God, I feel so alone—
Looking out into the darkness. What
Will happen when I see you
Again? It seems like it’s so far, so far to
America.
So far to where you live, you live so far
From me…
So far from Home, so far from you, so
Far from happiness,
So far from Salvation…
We work in the dark;
We do what we can. I think about that now,
Wandering all the decks and levels of
This ship.
I may be a scientist, but I’m also a
Member of my society.
And we produced this ship,
I produced this ship,
As if I had personally driven in every
last rivet,
Sat with a pencil and straightedge,
computing stresses,
Measuring bulkheads, designing
thicknesses, tolerances,
Safety factors…
This ship is the mind of man,
Set out above the ocean, the mute
Beingness of the Universe.
All of this running through my head,
Half drunk,
Wandering always through the smell of diesel oil…
Can’t get rid of it, it’s a reminder of the
Nature of your passage,
The technology supporting you,
Carrying you across this ice-filled ocean,
The technology of Oil and Steel.
It’s almost midnight.
I’m just about to turn in,
Suddenly, out of the corner of my eye, I
Spot a white shape
In the distance…
No, it's not in the distance…
It’s hit the ship!
It’s an
ICEBERG!
My God, fooled by the night sky…
Iceberg!
We’ve hit it!
Chunks of ice falling on the foredeck,
A shudder runs through the ship, we
Veer to the left
And stop dead in the water…
I stand and watch the iceberg drift away.
It’s about ninety feet tall, but it’s
Impossible to tell
How much we’re not seeing,
How much is below the surface,
Or even what part of the ship has been hit.
It didn’t really feel like a
Collision…
There doesn’t seem to be any
Damage…
People come running out…
And it’s a Game.
They pick up pieces of the iceberg that
Have fallen
On the squash court below me, and
They’re throwing them
At each other, out there in their pajamas.
But there are a few ominous notes:
From below,
There is the sound of pumps.
First Officer Lightoller is not answering
Questions…
He just
Ran by me, carrying a pistol.
Lifeboat Drill?

Refrain

Lifeboat drill?
In the middle of the ocean? In the
Middle of the night?
They’re not fooling anyone.
I can count, I’m not a stupid man.
There aren’t anywhere near enough
Lifeboats on this ship.
The women and children will go,
And the men must stay behind.
They know. You can see it in their eyes,
Saying goodbye to their wives as they
Cram into those lifeboats.
“See you in New York, dear!”
Oh, Emily,
The millionaire industrialists standing
Out on the deck
In the middle of the night,
Wearing their
Finest evening clothes,
Facing the ocean,
Facing the sky,
Facing death. It’s almost two-thirty. They’ve been
Radioing a distress call,
And apparently there are ships on the
Way to help,
But they’re not saying how long it will
Be…
How many hours in that water,
How many hours in that
Cold water.
There’s a certain strange cameraderie
Here on the deck,
Millionaires and poor Irish farmers
Who put aboard at Queensland,
Finishing off whatever liquor is left.
Talking, laughing, listening to the band
Play “Autumn.”
It’s gonna be cold in that water.
And we are definitely sinking now.
The captain has just advised that those
Of us who are left
Should jump and try to swim as far as
Possible
Before the ship goes or it will suck us
Under with it.
About the only chance we have is to
Swim for the lifeboats
And try to cling to the sides until the
Ships come to rescue us.
Mother Ocean,
You’re cold tonight.
Sucking the life from my limbs
As I swim toward those lights,
Those crowded lifeboats, those packed lifeboats.
All around me I can see the hands
Breaking water,
Reaching for the boats, people
Drowning,
Just giving up and going under.
I can see all the hands in the water
Reaching up.
All the hands in the lifeboats reaching
Down.
All the hands in the water reaching up.
All the hands in the lifeboats reaching down.
All the hands in the water reaching up.
All the hands in the lifeboats reaching down.
(repeat, against…)
Sometimes you're reaching up...
Sometimes you're reaching down...
Sometimes you're reaching up...
Sometimes you're reaching down...

TITANIC—TAG

Emily,
It’s cold underwater.
Down here with the ship,
Down here with the Unsinkable Titanic.
The Great Titanic,
Under the water.
And here we are with her,
We lost souls left alone.
I love you.
Did I ever really tell you that Emily?
It’s a Cold life,
It’s a Cold life,
It’s a Cold way to go
Down here with the Unsinkable.
It’s a Cold life,
It’s a Cold life,
It’s a Cold way to go
Emily, Emily, I love you.
(repeat)

Final Cuts

Emily 17

GENIUS GONE INSANE
(Music and lyrics by Buddy)



Well, we lived our lives in the public eye
Like a Genius Gone Insane,
Misunderstanding all we’d see.
When the end it finally came,
It was like a whirlpool in my brain,
Tearing through whatever’s left of me.

We cannot speak, we cannot touch,
There are walls
Around us now,
Three hundred thousand meter/seconds high.
Now we stand in different lands,
Under different hands and different
Names,
Fading with the order
From the sky.
(repeat first verse)

Final Cuts

Emily 18

THE MISTER SOFTEE SUITE:
(BOTTOM OF THE WELL/ BRAIN DEATH/ NOTHING
HUMANLY POSSIBLE/ WAITING FOR FALL)
(Music and lyrics by Buddy)



Not so much what we want,
But why we want it.
Not so much what we were taught,
But how you said it.
We’ve been taking things from your
Hands now for so long,
For so long.
You never thought we had other plans,
and now it’s time
For moving on…

Refrain
 And there’s only one way to tell…
 And there’s only one way to tell…
 What’s on the bottom of the Well.
Well, there’s no need to fear.
We’ll be gone by this time next year.
As the clocks tick around, as the
Numbers play,
Quicker than we can be found,
We’ll be on our way.
We’re on our way…

Refrain

I’m sick and tired of trying to prove things
To you motherfuckers.
I’m sick of people disappearing.
I’m tired of fearing on the level of the Lovers,
One thing or another…
It’s just Brain Death,
Living without you.
It’s just Brain Death,
Living without you.
It’s just Brain Death,
Trying to live without you.
Trying to live without you.
Trying to live without
You.

(segue)
I cannot raise the dead.
I cannot save the doomed.
I cannot restore the blood once shed.
I cannot retrieve the life consumed.
And it poisons me to say
As I watch you all decay,

Refrain
 That there’s nothing humanly possible.
 Nothing humanly possible.
 There’s nothing humanly possible
 That any of us can do.
I cannot change the past.
I cannot force the cards.
We are the next and last.
This learning does come hard.
And it tortures me to say
As we die from day to day,

Refrain

(segue)

Final Cuts

Emily 19

WAITING FOR FALL
(needs legal clearance on lyrics and the Mister Softee Theme)
(Music and lyrics by Buddy
additional lyrics by Will Neustadter)



SIX LINES DELETED

Oh...

FIVE LINES DELETED

So much of what I thought seems
Impossible now.
It’s a long time, it’s a long way, I don’t
Know how
To get home.
It’s a long way…

Well, this cruise we’re on has never begun.
Well, this cruise we’re on…
Ain’t no one coming back again.
And as the lights fade from the sky, you
Wave goodbye,
You wave…

SIX LINES DELETED

Oh, sudden danger!
All work and no play.
And some ominous stranger
To take you away…
Why?
Well, tell me why?
Well, tell me why…
I wish…

Carried along like a creature from the deep,
I cannot ask for anything more.
I come to you, too tired for sleep,
Leaving hints outside you door.
Childhood’s packages,
Fragrant playground dreams,
Waiting for the mask to lift, waiting for
The world behind the scenes,
Waiting for you to see what it really means.
What it really means, what it really means,
What it really means,
What it really
Means to me.
Oh, I know, you don’t think I’ve seen
You, you sold yourself to the machine
And I hear it now,
Clanking through the backyards of your
Dreams,
Heard but never seen,
Just like me.
Is he like the way I used to be, just like
Me?
Is he like the way I used to be, is he just
Like me?
Well, I waited for Fall.

Closing the distance,
Narrowing it day by day,
Oh, oh, such resistance.
I got nothing left to say.
I got nothing left to play.
I’m invisible now, there’s nothing left
To reveal…
De de de de de de de de de de
de de de de de de de…
(repeat and fade…)

Final Cuts

Emily 20

TIME MACHINE #5
(Music and lyrics by Buddy)



Looking at a picture of you,
Looking at your face,
Looking at the camera,
Looking into space.
Woken shrieking
Speakers leaking
Music of the Stone.
Frozen meaning.
Learning to be seen
Is to be shown.
Take me back, take me back, Time Machine.
Take me back, take me back, Time Machine.
Take me back to the future.
Take me back to the future.
Take me back to the past.
Take me back to the streets of the city.
Downtime to the mind
I was the last time.
Take me back through the water,
Back through the ocean,
Back through the web of time.
Back through the earth, back down to
Atlantis,
Back to when my baby was mine.

Take me back, take me back, Time Machine.
Take me back, take me back, Time Machine.
Take me back, take me back, on the
Backstreets of the past.
Back to back, back to the village
And remind me of the mind we long to
Find at long last.
It was way downtime in the City Gone
At the dawn, left in the streets of the Black One’s Time.
We broke down, we broke in
To the City of the Dawn,
Broke into the analog city time,
The analects of a past long gone.
Broke into the River,
Broke into the Rhythm,
Broke into the Temple of the Queen,
Broke into the Rhythm,
Back into time in the Temple of the Queen.
Captured in the cusp of time,
Captive in the focus of a horrible force,
Spilling like lava down pyramid staps,
An Apocalyptic sign!

Aztecs screaming in the great stone square
About the serpent and the sun.
Sinking into time until it seems to disappear,
It appears that the age has begun.
Well the age has begun, the age has begun,
In the Temple of the Queen.
The age has begun, the age has begun,
In the Temple of the Queen.
Slip into time at the river’s edge
Quarter to twelve with a gun in my hand
You know what I mean?
Slip into time, slip into time, the Temple
of the Queen,
Back into time, back into time, back into
The time machine.
We slip back into time, back into time,
Back into the Temple of the Queen,
Back into time at the river’s edge.
Baby, you know what I mean?
Slip into time, slip into the river with the
Serpent gun machine.
Slip into the queen, slip into time, slip
Into the age machine.
We fell back into time, back into time,
Back into the time machine.
Time has begun, time has begun in the Temple of the Queen.
We started out the sequence and we’re
Back inside,
Back inside the time machine.
We fell back into time, back into time,
Back into the time machine,
Back into time, back into time, back into
The Time Machine,
Back into time, back into time, back into
The Time Machine…
(repeat and fade)

Final Cuts

Emily 21

EMILY (MAYBE IN THE FUTURE)
(Music and lyrics by Buddy)



Tangled in the alien dawn.
I don’t belong here; it’s time I moved on.
There’s nothing left for me to find.
All the fragments of the design…
Awake.
Take my hand.
Try to make
Me understand…

What we are can’t decide what we are.
Fragments left inside the orbit of a star.
People needing people needing people
Needing sight,
Masks,
Masks over their eyes.
Masks and hair, flesh unaware,
Oh, Emily.
Oh, Emily.
It seems so strange to be sitting here saying this
After all this time.
Staring at the gray floor, staring at this skin,
Staring within, always staring within…
And then I think of you, Emily.
About your face,
The flexible albedo of your skin,
The life we could have had
In a future that might have been.
Your mouth, your eyes, and the soft
Dark way you talk
When you talk to me…
Emily.
Maybe in the future there’ll be a brilliant new age
With time and power to spare.
Maybe in the future there’ll be love for all,
And maybe there’s some way there…
Through the fiction of life,
And the promise of faith,
Lost in the flesh-locked soulless plan,
Harrowed endlessly on this
Vulture-ridden rock…
Time under an alien hand.
Time
Under an alien hand.

Final Cuts

Killing Time

For this album, I wanted to return to the high-concept, realistically rendered style of "Magic Warfare." I collected props for a couple of weeks, then dressed one corner of the basement and shot a couple of rolls with a remote shutter. The image was enlarged to correct size, I added the lettering, and then reshot, printed multiple images on one page, and then reproduced batches of them by color xerography. The color panel was spray adhesived to a standard 3-fold cassette insert done on the LaserWriter®

Final Cuts

Killing Time

Imagine a different world. One where the Incas discovered writing before they could be conquered, and kicked butt. Where Freemasons really do have a handle on the "soul" in every stone. Where people still wear hats. Where Armstrong beat Sarnoff in court and television is still radio's idiot sibling. Where Nixon won in 1960, and got his head handed to him ten years earlier, leaving Jack and Bobby to rule the 60's. Where people believed Plato's Timeus . Where teachers get paid as much as avertising executives. Where Hearst laughed it off and Welles became the greatest filmmaker of all time. Where we were all skilled at John Wesley Hardin's border roll, and the Law was afraid. Where James Joyce's deathbed complaint was irrelevant. Where public television really belongs to the people. Where entropy does not always overtake the thief. Where the President wears a Hawaiian shirt. Where there never will be any such thing as the designated hitter. Where Freud was softened by mescaline rather than hardened by cocaine. Where Ursula LeGuin is the most popular writer in America. Where we learned to live in peace with the Abenaki long before we wandered West. Where Fred Hampton wasn't home. Where mechanization never quite took command.
Imagine.
Well, that was nice, wasn't it? But it's monday morning, you're late for work, your rent check bounced, you need a root canal, and your lover just walked out.
Welcome to Killing Time.

Final Cuts

Killing Time

Killing Time 1986

Make All Your Dreams Come True
Tell Me Why
Slowly Light Begins To Dawn II
Desert Song
Falling Apart/Druid Chant
Red Light Red
Killing Time #1
Atman
Just Another Flash In The Pan
You Make Me Whole
Becky and Bill
Make all Your Dreams... (Reprise)
Rockaway Rock
You Make Me Whole (Reprise)
Killing Time #2

Produced, engineered and mixed by Art
Recorded, mixed and mastered in the basement of Callisto
Art: acoustic guitar, vocals

Final Cuts

Killing Time 1

MAKE ALL YOUR DREAMS COME TRUE
(Music and lyrics by Buddy)



Well it's a long walk
Down the amusement pier
To the lights beside the arcade.
It's along way; I can see it from here—
The rings of pattern in the plans we made.
And I walk down this rainswept stretch of boardwalk
Past the Tourniquette Hotel.
And I can still feel the ghost of your hand in my hand,
And I guess it's just as well.
I guess it's just as well.
And it's just too soon to tell.

Refrain
 Come on, babe, out to the beach tonight;
 We can keep anything we can steal.
 Come on, babe, out to the beach tonight;
 I'm gonna show you some things that are real.
 Come on, babe, out to the beach tonight;
 You know the only one I'm ever gonna ask is you.
 Sit beside me on the Wheel tonight...
 I'm gonna make all your dreams come true.
 I'm gonna make all your dreams come true.

Well, Carbon Bob
Had a broken heart.
He should have known that nothin's ever stayed.
Now he hides under the boardwalk where it's cold and dark
And the wood is all decayed.
I coulda told him when the whole thing began
That she was nothing but a Jersey Girl.
He said, "I guess I hadda learn that one the hard way, man.
But it's not the end of the world." He said, "You know, I asked the Boss...
And he said nothin's ever Really lost..."

Refrain

They say that Tooth of Crime and motion of guilt
Go together hand in hand in hand.
They found your car,
Buried lock-deep in silt,
Late last night out on Terminal Island.
The State Police were called; everybody crawled
Out to the end of the rocks to see...
Risin' out of the night
In the chopper light
Your ancient silver Mercury.
And it's been a long time.
Let me tell you what's on my mind...

Refrain

Final Cuts

Killing Time 2

TELL ME WHY
(Music and lyrics by Buddy)



Way over yonder
In the world of dream...
They hung suspended
From the velvet screen.
I thought gravity was a rainbow
But it's only shades of gray.
When you ask me what's the matter,
Well, what do you expect me to say?
Expect me to say...
Expect me to say...
When you say what's the matter,
Well, what do you expect me to say?

As I lay down dying in darkness and scattered light,
A mind wasted in the White Subway's shattered flight
On the Immense Journey, with the fallen Tree,
I thought I'd touch someone's hand before I leave,
Down on my knees.
Tell me why…
Tell me why…
When you say what does it matter,
Do you expect me to lie?

Lie di di di di
di di di
di di di
di di

Lie die di di di di
di di di
di di di
di di

Lie di di di di
di di di
di di di di
di di

Lie di di di di
di di di
di di di
di di di di di

What do you say?
What do you say?
When you ask me what's the matter,
Well, what do you expect me to say.
Do you believe?
Do you believe?
Do you believe?
Do you believe?
Do you believe in childhood?
Do you belive in Emily?
Do you believe in Magic?
Immortality?
What's past is past; what's gone is gone.
That's the mystery of the Sphinx.
We crawl down in the basement with a flashlight
And look for missing links.
What do you say?
What do you say?
When you say what does it matter,
What do you expect me to say?
When you say what does it matter,
Does it matter why?
When you say what does it matter,
Does it matter why?
Does it matter?
Does it matter why?
Why was it matter?
Was it matter?
Why?
Why was it matter...

Final Cuts

Killing Time 3

SLOWLY LIGHT BEGINS TO DAWN II
(Music and lyrics by Buddy)



Are you afraid to die?
To turn back into motion's faceless stream?
Face the dream
Gone to cancer—
Nightmare ridden, bedspread wet, you turn and meet the night.
Your eyes still full of flashes of Pure Light.
The insides of your brain,
The furrowed tunnels of the pain that you feel,
Just another time Around the Wheel.
Another turnstile moment cracked into your consciousness,
A flash of Zeit and Nothingness
And Will.
The explosion of a star
And here we are...

And you,
You catch glimpses of yourself.
And you,
Don'tcha catch glipmses of yourself?
Oh, and you,
now, dont'cha just sometimes catch glimpses of yourself?
Oh, and you,
Don't you catch glimpses of yourself?
Just scattered moments caught in flight.
Early color photographs preserved in pages left
Unread by bedspread candlelight.
Apartment meetings late at night.
Past the curving edge of sight,
Poses of Raw Delight,
Love that turns to bite,
To break the heart that sought to seal it in
With stones and mortar old as time itself.
Hands of the unknown, with weapons deft,
Left behind by tyrant kings.
But these were other things—
Pathways that were new
Inside the mind they made for you,
With toys,
With bars,
With raster cages in the zoo.
Yes, and I was in there, too.

The Quest for fair T'Pring,
The peace that only she can bring,
That final note of spring
That echoes into sad advice
The Captain's sacrifice.
The hypo from McCoy
The man becomes the boy, the boy the toy, the toy bright rage and joy
Just at that crack of neck the Other's battled breath at last expelled.
And then joy dissolves,
Slinking off like movie fog,
Down alleys greasewet and thundering
With the morbid poundings of a heart in flight.
You must find shelter, or they'll kill you in the night.
Empty rooms in wounded minds
And hands that wring the rags of the clinging blood of time,
The singing god who sanctifies the past
As if this was the last
Time we'll be here…
Time we'll be here…
Time we'll be here…
Time we'll be here…
You know I believe that we've been here a long time.
You know I believe
Yes, sometimes it seems like ages of skin and bone.
Down,
We went down,
Through the coal forests down through collision-damned New Jersey,
Toward the throne.
The hands of Casey Jones
And the workers on the tracks,
Smiles on the faces of those beaten backs
Enjoying now their turn.

Dreamt into the subway,
Into suits and leather briefcases,
Commercials, condo alleys, video, evolution, consciousness.
The primal fire of Pain,
The force that moves the brain and keeps us out on the Main Line.
On the Main Line.
Out on the Main Line.
Out on the Main Line.
Out on the Main Lie.
A souring smell of rust,
The signals change; the dust rises from the tracks.
The train has passed; the wind behind our back
Whips up our hair and cuts at the edges of our eyes.
We turn, and touch, and face the lies.
Madness at the lights
Awaiting at the change from day to night,
The endless curve of sight,
Membrane curled around soft water.
Weeping images recur
And fade.

Final Cuts

Killing Time 4

DESERT SONG
(Music and lyrics by Buddy)



He hitchhikes out from town
From Reno where he leaves his car
Fifty miles into the desert
The truck driver says,
"Man, you know where you are?"
He just nods and smiles
Waves the trucker on ahead
A last fast gaze into the heat haze
He blows his brains out and he's dead
Dead in the desert
At twenty-three.
Out in the scrub brush
Where nobody can see.
Dead in the desert
at twenty three
Dead in the desert
Where nobody can see.
Out in the scrub brush
where nobody...

Then the lizards come
crawling up and they eat his eyes
Face down oozing blood
into the sand as he dies
Next day the state pollice
find the body on the roadside
They scare away the vultures
Coroner calls it suicide.
Now sez Father Anastasio
He can't be buried in his family grave
Why did he do it says his father
He was so brave.
You know my boy
he was so brave
He was a tall boy
He was so brave
My boy
He could face anything
He could face anything
He could face
Nothing

Put the body on the plane
shipped it off back east
had to be closed casket
good enough for the relatives at least
Standing there in the funeral parlor
the victims and the friends
Adjust the venetian blinds
Sign the visitors book
Talk loose ends
Well the boss is gonna give the mother
two weeks back pay
You know his admission to law school
came just the other day
Just the other day
Just the other day
thinking about just the other day
Just the other day
Just the other day
Just the other day
Just the other day
Just the other day
Just the other day
Just the other day

()
And his girl friend is sitting there in a chair by the side of the casket
And she is so far from her family
And I can tell you that she's thinking
about a universe
where it didn't end this way
Thinking about
Just the other day
thinking about
just the other day
Thinking about what could have happened
Just the other day
Thinking about what should have happened
Just the other
and you're starting to wonder about what happened
Just the other
You're starting to wonder and you know that there'll be
another day
You'll be thinking this
on another day
It'll be you another day
It'll be you another day
Standing around you another day
Thinking about you another day
Just some other day
just the other day
just the other day
It was just the Other day
It was just the other...

Funeral church was empty
the pastor said some things about insanity
Modern life and mortal sin
and some textbook platitudes about humanity
Now the girfriend stands on the artificial grass
crying, trying to be brave
As the priest says,
"Death where is thy sting,
where is thy victory, O grave.
Jesus the Christ came down to Earth and
tried to be just like this kid
He was born and died and buried and on the third day he rose
Father forgive him,
for he knew not what he did.
Father forgive him,
for he knew not what he did.

And the long line winds past
slowly dropping pink carnations
folding past the grave
dropping in carnations
and she's thinking
smothered in carnations
In and out of the box
In and out of the box
smothered in carnations
In and out of the box
a long way in from the rocks
In every word that it talks
the nameless spirit that walks
and she's thinking

Mysteries from the box
A long way from the rocks
Every time we talk
The cosmos shifts and locks
you're a little bit older
And you're a little bit colder
And you find you've got your shoulder
Under Sisyphus's boulder

Someday I
Will get back to that sheltering sky...
Someday I
Will get back to that sheltering sky...
Someday I
Will get back to that sheltering sky...
Someday I
Will get back to that sheltering sky...
Someday I...
Someday.

Final Cuts

Killing Time 5

FALLING APART/DRUID CHANT
(Music and lyrics by Buddy)



Hunh! (A lá Zevon)
I been falling apart for a long time
Droppin' letters on the floor.
I been twisted and tangled
In the worst of circumstances
But I ain't never said I ain't got the time
for one more

I been falling apart for a long time
And it's feeling much the same
I been walkin on water
with the Pharoah's only daughter
Holding what looked like
the best hand in the game...

Refrain:
I been falling
I been falling I been falling I been falling
I'm fallen I'm fallen I'm fallen
I been falling I been falling I been falling I'm fallen.

Hoh.

I been falling apart for a long time
Walkin sideways in the sand
Invisible sections
In eleven-d projections
That all seem to lead right back
to where I stand

I been falling apart for a long, long time
Wearing the street right through my shoes
I enjoy walking on thin ice
In my own secret service
When I ain't got nothing left to lose

Refrain

I been falling apart for a long time
And I'm feeling something ill
I've obeyed the Laws of Robotics
Till I become completely psychotic
Now I'm convinced that to save myself I might even kill
I been falling apart for a long time
On the streets and on the run
I been looking for my double
In all kinds of trouble
Staggering around
Howling at the sun

Refrain

I been falling apart for a long time
Chasing Jason down the hall
I been seeing vases and faces
In the same times and places
for so long now that it
don't seem strange at all
I been falling apart for a long time
and you know I hate this walking home
Living like some critter
on borrowed neurotransmitters
and a little bit of magic
that I scored at the dome

Refrain

Druid Chant

I'm fallen I'm fallen I'm fallen I'm fallen I'm fallen I'm fallen
I'm fallen I'm fallen I'm fallen
I'm fallen I'm fallen I'm fallen I'm fallen I'm fallen

When the sun goes down
When the sun goes down on the city
When the sun goes down
When the sun goes down I can believe in the Mystery

When the sun goes down
When the sun goes down on the city
When the sun goes down
When the sun goes down I can believe in the Mystery

Final Cuts

Killing Time 6

RED LIGHT RED
(Music and lyrics by Buddy)



Well, I'm rolling down the tunnel
I don't see nothing there but green
So I call up my controller
She's a friend I never seen
And I say, Hey there pretty lady,
what's the situation up ahead?
She says, you better slow down
There ain't no way around
They're gonna need backhoes
to clear out the dead

Refrain
Oh no, red light red
Oh no there's trouble up ahead
Oh no, red light red
Oh no there's trouble up ahead
there's trouble up ahead now
there's trouble up ahead now

Well I went to ask the Policeman
He looks just like Emily
I says what about mantra yoga
and quantum indeterminacy?
He says boy, don't you go fucking around with magic.
And don't go messing with the past.
'Cause you, if you ever find
A prayer to touch that mind,
You'd just better hope it kills you fast.

Refrain

Bridge

trouble up ahead trouble up ahead now
trouble up ahead trouble up ahead now
Well you know
Well you know
Will you know
Will you know
Will you know it when it comes?
Will you know it when it comes?

When it comes there might be darkness.
When it comes there might be rain.
When it comes there'll be a morning
Like the earth will never see again.
When it comes.
When it comes.
When it comes. Nothing wasted when it comes.
When it comes. Don't be wasted when it comes.

Oh no, red light red
Oh no there's trouble up ahead
Oh no, red light red
Oh no there's trouble up ahead
there's trouble up ahead now
there's trouble up ahead now
trouble up ahead trouble up ahead trouble up ahead trouble up ahead
trouble up ahead now

Well, when I wake up, it's Tuesday morning.
Of course, the whole thing was a dream.
But I can surely, I can surely see a warning
Bout things not being what they seem.
So I said, hey, pretty lady
What do you think that means is going on?
She says, you know I been trying to tell you this for quite some time
But the truth is I think it's time that I was gone.
Oh no, red light red
Oh no, there's trouble up ahead.
Trouble up ahead now
Trouble up ahead Trouble up ahead now
Trouble up ahead Trouble up ahead now
Trouble up ahead Trouble up ahead now

Final Cuts

Killing Time 7

KILLING TIME #1
(Music and lyrics by Buddy)



There are songs
of power and frustration
about the world that we see.

There are songs
of peace and imagination
And those are the ones
That set us free.

To the victor go the spoils
Rake the chips in at the end
In the world's full rolling boil
All the flesh that begins one day must end
Oh and all that we won
We lost my friend
All that we won

Oneness gathers
What nothingness sows
And little girl blue
Has lost her clothes
Now little boy blue
won'tcha blow that horn
Little angel blue
Come blow that horn
Nothing is wasted
Nothing is born
Standing out here
In the gathering dawn
Wading though the river
to the wilderness beyond
In the middle of the fire
In the middle of the wheel
In the middle of the dying
In the middle of the deal
In the middle of the wire
In the middle of the reel
In the middle of the eye
set in the middle of the seal
Killing Time.
Killing Time.

Final Cuts

Killing Time 8

ATMAN (EP)
(Music and lyrics by Buddy)



Down around south Manhattan
Where there's time to think.
I was walking down the streets
staring at the river
Nothing to drink
With designs
In our minds
We been up all night
Making love and painting signs
Piecemeal meaning
Look at this precision in our choice
That firm note of decision
You can hear it in our voice
We're gonna...

Refrain
la la la
La la la la
la la la la la
la la la la
la la la la la
la la la la
la la la la la
la la la

Down around Eastern Parkway
Where there's Time to Kill.
Stumbling up the back staircase of the Dark Way
to the Triumph of the Will
With a pick
In my bag of tricks
I been whistling for a boatman
on the shoreline of the Styx
I'm off to meet a prisoner
Called Euridice
The mission's Magic Warfare
And she's coming out with me
And we're gonna...

Refrain

Down around Silicon Valley
When you're at the screen
Trying to decide between Lucifer and Charlie
And the server's acting mean.
With our flames
And zero-sum games,
We been up all night feeding the gods
And breaking frames.
Huffman packing
Bitmap hacking
In a wasteland Newton missed.
When every application that you open
Just sends a goodbye kiss
And you're gonna...

Refrain

Down around San Narcisco
Out in the sun.
Carried along like some parties to a Mystery,
Hand in hand in hand everyone.
With a yawn
In the dawn
We been up all night
Riding the bus looking for the horn.
Tired of watching the skies
Waiting for the Intrusion of the Divine,
Now we lie back and await the Crying
Of Lot 49.
We're gonna...

Final Cuts

Killing Time 9

JUST ANOTHER FLASH IN THE PAN
(Music and lyrics by Buddy)



It's easier out at sea when they bury you.
Here in the Western World we're gonna have to carry you.
Into some marble room where they can worship you
As being without a mind

Refrain
Just another flash in the Pan
Just another mind in a cage
Just another two-thousand man
Just another product of the age.

Walking down the street ensnared in Indra's net
Try to make enought to keep all the monsters out of my head
Try to keep up just a little with all the books I read
Don't make no difference now what Plato said.
Just another Flash in the Pan
Just another mind in the Cave
Just another two-thousand year old plan
Just another nobly lied to slave.

Working the airconditioned office talking on the phone
Talking to all the Zone-things under cover back home
Drawing conclusions on the bathroom wall
Drawing on my desk
Staring out the window at the concrete wilderness
You can be my guest
Cuz I'm
Living in a world of make believe.
What does it enhance?
What does it obsolesce?
What does it retrieve?
It reverses into the world to be taken as real.
At the speed of light,
Phenomenology gets a pretty raw deal.

Refrain
Broken on the Wheel of Temporal Causality.
The telephone pole of information replaced the wisdom of the Tree
Sippin' tea sittin' by the radiator waitin' for the mail
You know that plain brown wrapper just might be the Holy Grail
It never fails, I'm
Trapped in this wetware network of on-off gates
Looking for way to cross over into some Altered States
And I'm thinking about the final message I got from the Beast
She said there's only one way from that Journey to the East.

Refrain

Final Cuts

Killing Time 10

YOU MAKE ME WHOLE
(Music and lyrics by Buddy)



When the situation gets dangerous
And there's no one left to call
And I need someone to trust
And I've got to tell it all
There are problems with the ancient gods
There are problems with the Christ
There's fighting in Northern Ireland
There's a frost in Paradise
You shatter my neutrality
Force me to reality
You are the causality that captivates my soul
You make me whole
You make me whole
You make me holier that I ever dreamed I could be
Now I know what it's like to be free

The prophets are speaking in the square
Each inside a leather mask
There are questions of which I am aware
That nobody dares to ask
Don't talk of paranoia
That's something I no longer do.
I'll say this means one thing to me
It means something else to you
No one questions authority
We just assume that's the way things have to be
It doesn't bother me you've shown the hollowness of that role
You Make me whole
You make me whole
You make me a whole more sure that I see what I see
I know what I hate, and I don't hate me
Anymore.

You are subterranean
You're a creature on the prowl
I have been you time and time again
In rock and cloud and fish and fowl
Down inside your tangled bloodstream
What hallowed orphans freeze
In pagan rites where voices roar
In the battle of the Trees
A myth of resurrection
Whispers through the crowd at the Crucifixion
As the Centurion offers the gall spongs
On the pole
You make me whole
You make me whole
You make me wholly insecure that things are as they seem
You lead me to wisdom through nightmares disguised
As dream.
You're the lizard in the desert song
You're the motion of the skies
You have been beyond me all along
You are that which never dies
There's something to art and Poety
Of which we only vaguely speak
The source of glory's sure reward
The guest unique.
It isn't easier as time goes by
The system tames us and we learn to die
But in our minds eye we're still fighting for control.
You make me whole
You make me whole
You make me get a hold on the difference between Truth and Belief
Inside the orbit of Mercury
I find relief.

Final Cuts

Killing Time 11

BECKY AND BILL
(Music and lyrics by Buddy)



Out in the woods at midnight
I swear these country roads are strange
Shapes from haunted daylight closing in
To change
These ancient places
That we walked in afternoons
Show through the trees from
Town to town to town
Like the moon

Refrain
She says to me
Bill
It's once in a lifetime
She said I do
I feel the Fall
Once and once only in this lifetime
One chance for
Once and for
All

I went to pick up Becky at the diner
She's been waiting there since eighty-five
Head to the movies down in Clarksville
Old rock and roll on the radio as we drive
Well you know
I was in love with Becky back in high school
But then I went away to State
Thought I'd make it up in the majors
And By the time I came back
Well you know that it's too late

Refrain

By the time we finally made it
I was long past thirty
Coaching at the middle school on the edge of town
The money wasn't too good
But it wasn't dirty
Though Beck's folks thought she should have done a lot better
The second time around
We got a little house
Nothing much on Spring Street
With a couple of cats
and a big bed upstairs
And now we go out driving on these night roads
Like the highschool lovers we never was
Back when we had no cares
(Countin' those gray hairs)

Refrain

Once in a lifetime...
she said to me
Once in a lifetime
she said to me...

Final Cuts

Killing Time 12

MAKE ALL YOUR DREAMS COME TRUE (REPRISE)
(Music and lyrics by Buddy)



Now I'm distressed I can't get no rest
Even the blessed have to pay some dues
Walking down the road trying to break the Code
Binding the two by two by twos
It's starting to get dark
And they all heading for the park
Out on the end of Springfield Avenue
It's such a long dark time
Back along the river in my mind
But I seem to remember being there
One time with you
Come on babe out to the beach tonight
We can keep everything we can steal
Come on babe out to the beach tonight
I'm gonna show you some things that are real
Come on babe out to the beach tonight
You know the only one I'm ever gonna ask is you
Sit beside me on the Wheel tonight
I'm gonna make all your dreams come true
I'm gonna make all your dreams come true.
I can make all your dreams come true.

Final Cuts

Killing Time 13

ROCKAWAY ROCK
(Music and lyrics by Buddy)



Well we pull into the parking lot
Out behind the hot dog stand
Riis Park in the midnight dark
We run screaming on down to the sand
Radio blasting
On that rock and roll frequency
We got the Kingsford edge
We gonna drug and veg
Like the killers we pretend to be
Come on baby
Remember how we used to play?
We gonna do all right
We gonna rock all night
On the Rocks at Rockaway

Refrain
Do all right
Babe we gonna Rock all night
We gonna do all right
We gonna rock all night.

Picked up the beer at the Gateway place
Bought about a thousand cans
Hid it in a duffel bag
So we don't get caught by Jackie's old man
Come on baby
You know that the summer's on the way
You can't hide up in your room tonight
Come on down to the sea to play
Come on baby
What more do I have to say?

Heard about your new boyfriend, baby
I took some of his heat
He got an MBA
Take down 80 K
And his dad he works over in the Street
I'm just a Brooklyn boy
I ain't got nothin' goin for me
But I play guitar in some local bars
And I ride the IRT
Come on baby
What more do I have to say?
We gonna do all right we gonna rock all night
Out on the rocks at Rockaway

Refrain
Four in the morning, things got a little wilder than we planned
Ray blew up the fire with a twelve hour propane can
Charlie trashed the lifeguard chairs cuz they looked like things from Mars
It must be full moon, we should be leaving soon
Here come the Park Police cars
Come on baby
What did you say?
We gonna do all right
We gonna rock all night
Out on the rocks at rockaway.

Ref

Final Cuts

Killing Time 14

YOU MAKE ME WHOLE (REPRISE)
(Music and lyrics by Buddy)



There is no discovery
That could ease our transit now
We've decided what it means to be
In the world outside the Tower
The Wheel of Life is motionless
The winds of changes stall
I wait for that first antic kiss
That will begin the fall
We can't believe the Buddha now
We can't be saved by Will or Tao
And the Return is just a myth
From days of old
You make me whole
You make me whole
You make me whole out of nothingness

You are the Word and I can't guess
What's next.
You are my Text: Killing Time.

Final Cuts

Killing Time 15

KILLING TIME #2
(Music and lyrics by Buddy)



Have you noticed that I don't blink
Or fall away from Things,
Or make vague eye contact with those offstage,
Or walk the wicked wire,
Or get tangled in my strings,
Like some puppet from the Sixties come of age?

Killing Time is just a mirror.
Killing Time is just a dream.
Killing Time is just the payoff,
Of the way things seem to mean.
And if you ever doubt the power
Of the printed bound up word,
If you ever doubt the power of a song,
You'll be 'long in eighty-hours,
Drop on by and have a look.
And you know, it might not even be that long.

Killing Time is just a notion
Killing Time is just a dream
Killing Time is just a Vision
Killing Time seem to seem
And if you ever start to doubt
The bright moment of your doom
If you begin to doubt the climb
Just stay away from edges
And the magnifying booth
You have realized the truth
By Killing Time

There are songs and there are singers
Like the trumpeters of Hell
And only Time can tell its twisted tale
There are stories of division
That would tear you down to tears
Like forty ugly years inside the whale

Killing Time is just a notion
Killing Time is just a dream
Killing Time is just a Vision
Killing Time is just a Seem to seem
And if you ever doubt the Hammer
Appearing in your dream
If you ever doubt the room
Can make you rhyme
Don't forget to close your letters
With a marker from the Chase
As you fall back into place
Killing Time

Bridge
If they have to, you know, people can change things
If they try to, they can tear themselves apart
If they meet and come around
They can come to common ground
And wake the sleeping soul in Matter's heart...

Have you ever had a vision of the way things ought to be?
Have you ever tried to reach another Mind?
Then you know of the decision by the World not to Be
And you've realized Mother Nature's not so kind...
But there's a fire in the distance
There's a spirit in your walk
Cuz you've seen the tumbling Wheels brought on line
And there's a Voice inside the Silence
With the info that you need
Cut the cord and let it bleed
It's Killing Time.

Final Cuts

Retribution

The cover photo was taken by Emily Keane, back in 1983 when we were all living in a house in Jenkintown, just outside Philadephia, shooting "Sooner or Later." We had a summer sublet and Emily had the run of a nearby campus where she was TA-ing for a film course. The reps would come and go (some of them are visible in the party scene at Bill and Ceri's, if you've ever seen the film) and we'd jam at night and film all day. This was a particularly tough morning, and Emily just caught the shot.

Final Cuts

Retribution

—Mao



There is nothing to be afraid of. I am Buddy and I am Philip K. Dick and I am Malcolm Lowry and I am Bruce Ismay. Not in the fragmented, channeled way which is all you can recollect. Sobriety is drunkenness, says the Bridge—this is its true message. You built it, back when you were paralyzed in an apartment in Brooklyn, watching for glimpses of her with field glasses. What the damned forget (don't they? All the time...) is that they're The Damned. Nimbus of Stagehands reaching up to the Hands of the Author reaching down. Welcome, students, to Political Atrocities 103: Introduction to state sponsored terrorism. There are no prerequisites. "Who needs love when you've got a gun?"—Mu. Apartments where the gas jets burn all winter as indictives of the evil Lords of Cold. And the ultimate horror of listening to old tapes, the Zarathustra Realization: as ugly and stupid as your former self seems to you now, so you will seem to your Entropy Self...and so, you, RIGHT NOW, are stupid and horrible; a smelly, obnoxious defecating prank of nature. And the only reason you can think of to keep existing is the hope inpired by the slim progress you've made over your insipid protoself.

Final Cuts

Retribution

Retribution 1988

Bubble Memory
Newry
The Bottom Line
Talk Around Town
Midnight Movies
Jigoku no Mokushiroku
Supposed to be a Love Song
Cuchulain (A song crept by me on the water)
Amor Vincit Omnia: Love Takes its Time/Songs in an Empty Room/Jenkintown

Produced by Art and Neal
Engineered and mixed by Art
Recorded, mixed and mastered at Eridanus, Pirate Cove, Rhode Island
Art: acoustic guitar, vocals
Emily: violin
Neal: lead guitar, effects
Vox: drums
Mu: bass guitar
Voice overs: the late Dr. Jerome Brentano, Gerald Cambrensis.

Final Cuts

Retribution 1

BUBBLE MEMORY
(Music and lyrics by Buddy)
(homage á Paul Simon)



I met him in the alleyway, he was the Hero with a Thousand Faces
Said, "Boy, you and me we're going places
Get your aces out early,
Later on down in the game they gonna bury them deep
No way to predict technology creep
Even in liquid nitrogen this flesh don't keep."

 Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence,
 It's a question of Being and Nothingness
 Broken symmetry and stress
 The Author and the Text

Soul stealer, shapeshifter, shoplifter
where you get to at night is anybody's guess.
Just another prophet in the Wilderness
Another mind trying to make sense of the mess
Another victim trying to avoid the Press.

 Happy Birthday Wanda June,
 It's a question of Being and Nothingness
 Even saints do more than they confess
 In this world and the next.

Take a lesson from the Sixties: don't ride in bubbletops
And if you get into trouble don't call the cops
Cuz they aint gonna be much use at all to you these days.
They took away the dark forest of the Goddess,
gave us the cross of civilization
Took away the tribe, gave us the nation,
Took away the band and gave us the corporation
It's Jus Prima Noctis, we're living in the Middle Ages
When the Book is king people can only be Pages
Listening to Presidential Rages
Walking through the downtown streets deaf dumb and blind
in a media blamestorm
Trying to avoid the Acid rainstorm
Sleepin' on steamvents trying to stay warm.

REFRAIN:
 Happy New Year, Mr. Orwell,
 It's a matter of order and randomness.
 There ain't no way to second guess
 The slow return of the repressed.

Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence,
it's a question of Being and Nothingness
Broken symmetry and stress
The Author and the Text
Happy Birthday Tambre Jayne,
It's a question of Being and Nothingness
Even saints do more than they confess
In this world and the next.

It's the Triple Witching Hour, Love in the Ruins,
we're Lost in the Cosmos,
Just attabout the boundary of the lethal dose
Tryin to find some candidate's not comatose.
Spendin our time
Trying to perceive Icons
Looking out for car bombs
Battling Decepticons
And we're Live on the Wire, synched into the transnational Network
Trying to learn my living on this fretwork
Keep Beauty and the Beast from going berserk.

REFRAIN

I met her in the alleyway
she was the heroine with
a thousand faces…

Final Cuts

Retribution 2

NEWRY
(Music and lyrics by Buddy)



I remember weaving around
With Penelope
On the streets down
by the bay.
Where the river ran
and the silent grass
in that April
Sunless lay
Where the circled stones show
Heroes from the past known
only by the names on the graves
Now the pastor sighs
as the people close their eyes
and whisper prayers assuring Jesus saves
Off in the trees
I wait and see
The Civil Guard lead you back
to your car
It's time to admit
that the knot's been split
and we are each forever now
just exactly what we are
The past is gone
it's time for moving on
There's nothing left for me
in Newry.

I have a dream
and it's full of war and lawyers and doctors
and policeMen on TV
broadcasting from America
thousands of miles across the sea
It's rough up here in the North
where the faces all are strange
Remembering Mountcharles
and your wedding all arranged
Oh, your father must have been brave
the local folk agree
to think he could give you away in the South
with the Provos running free
Seeds of doubt, Tears of grief
first a trout, then a grain of wheat
And our word decayed
and the World we made
sank into the sea
In Newry

Well the women rock in the living room
 and talk of the harrows of birth
 I'm tring to catch Penny
 but its the wickedest trick on Earth
 the sun and the roar of the surf on the shore
 and the bees and the buzz and the bloom
 lead me dancin' on till all sense is gone
 in a rye rust race consumed…

Sometimes in the other rooms
are ghosts of the way things used to be
and the fog in the harbor lifts
and the phantom vessels drift
from the haze of folktale evenings
back out to the open sea
There's no hope left
for the children of theft
and the children
of plastique
it's the call of the guns
to the handsome, brave young ones
now that there's no longer
any heaven left to seek
but the stories still survive
like the old farmers and their wives
and there's no way
no way
no way
to break free
of Newry

Final Cuts

Retribution 3

THE BOTTOM LINE
(or, life in the 80's)
(Music and lyrics by Buddy)



There's a feeling in the air
that just can't be explained
this guy come to town
and the people all got deranged
it's the bottom line
don't know what's behind it no more

Say it's the law of the jungle
Or diminishing returns
Feels like standing on the deck of the Stark
watching the Emperor
Fiddle while she burns
To the waterline
Don't look at what's behind you no more

Its a corporate culture and
we're cultural creatures
I'm just trying to turn all these
bugs into features
workin on the bottom line
reading dollar signs
and the Art of War

We're dressing in Coke
we sleepin on silk
we're down on the streets with an 800 number
begging for quarters and milk
holding on the Party Line
And the function you find
To make more

 Yeah, we heard it all before
 but this is Big Time
 waiting at the station for the eleven-fifty-nine
 I can see the signals change
 I can see it coming down the track
 and all of the people are waiting
 all the people waiting
 to get the rich off their backs
 down on the Bottom Line
 Don't you try and turn that blind eye
 No more

Ah, the Medium is the Message
Ya gotta understand it
If Moses had a PC
there'd be
Ten thousand commandments
That's the bottom line
the world you find
when you open the door

Matter makes time
Time makes space
and that's the end of the story
Right on down to the end of the human race
its just a matter of time
and that's the bottom line
yeah it's just Being and Time
that's the bottom line
Nur die Sein und Zeit
unten auf der Seite

Final Cuts

Retribution 4

TALK AROUND TOWN
(Music and lyrics by Buddy)



Talk around town sez you're gonna go all the way
Talk around town sez you made the connection now you're set for the big day
Talk around town sez you're gonna be here when we're gone
There's a seat on the Shuttle with your name on it babe
and all you gotta do is get on

Refrain

 It all boils down to who got what
 And who had the guts to make Final Cuts
 Look at me, standing out here all alone.
 Well if you can't save me, just save yourself
 And if you can save yourself, save somebody else
 Cuz ya know, it's a long way down to the ground...
 That's the talk around town.

Talk around town sez you're hand in hand with the Man
Sez you gonna be one of the principle players when it's time to make the Stand
Talk around town sez you got an in with the Heat
And you'll be walkin around these Aztec ruins when there ain't
nobody left on the Street

Refrain

Talk around town's you're worth some serious bread
Must be tuff dharma, in your line of work, to ride the subway
 with a price on your head
Talk around town's you're wearing the stone from the Henge
And that you're the one that made up that saying:
"Living hell is the best revenge."

Refrain

Talk around town's it's twenty percent of the gate
And that sucker watching "Tucker" in the Silver Shadow is
 just gonna have to wait
Talk around town's you've been getting together with Steve
And there's a sequel coming out next summer
 with some Critters you ain't gonna believe
The talk around town's that you've really been raking it in
You're living proof of the age old saying you can never be too rich or too thin
The talk around town's that you bought up the trademark on Grace
That you're sole spokesperson for the ozone layer
And you're the Queen of Outer Space

Refrain

Final Cuts

Retribution 5

MIDNIGHT MOVIES
Dedicated to
Akio Morita and Masaru Ibuka
for making it all possible
(Music and lyrics by Buddy)



 Midnight Movies
 Love to watch them
 Watch the monsters
 Kill the women
 Watch the heroes
 Make decisions
 The Two Cultures
 Are in collision now…

My VCR is an object of devotion
I watch the fingers get cut off in slow motion
Watch the werewolves eat the children
Such good models...I wonder how they build them

Oh that scene in Dawn of the Dead
When that chopper blade cuts through the zombie's head
How I feel…such intense sorrow
Wish I had that final reel of old Vic Morrow
(variant)
Oh that scene in FMJ
When Leonard sucks the gun and blows himself away
Then I know...such sick desire
Wish I had that final TV show of old Bud Dwyer

Jason and Freddy Terrorize the nation
Emphasize the dangers of premarital copulation
Brian de Palma in "Blowout" and in "Carrie"
Putting the fork to that piece of meat he married

How I relive my primal scene
When the skin on the scientist's head bubbles and turns green
I've seen it sixteen times I know where the monsters lurk
Look at the edge of the flying spiders, you can see the matte work

I know I struggle with the monster within
Look in the mirror sometimes and I think it's gonna win
This society reflects all my aggression
And I just can't wait for another session…

 Midnight Movies
 Love to watch them
 Watch the monsters
 Eat Nancy Reagan
 Watch the hero's
 cancerous intestines
 Sorry Ron, I guess you should have
 stuck to Westerns.

Final Cuts

Retribution 6

JIGOKU NO MOKUSHIROKU
(Music and lyrics by Buddy)



With kami and kana at half-past nine
I went down to my battlefield tapes.
Looking over the history of the world
On the trail of the risen apes.
When the dreamwork freezes it creates diseases
trying to show you the way to go.
It's alright, save it for another night, it's just, like,
A television show.

And it feels like the death of culture,
The death of time.
If I don't bust free it'll be the death of me
And my secondhand Jesuit mind.
The way things look I could write a book
If there was anybody left to read.
But they've been driven blind, frozen to the Signs
That they sucked in their Terminal Greed.

Alone, alone, all All alone
On the clanking IRT
And all the friends I've known, cut back to the bone
By supply side economy
And it sounds like Science Fiction
And it sounds like a bad idea.
It's the Wrath of Khan
The Yukaihan
The Monsters of the Year.

Alone alone, all all alone. (Monsters!)
 Alone alone, all all alone. (Monsters...)
 Alone alone, all all alone. (Monsters?)
 Alone alone, all all alone. (Mmmm...monsters.)

With kami and kana at half-past nine
I went down to my battlefield tapes.
Looking over the hirstory of the world
On the trail of the Naked Apes.
When the dreamwork freezes it creates diseases
trying to show you the way to go.
It's alright, save it for another night, it's just
A television show.
Just a television show
Just a television show    Repression and sublimation
Just a television show    Western civilization
Just a television show    Running in the brains of mammals
Just a television show    You don't like it you gotta
      change the channels…

Just a television show    The medium is the mass age
Just a television show    It's a digital rite of passage
Just a television show    Re-enact the agone
Just a television show    And wait for dawn…

Final Cuts

Retribution 7

SUPPOSED TO BE A LOVE SONG
For Emily
(Music and lyrics by Buddy)



Well, I got really drunk last night,
In, I suppose, my classic style.
And I wandered around the basement
Staring at things for a while.
I played old tapes, I laughed at things,
I called my missing friends.
Thinking about the life I live that I know is soon to end.

Refrain:
 And this is supposed to be a love song,
 Supposed, supposed to be.
 And I give you my hand, and the life we've planned
 Somehow slips over me.
I thought about the union of opposites and likes
While video unwound I wandered around amid lawnmowers and bikes
Too far gone to think, I stood at the sink
staring at this old face
And all I could see looking back at me,
Was a pattern in time and space.

REFRAIN

Anger turns to wisdom now
And fire turns to chains.
Gravity burns the Eternal Return
Deep into our split brains.
And we live and lie and things slide by that we don't have the strength to keep
And we grow old and slowly fold
And finally fall to sleep.

REFRAIN

Oh, waking up ain't easy.
Oh, waking up is hard.
Waking up's rough when you're hearing the devil
With a rake out in your back yard.
And I knew like that
there was nothing that mattered in this world but you and me
And the hardest part of a broken heart is
Swallowing the tale of fantasy.

And this is…a love song,
 Just what it's supposed to be.
 And I give you my hand, and the life we've planned
 Somehow slips over me.

Final Cuts

Retribution 8

CUCHULAIN
(A SONG CREPT BY ME ON THE WATER)
Concept and lyrics: Jerome Brentano
Music and additional lyrics: Buddy Newkirk
(Music and lyrics by Buddy)



Fade in: TV ANCHOR and the voice of MISSION CONTROL narrate the launch of the Shuttle Challenger.

SCOBEE
Reading 486 on mine.

SMITH
Yep. That's what I've got too.

HOUSTON PUBLIC AFFAIRS OFFICER (PAO)
Three good APU's. Velocity 2,257 feet per second, altitude 4.3 nautical miles. Downrange distance, 3 nautical miles.

MISSION CONTROL CENTER HOUSTON
Go at throttle up...

SCOBEE
Roger, go at throttle up.

PAO
Engines throttling up.
Three engines now at 104 percent.

A clicky burst of static and a popping noise

SMITH
Uhh...oh!

CONTROL
Uh...flight controllers are looking very carefully at the situation. Obviously a major malfunction.
We have have no downlink...we have a report from the flight dynamics officer that the vehicle has exploded...

Faint crowd noises in background. Fade in guitar.

I was lying on my back staring at the sky
Just like them
Talking about the death of Gods
When the Astronauts went down.
I was standing on a street staring at a screen
Just like you
Watching them fall to the endless sea
When the Astronauts went down.

 And a song crept by me on the water
 And I thought I heard the voice of my father
 Cuchulain
 And it brought me back again.

Fade in:
Staticky 1940's radio announcer HERB MORRISON narrating the arrival of the HINDENBURG.

MORRISON
Oh...It's exploded, it's burst into flames, it's in flames...oh, the humanity...excuse me...please...

A fiery end for Siegfried's bride
Lakehurst echoes with the terrified cries
Historians say she was the Führer's pride
but you'll never control the sky
No, you'll never control the sky.

Well you're born
And you die
You struggle with your Troubles
And you wonder why
Live the Word or
Live the Lie
But you'll never control the Sky
No, you'll never control the sky.
And a song crept by me on the water
 And I thought I heard the voice of my father
 Cuchulain
 And it brought me back again.

Guitar bridge...

Crossfade into PUB with accordion picking up melody. GLASSES, PLATES, LAUGHTER

BARMAID
Your pint, Sean.

OLD SEAN
Thank ye. I can't believe you lads really want to hear that old story again...

LADS
(various ad libs)
"Of course we do." "Tell it!" "Yeah, really."

OLD SEAN
All Right. The story of Cuchulain. "He thought he could master a woman's heart." Cuchulain, the mighty Warrior, was King Conchobar's trusted ally. He had learned war and the spells of battle from Emer, the most powerful of the dark Witches. He'd got her with child, and then he left her for Eithne the Fair. Oh, but Emer was cunning. She knew retribution. Emer raised Cuchulain's son in exile. She sharpened that boy's will against hers like a knife against a whetstone. That's the way it is, lads. A woman's spite is as remorseless as the sea...(pause)...Slainté...

Crossfade into SHIP'S BRIDGE. A distant THRUM OF ENGINES.

CAPTAIN SMITH
Steady as she goes, Mr. Lightoller. What's she making?

LIGHTOLLER
25 knots, sir.

CAPTAIN SMITH
Outstanding.

(a beat)

LIGHTOLLER
Sir, about the ice warnings...

CAPTAIN SMITH
Yes. Mr. Ismay and I have...discussed them. Tell Ensign Fleet to keep a sharp eye out, we should be closing on the field about midwatch.

LIGHTOLLER
Aye, Aye, sir.

CAPTAIN SMITH
Steady as she goes…

The greatest ship that will ever be
Sunk by pride and insanity
They said she'd float for eternity
But you'll never control the sea
No, you'll never control the sea.

First you're blind
Then you see
You wake up in the water
With no memory
Sink like a stone
Or learn to breathe
But you'll never control the sea
No, you'll never control the sea.

And a song crept by me on the water
And I thought I heard the voice of my father
Cuchulain
And it brought me back again.

Guitar bridge.

Crossfade back to PUB

OLD SEAN
When Cuchulain's son grew, Emer hurled him at his father. She had him camp at a lonely beach on the border of Conchobar's kingdom. The boy refused to give his name to any of the king's messengers...in those days, a serious challenge. Conchobar's warriors fought him one by one, but the boy bested them all. Finally, Cuchulain took up the challenge. Man and boy fought along the shore, a long and doubtful battle, until Cuchulain slew him. Cuchulain demanded his name, and with his dying breath, the boy replied, "I am Cuchulain's Son."

It's passed from the parents to the daughters and sons
Born in the grave, living under the gun
The days spin away the chance to save anyone
And you'll never control the sun
No, you'll never control the sun

Well you fight
And you run
Fate tips her hand
And your will is undone
Fall with the Many
Or Become the One
But you'll never control the sun

No, you'll never control the sun.
And a song crept by me on the water
 And I thought I heard the voice of my father
 Cuchulain
 And it brought me back again.

Crossfade

OLD SEAN
"My son," said Cuchulain, "My son." Conchubar feared the Mighty Warrior would slay them all in his madness and his grief, so he odered his druids to cast a spell over him. Their music crept by Cuchulain on the water, and he, mad and enchanted, fought with the tide.

No, you'll never control the sun.
No you'll never control the sun.

OLD SEAN (Sighs)
Aye, it's an old story.

No, you'll never control the sun.
No you'll never control the sun.

HERB MORRISON
Oh, the humanity...

No, you'll never control the sun.
No, you'll never control the sun.

Oh, it's death in slow motion
falling twelve miles to the ocean
as we stood and tried
to fight back the tide.

No, you'll never control the sun.
No, you'll never control the sun.

Final Cuts

Retribution 9

AMOR VINCIT OMNIA
(LOVE TAKES ITS TIME)/WALKING/
SONGS IN AN EMPTY ROOM/
JENKINTOWN/RICORSO)
(Music and lyrics by Buddy)



On the first of May
I heard her say,
"I'm going away
On a getaway, on a getaway."
She said, "There's somethin' I gotta do
and this somethin' don't involve the me
from me and you."
She said, "I made up my mind
It's the end of the line,
that's the way things have just gotta be.
There's nothing left in this universe
corresponds to
you and me."

 Amor Vincit Omnia
   Love takes its time.
   It's Zero-sum,
 It's deaf and dumb and blind.
 It might be down and out in Elba,
 But ya know it's dreaming about
 the Rhine.

On the eighth of July,
I heard her cry,
She said, "This is just goodbye.
Cuz we're living a lie, we're living a lie
That we've been keeping alive for years,
And I really won't be disturbed by words
Or tears."
She said, "It's way past time,
that's the bottom line,
That's just the way It goes.
So forget about quoting Rilke,
And working Under The Rose."

 Amor Vincit Omnia
 Love takes its time.
 It's Zero-sum,
 It's deaf and dumb and blind.
 It might be down and out in Elba,
 But ya know it's dreaming about
 the Rhine.

Twenty-second February,
Drunk as could be.
Writing script and chopping speed
Generating awful Need.
Needing to be free at last,
Needing to forget the past
and the missing mass.
Well, you know when a woman hold open the door
You're supposed to walk right in.
Stop thinking 'bout Lilith and Samael
Stop thinking 'bout Original Sin.
But I remember the Ding an Sicht
And the pressure on the Thing to Be
And I remember the Hounds of Hell
And the Shell rising from the Sea
And I'll always remember the stars above
And the pull of the Earth below
Thinking of that first taste of love
and those footprints in the snow…
Footprints in the snow.
Oh, footprints in the snow…

€

Walking in the morning,
I been walking in the afternoon.
Walking in the evening
Under what's left of the moon
I been down some lonely roads,
Treacherous stretches of Interstate, it's true.
Out on the fine dividing line between love and hate
I been thinking of late about you.

Well we see each other from time to time,
Here and there.
All the images left in my mind
your face in a crowd
the heat of your stare.
Well we've both walked a lot of miles,
a lot of faces and hands and odd jobs in between.
A lot of people we should have known,
A lot of places we should have been.

 And I'm trying to talk about meaning
 And the Woman in the Moon
 But meaning just slips away again,
 Like songs in an empty room.

There's lots of words in the airwaves
We're Amusing Ourselves To Death.
In this dim recursive universe,
We just live from breath to breath.
Well I been walking along and I can't help but think,
And thinking adds another layer.
We're two of a kind we're gonna kill some time
And hope the lifeboats are waiting when we come up for air.

€

And I'm talking about the Lady
And I'm talking about the Moon
Talking about the Page of cups
Talking about Doom
Talking about Meaning
And all the words that fled too soon,
Talking about what could have been
Talking about the Runes.
Talking about the Eagle and I'm
Talking about the Chain
And the Vision of the Unicorn
That makes everyone a child again.
Talking about the Hitcher
Standing out on the road
Talking about the Desert Song,
Talking about the Code.
Talking about the Astronauts, you know I been
Talking about Oil
Buried underground for a billion years
In the World's full rolling boil.
Talking about the System and I been
Talking about my friends.
And the ones I love, how I miss them,
As the thing winds down to the end.
Talking about the Story
That's told in the Rainbow.
Talking about the Power and the Glory
and all the People in the Know.
Talking about the Hand of the Goddess I been
Talking about Doom
Talking about waking up in the Garden
And the Terror of the Afternoon
Talking about the Reasons
Behind the words that I sing.
Talking about the Early Morning Song
And the creatures on the wing.
Talking about Image Formation, I'm
Talking about the Mind
Talking about Information, guess I been
Talking a lot about Time.
Talking about the Print Head
Rolling copy out.
Talking about those pens in the sketchbook
that I think so much about.
Talking about Syracuse and Pennsylvania
And New York, and the RMS Titanic,
And her unfinished trip to port.
Talking about the people I met for a moment
And then walked on.
Talking about the Reagan bet
And a New Year's East River dawn
Talking about the Fist in the Glove and I been
Talking about The End
Talking about the Power of Love
and the mystic curve of Zen.
Talking about the Angel falling
from the dark and dusty sky,
Talking about Religion. I been
Talking a lot about Lies.
Talking about Tom Pynchon and Hunter S. Thompson
and Kurt Gödel.
Talking about the death of Jean Paul
And other people being Hell.
Talking about the world of Belief I been
Talking about my goal,
Talking about being the Second Thief
And the fact that you made me whole.
Talking about the World of Ideas
And the world that will never be.
Talking about my deepest fears,
Talking about the Sea...
Oh, I been talking about the Sea.

€


It was a little side street
Way off the beat
In Jenkintown.
But oh, how we loved it there.
Cats lying in puddles of light
And your hair.
Tracking shots in college corridors
Listening to Emily on the Train
All these memories of yesterday's doors
Just draw me back again,
They bring me back again,
Bring me back again,
And I remember when
Jenkintown.

At the stream down by the Main Line
Carved our initials in a tree.
Like Druids of old we wondered what
The future would hold.
In a few years, in a few years
I wonder where we'll be
In a few years, in a few years,
We'll both come back and see
In a few years, in a few years,

And another few Rings on the Tree.
Jenkintown.
Ah, Jenkintown.

Picked up a wounded bird on the roadside.
Just another hitcher on his way through.
Took him to the vet, kept him as a pet
For as long as he lived
How long was that one night
To me and you.
And when we came down in the morning, buried him in the park.
All Canada's geese honked by in mourning
For a fallen star, a fallen child
a fallen star, their partner in the wild
a fallen star, she turned,
and through her tears she smiled.
Jenkintown.
Oh, Jenkintown.

€

It's been a long time,  Oh,
and a long day,      Jenkintown
It's a long passage home.        Amor Vincit Omnia
It's a long ride,          love takes its time.
It's a long way,         It's zero-sum
but it's the only road    And I'm trying to talk
we've ever known  about meaning       It's dumb and blind
(repeat)    and the Woman in the Moon.
        But meaning just slips away again,
          It might be down and out
        songs in an empty room
              In Elba
        Oh,
        Jenkintown
              But it's dreaming about
              the Rhine.
…it's the only road
we've ever known.            But it's dreaming about
              the Rhine


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