100 Songs Read online

  Like a camel and then you frown

  You put your eyes in your pocket

  And your nose on the ground

  There ought to be a law

  Against you comin’ around

  You should be made

  To wear earphones

  Because something is happening here

  But you don’t know what it is

  Do you, Mister Jones?

  HIGHWAY 61 REVISITED

  Oh God said to Abraham, “Kill me a son”

  Abe says, “Man, you must be puttin’ me on”

  God say, “No.” Abe say, “What?”

  God say, “You can do what you want Abe, but

  The next time you see me comin’ you better run”

  Well Abe says, “Where do you want this killin’ done?”

  God says, “Out on Highway 61”

  Well Georgia Sam he had a bloody nose

  Welfare Department they wouldn’t give him no clothes

  He asked poor Howard where can I go

  Howard said there’s only one place I know

  Sam said tell me quick man I got to run

  Ol’ Howard just pointed with his gun

  And said that way down on Highway 61

  Well Mack the Finger said to Louie the King

  I got forty red white and blue shoestrings

  And a thousand telephones that don’t ring

  Do you know where I can get rid of these things

  And Louie the King said let me think for a minute son

  And he said yes I think it can be easily done

  Just take everything down to Highway 61

  Now the fifth daughter on the twelfth night

  Told the first father that things weren’t right

  My complexion she said is much too white

  He said come here and step into the light he says hmm you’re right

  Let me tell the second mother this has been done

  But the second mother was with the seventh son

  And they were both out on Highway 61

  Now the rovin’ gambler he was very bored

  He was tryin’ to create a next world war

  He found a promoter who nearly fell off the floor

  He said I never engaged in this kind of thing before

  But yes I think it can be very easily done

  We’ll just put some bleachers out in the sun

  And have it on Highway 61

  JUST LIKE TOM THUMB’S BLUES

  When you’re lost in the rain in Juarez

  And it’s Eastertime too

  And your gravity fails

  And negativity don’t pull you through

  Don’t put on any airs

  When you’re down on Rue Morgue Avenue

  They got some hungry women there

  And they really make a mess outa you

  Now if you see Saint Annie

  Please tell her thanks a lot

  I cannot move

  My fingers are all in a knot

  I don’t have the strength

  To get up and take another shot

  And my best friend, my doctor

  Won’t even say what it is I’ve got

  Sweet Melinda

  The peasants call her the goddess of gloom

  She speaks good English

  And she invites you up into her room

  And you’re so kind

  And careful not to go to her too soon

  And she takes your voice

  And leaves you howling at the moon

  Up on Housing Project Hill

  It’s either fortune or fame

  You must pick up one or the other

  Though neither of them are to be what they claim

  If you’re lookin’ to get silly

  You better go back to from where you came

  Because the cops don’t need you

  And man they expect the same

  Now all the authorities

  They just stand around and boast

  How they blackmailed the sergeant-at-arms

  Into leaving his post

  And picking up Angel who

  Just arrived here from the coast

  Who looked so fine at first

  But left looking just like a ghost

  I started out on burgundy

  But soon hit the harder stuff

  Everybody said they’d stand behind me

  When the game got rough

  But the joke was on me

  There was nobody even there to call my bluff

  I’m going back to New York City

  I do believe I’ve had enough

  DESOLATION ROW

  They’re selling postcards of the hanging

  They’re painting the passports brown

  The beauty parlor is filled with sailors

  The circus is in town

  Here comes the blind commissioner

  They’ve got him in a trance

  One hand is tied to the tight-rope walker

  The other is in his pants

  And the riot squad they’re restless

  They need somewhere to go

  As Lady and I look out tonight

  From Desolation Row

  Cinderella, she seems so easy

  “It takes one to know one,” she smiles

  And puts her hands in her back pockets

  Bette Davis style

  And in comes Romeo, he’s moaning

  “You Belong to Me I Believe”

  And someone says, “You’re in the wrong place my friend

  You better leave”

  And the only sound that’s left

  After the ambulances go

  Is Cinderella sweeping up

  On Desolation Row

  Now the moon is almost hidden

  The stars are beginning to hide

  The fortune-telling lady

  Has even taken all her things inside

  All except for Cain and Abel

  And the hunchback of Notre Dame

  Everybody is making love

  Or else expecting rain

  And the Good Samaritan, he’s dressing

  He’s getting ready for the show

  He’s going to the carnival tonight

  On Desolation Row

  Now Ophelia, she’s ’neath the window

  For her I feel so afraid

  On her twenty-second birthday

  She already is an old maid

  To her, death is quite romantic

  She wears an iron vest

  Her profession’s her religion

  Her sin is her lifelessness

  And though her eyes are fixed upon

  Noah’s great rainbow

  She spends her time peeking

  Into Desolation Row

  Einstein, disguised as Robin Hood

  With his memories in a trunk

  Passed this way an hour ago

  With his friend, a jealous monk

  He looked so immaculately frightful

  As he bummed a cigarette

  Then he went off sniffing drainpipes

  And reciting the alphabet

  Now you would not think to look at him

  But he was famous long ago

  For playing the electric violin

  On Desolation Row

  Dr. Filth, he keeps his world

  Inside of a leather cup

  But all his sexless patients

  They’re trying to blow it up

  Now his nurse, some local loser

  She’s in charge of the cyanide hole

  And she also keeps the cards that read

  “Have Mercy on His Soul”

  They all play on pennywhistles

  You can hear them blow

  If you lean your head out far enough

  From Desolation Row

  Across the street they’ve nailed the curtains

  They’re getting ready for the feast

  The Phantom of the Opera

  A
perfect image of a priest

  They’re spoonfeeding Casanova

  To get him to feel more assured

  Then they’ll kill him with self-confidence

  After poisoning him with words

  And the Phantom’s shouting to skinny girls

  “Get Outa Here If You Don’t Know

  Casanova is just being punished for going

  To Desolation Row”

  Now at midnight all the agents

  And the superhuman crew

  Come out and round up everyone

  That knows more than they do

  Then they bring them to the factory

  Where the heart-attack machine

  Is strapped across their shoulders

  And then the kerosene

  Is brought down from the castles

  By insurance men who go

  Check to see that nobody is escaping

  To Desolation Row

  Praise be to Nero’s Neptune

  The Titanic sails at dawn

  And everybody’s shouting

  “Which Side Are You On?”

  And Ezra Pound and T. S. Eliot

  Fighting in the captain’s tower

  While calypso singers laugh at them

  And fishermen hold flowers

  Between the windows of the sea

  Where lovely mermaids flow

  And nobody has to think too much

  About Desolation Row

  Yes, I received your letter yesterday

  (About the time the doorknob broke)

  When you asked how I was doing

  Was that some kind of joke?

  All these people that you mention

  Yes, I know them, they’re quite lame

  I had to rearrange their faces

  And give them all another name

  Right now I can’t read too good

  Don’t send me no more letters no

  Not unless you mail them

  From Desolation Row

  POSITIVELY 4TH STREET

  You got a lotta nerve

  To say you are my friend

  When I was down

  You just stood there grinning

  You got a lotta nerve

  To say you got a helping hand to lend

  You just want to be on

  The side that’s winning

  You say I let you down

  You know it’s not like that

  If you’re so hurt

  Why then don’t you show it

  You say you lost your faith

  But that’s not where it’s at

  You had no faith to lose

  And you know it

  I know the reason

  That you talk behind my back

  I used to be among the crowd

  You’re in with

  Do you take me for such a fool

  To think I’d make contact

  With the one who tries to hide

  What he don’t know to begin with

  You see me on the street

  You always act surprised

  You say, “How are you?” “Good luck”

  But you don’t mean it

  When you know as well as me

  You’d rather see me paralyzed

  Why don’t you just come out once

  And scream it

  No, I do not feel that good

  When I see the heartbreaks you embrace

  If I was a master thief

  Perhaps I’d rob them

  And now I know you’re dissatisfied

  With your position and your place

  Don’t you understand

  It’s not my problem

  I wish that for just one time

  You could stand inside my shoes

  And just for that one moment

  I could be you

  Yes, I wish that for just one time

  You could stand inside my shoes

  You’d know what a drag it is

  To see you

  VISIONS OF JOHANNA

  Ain’t it just like the night to play tricks when you’re trying to be so quiet?

  We sit here stranded, though we’re all doin’ our best to deny it

  And Louise holds a handful of rain, temptin’ you to defy it

  Lights flicker from the opposite loft

  In this room the heat pipes just cough

  The country music station plays soft

  But there’s nothing, really nothing to turn off

  Just Louise and her lover so entwined

  And these visions of Johanna that conquer my mind

  In the empty lot where the ladies play blindman’s bluff with the key chain

  And the all-night girls they whisper of escapades out on the “D” train

  We can hear the night watchman click his flashlight

  Ask himself if it’s him or them that’s really insane

  Louise, she’s all right, she’s just near

  She’s delicate and seems like the mirror

  But she just makes it all too concise and too clear

  That Johanna’s not here

  The ghost of ’lectricity howls in the bones of her face

  Where these visions of Johanna have now taken my place

  Now, little boy lost, he takes himself so seriously

  He brags of his misery, he likes to live dangerously

  And when bringing her name up

  He speaks of a farewell kiss to me

  He’s sure got a lotta gall to be so useless and all

  Muttering small talk at the wall while I’m in the hall

  How can I explain?

  Oh, it’s so hard to get on

  And these visions of Johanna, they kept me up past the dawn

  Inside the museums, Infinity goes up on trial

  Voices echo this is what salvation must be like after a while

  But Mona Lisa musta had the highway blues

  You can tell by the way she smiles

  See the primitive wallflower freeze

  When the jelly-faced women all sneeze

  Hear the one with the mustache say, “Jeeze

  I can’t find my knees”

  Oh, jewels and binoculars hang from the head of the mule

  But these visions of Johanna, they make it all seem so cruel

  The peddler now speaks to the countess who’s pretending to care for him

  Sayin’, “Name me someone that’s not a parasite and I’ll go out and say a prayer for him”

  But like Louise always says

  “Ya can’t look at much, can ya man?”

  As she, herself, prepares for him

  And Madonna, she still has not showed

  We see this empty cage now corrode

  Where her cape of the stage once had flowed

  The fiddler, he now steps to the road

  He writes ev’rything’s been returned which was owed

  On the back of the fish truck that loads

  While my conscience explodes

  The harmonicas play the skeleton keys and the rain

  And these visions of Johanna are now all that remain

  I WANT YOU

  The guilty undertaker sighs

  The lonesome organ grinder cries

  The silver saxophones say I should refuse you

  The cracked bells and washed-out horns

  Blow into my face with scorn

  But it’s not that way

  I wasn’t born to lose you

  I want you, I want you

  I want you so bad

  Honey, I want you

  The drunken politician leaps

  Upon the street where mothers weep

  And the saviors who are fast asleep, they wait for you

  And I wait for them to interrupt

  Me drinkin’ from my broken cup

  And ask me to

  Open up the gate for you

  I want you, I want you

  I want you so bad

  Honey, I want you
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br />   How all my fathers, they’ve gone down

  True love they’ve been without it

  But all their daughters put me down

  ’Cause I don’t think about it

  Well, I return to the Queen of Spades

  And talk with my chambermaid

  She knows that I’m not afraid to look at her

  She is good to me

  And there’s nothing she doesn’t see

  She knows where I’d like to be

  But it doesn’t matter

  I want you, I want you

  I want you so bad

  Honey, I want you

  Now your dancing child with his Chinese suit

  He spoke to me, I took his flute

  No, I wasn’t very cute to him, was I?

  But I did it, though, because he lied

  Because he took you for a ride

  And because time was on his side

  And because I . . .

  I want you, I want you

  I want you so bad

  Honey, I want you

  STUCK INSIDE OF MOBILE WITH THE MEMPHIS BLUES AGAIN

  Oh, the ragman draws circles

  Up and down the block

  I’d ask him what the matter was

  But I know that he don’t talk

  And the ladies treat me kindly

  And furnish me with tape

  But deep inside my heart

  I know I can’t escape

  Oh, Mama, can this really be the end

  To be stuck inside of Mobile

  With the Memphis blues again

  Well, Shakespeare, he’s in the alley

  With his pointed shoes and his bells

  Speaking to some French girl

  Who says she knows me well

  And I would send a message

  To find out if she’s talked

  But the post office has been stolen

  And the mailbox is locked

  Oh, Mama, can this really be the end

  To be stuck inside of Mobile

  With the Memphis blues again

  Mona tried to tell me

  To stay away from the train line

  She said that all the railroad men

  Just drink up your blood like wine

  An’ I said, “Oh, I didn’t know that

  But then again, there’s only one I’ve met

  An’ he just smoked my eyelids

  An’ punched my cigarette”

  Oh, Mama, can this really be the end

  To be stuck inside of Mobile

  With the Memphis blues again

  Grandpa died last week

  And now he’s buried in the rocks

  But everybody still talks about

  How badly they were shocked

  But me, I expected it to happen

  I knew he’d lost control

  When he built a fire on Main Street

  And shot it full of holes

  Oh, Mama, can this really be the end