Brick Wall Blues

My life has been
On auto-pilot so long
I forgot where I was going
With this joke

Lately things have been kind of chaotic
But I’m in the same place nearly every single day
Getting hit in the face by that punch
Line

It feels like a setup
But the rhythm’s all wrong
And in comedy, timing is
Everything

Comedy is history
Played in reverse
Yes comedy is history
Played in reverse

I’m dying up here
In front of this brick wall
A firing squad
And an exposed brick wall

It’s funny when it happens
To somebody else
But we both know exactly
What I’m talking about

And it’s funny, you know
That the funny thing is
That it never
Turns out to be funny

Comedy is history
Played in reverse
Yes comedy is history
Played in reverse

Lyric For LCK

I'm walking the streets of Manhattan
In the rain
Taking pictures of street scenes and people
In the rain
And I'm thinking of you
And where you've gone to
And the things that you do
That make me feel blue
I'm walking the streets of Manhattan
In the rain

People are strange but a dog will always
Be your friend
They speak in a language that anyone
Can understand
And I'm thinking of you
And where you've gone to
And the things that you do
That make me feel blue
People are strange but a dog will always
Be your friend

In the cafe I start feeling old
The breeze from the street brings a shivering cold
The piles of books that are sitting unsold
The coffee that comes out too bitter and bold

So I'm walking the streets of Manhattan
In the rain
Yes I'm walking the streets of Manhattan
In the rain

Had To Have You

V1.
You made me wait so long
With all your carrying on
But I had to have you

I couldn't be that strong
To be your tag along
Still I had to have you

C1.
That night
Did it feel right
Or was just a flight
Of my imagination?
You know
That I would stand and fight
If it just might
Get me your invitation

V2.
You had me on the phone
Tryin' to hold my own
But I just had to have you

Did I play the fool
Did I lose my cool
Cause I just had to have you?

C2.
That night
Did it feel right
Or was just a flight
Of my imagination?
You know
That I would stand and fight
If it just might
Get me your invitation

B.
Walk you down the avenue
It's all I could do and I think that you knew
That I just had to have you

C3.
That night
Did it feel right
Or was just a flight
Of my imagination?
You know
That I would stand and fight
If it just might
Get me your invitation

Mutual Interest

The vociferous Blue Jay
Says don’t eat my babies.
The cat says
I just want to play.
So she stares at him
And he stares at her
And that is how
They spend the day.

Lee Knight's Dream

Yeah, so I was talking
To Stephen Hawking
He sounded just like the ghost
Of Marc Bolan.

We drove to his house
And he showed me where to park
My car so it wouldn't
Get stolen.

He plugged in his Tele
Straight into the amp
Pedals are for pussies
He said.

Man he sounded good
When he hit that first chord
It was like a choir directly
From God.

We swam in the surf
And we flew over valleys
He showed me cool places
In time.

And he told the body
Is just an illusion
You can go anywhere
In your mind.

There were all kinds of people
Who came to hang out
Edison and Washington
And Thoreau.

And we played rock and roll
Til the sun came up
Cause rock and roll
Is what frees your soul.

Then I woke up
Must have been a dream
But tonight I'm going to plug in my Tele
And make myself free.

And I'll swim in the ocean
And fly through the valleys
And visit cool places
In time.

Club Kids

circa 1992

 

Future Mrs. S and I were living on one floor of a Wicker Park rowhouse down the street from the Opus Dei church:


A couple of blocks away, there was a bar called the Artful Dodger:

There was a bar in the front room and a dance floor in the back. The well drinks from the bar came with glow sticks in them.

and the back room had black lights and trippy graffitti on the walls. Usually something like this was playing:


The Artful Dodger stayed open until 2. If you weren't ready to go home yet (remember the glow sticks?) you could walk up to Blue Note on Armitage, which was a super smoky basement bar that stayed open until 4. The jukebox was good, filled with Blue Note jazz records as well as classic Chicago blues:


If you still weren't ready to go home (some of those *glow sticks* lasted longer than others) you could walk across the Cortland bridge

past the Finkl factory

and over to Old Town, where you could get a greasy breakfast at Nookie's Diner.

I had a friend who lived in a coach house/studio above a garage in Old Town. She tended bar and kept strange hours but she was usually good for some French press coffee, a couple of bowls and some chill music:

Then on Monday morning, load up the Walkman with appropriate tapes for the ride in to work:



Good times, back in the day.

Just One More (For The End Of The Road)

The ring of success
Remains highly elusive
You find happiness
In the daily quotidian
Forget all the diamonds
Mine for obsidian
The resort of your life
Is not that exclusive

Tierra del Fuego
Is the ends of the earth
Where the mountains collapse
Into archipelago
Our guide is Chilean
The storm Argentinian
And none of us know
What any of this is worth

So pour me another
And make it a double
Pour me one more
For the end of the road

We did take the acid
And yes it was brown
Just like the music
In the quickening mud
Just like the swan dive
And the sickening thud
The car's in the ditch
Shall we hitch
Back to town?

So pour me another
And make it a double
Pour me one more
For the end of the road