Track Listing

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1. Taboo

There’s a gallows in your eyes

Can I hang around a while?

Scratch that itch and burn and twitch

And dangle from your smile

‘Cause when you dance like Salome

With my head upon your tray

You’re a devil spawn in blue chiffon

A Satanic Doris Day

You get up close beside me

And I get a heart attack

The angels have all gone to find me

And they’re never, never coming back

I’d hate to deceive her

I said I’d never leave her

I click the hammer on my .45

When she clicks the receiver

Loving you is so taboo

An emotional tattoo

Burnin’, wailin’, heads and tailin’

What am I gonna do?

‘Cause loving you is so taboo

An emotional tattoo

Burnin’, wailin’, heart is a failin’

What am I gonna do?

2. Hey Valerie

Hey Valerie

You’ve forgotten my number

Or so it seems to me

Blackouts and apathy

Hey Valerie

You’re so “fuckin’ groovy”

All angst and attitude

Like a Mike Leigh movie

Are you real?

You don’t know how to feel

You only know how to steal

Dirty regrets from a red glass heart

Hey Valerie

The dirt gets in everything

In our poems and in our eyes

Grime stains and alibi’s you give

Something you’re generous with

You shouldn’t shit where you live

Your clothes stink from the lies you’ve lived

You’re playing hard

You’re playing hard

You’re playing hard

You’re playing hard to get

Mind and body

You offer up like wine

To feed me bleed me

Fucking with my mind

‘Til I’m hating every day in every way

Valerie

You need friends like mirrors

Who’s the fairest in the land?

It’s all tens and zeros to you

And I can be that way too

A carbon copy of you

Your lying eyes to see through

But, that would never do

And now I’m coming down

Can’t get my head around

You left me lost and found

Judas, junkie, clown

Judas, junkie, clown

Judas, junkie, clown

3. Motel 30

There’s a grenade under his desire

And he burns like a stopwatch on fire

The fuse is short, the countdown’s on

And he’ll pick up all the pieces after she’s gone

He’ll pick up all the pieces after she’s gone

When she’s gone

You’re gonna drink like a wasted frat

And kick your feet like a spoiled brat

You made your bed now you’re lying alone

And you’ll pick up all the pieces after she’s gone long gone

Motel 30 is a desperate shout

And if you check in then you’ll never check out

You feel like a hound, you look like a pup

And if you let it get you down then you’ll never get up

Get you down

Down, down when the pity’s on

Some kind of new-age Ponce de Leon

You’re drinking fear from a wooden cup

And if you let it get you down then you’ll never get up

Paranoid null and void beaten down

Tired of having you around

I know you I can’t believe it’s true

So, hand me down my walking cane

Don’t wanna hear you spout that bullshit again

If it’s too old baby, you’re too loud

And you’ll feel more lonely out in the crowd

You’ll feel more lonely out in the crowd

In the crowd

You’ve gotta get with the party plan

Or better move your ass old man

Live your life and live it loud

Or you’ll feel more lonely out in the crowd

You’ll feel more lonely out in the crowd

4. Lucky Riverboat
5. Wrecking Wall

Sometimes I think

Therefore, sometimes I am

Sometimes it stinks

That I don’t get the whole plan

I’ve gotta clean up the attic

Ya, I’ve gotta take out the trash

All this baggage

It really burns my ass

I bleed, I fall

I wait by the wrecking wall

I scream, I crawl

Lined up at the wrecking wall

My head is full of

So many dates and places

A catalog

Of thoroughly useless faces

And that’s why I can’t sleep

Sometimes when I go to bed

I’ve got all this nothin’

Dancing around in my head

I bleed, I fall

I wait by the wrecking wall

I scream, I crawl

Lined up at the wrecking wall

Life’s written down in headlines

With letters twelve feet tall

It’s full of facts and deadlines

On the wrecking, on the wrecking

On the wrecking wall

I bleed, I fall

I wait by the wrecking wall

I scream, I scrawl

My life on the wrecking wall

6. The Tame, The Half-Born, The Wild and You

If Carolyn called me up today I’d hang up the phone and walk away

It’s not that I don’t care anymore

But time changes locks on a lot of doors

And I know what you’re thinking and it’s true

Sometimes there is nothing you can do

But there’s a time that I recall a purple street in Lisbon

She was speaking dreams to me and I thought I was listening

But I was fifteen yards away before I felt the distance

She cried in Augusta street and stared into the windows

And I know what she’s thinking and it’s true

Sometimes there is nothing she can do

Carolyn is tamed

All those years and all those tears

Cuddling her insecure

And shaking like a child and feeling helpless

But maybe I share the blame

Peter has a fan club he’s a whiskey hating Christian

And he’s in love with everyone as long as they keep listening

And there’s a hole in my old faith where he belongs

But, the whole of me has never been that strong

Peter is half-born

With one foot in and one foot out

A princess on a barstool

Anarcho- Commun- Liberat- ingratiating stranger to me now

Close friends and passerby love affairs and suicides

Sex and drugs and crash ‘n’ burn

Decisions politics and prostitute religions

Fucking at the movies or fighting in the street

Christopher’s a scapegoat ’cause he lives like a poem

And they want explanations but I just want to know him

Not for what he claims to be or what they say he isn’t

Just because he’s got the balls to make his own decisions

And sometimes the pain he’s feeling is so real

Sometimes that is all I need to feel

Christopher is wild

With fire-escape guitar afflictions

Different lives but shared addictions

Late night taxi, Frank Black happy birthdays

And blood-pact butchers knives

Amsterdam, the sex museums and the New York City subway

Vancouver in November, and Montreal on Monday

We’ll get a fix in Union Square we’ll drop at C.B.G.B.’s

And if we can’t find salvation there, we’ll stay home and watch the TV

And I’ll be your disciple if you’ll be mine

And we’ll make love in the moaning summertime

‘Cause you are beautiful

7. Three Penny Operator

The night just taunts me

And the morning isn’t mine

I’m kneeling at the monument of hate you left behind

And lying next to you

Still feels like pulling off a crime

The blanket’s stained with guilt

When your dreams are full of wine

There’ll be a pistol at my head

Either now or later

Bullets preying at the temple of a three penny operator

You can see the Kamikazes

In the lovers that you pick

She pulls neurotic rabbits

From her basket full of tricks

You lay with one eye open

While the other gets some sleep

You trust that woman like the R.C.M.P

‘Cause she’s going up

A down escalator

It’s a running gag, she’s a three penny operator

Walk the moon-soaked doorways

The fresh air will do you well

Fill a jar up with pennies

And secrets you don’t want to tell

Keep your pockets full

You never know when she’ll return

When the keyhole clicks and the handle turns

Who’s driving this thing?

There are spys

Working inside the love that you thought was bulletproof

And every time you smile with your eyes

Your throat feels a noose

But, I don’t understand

I don’t want to be your hangman

No, I don’t understand

I just want to be your lover

At least for tonight

Or till the stock-market changes

Two cents worth from a three penny operator

Beeswax, cinnamon and L.S.D

My friend’s got pains where his butterflies should be And

The branches are all twisted in the leaves of these trees

And the taboos that have been lifted don’t give me any ease

So it’s one shot for now and two shots for later

Freezing in Tequila like a three penny operator

8. Blur

Where are you now?

With flood-lights down

I feel two thousand Redwood trees inside me

In hollow ground

My mind’s a blur

A spinal spur

Can’t feel my feet, below, behind, bewildered

A holiday

D.w.i

On a Friday night

A blue torpedo full of willing victims

With hollow eyes

A holiday

Hip, hip, hooray

A blind exploding ego super-nova

A holiday

We have

Put the cart before the donkey

Hold me up renaissance junkie

Hammer toss

Candy floss

A freak-show in my head

P.T. Barnum’s stinkin’ drunk again

‘Never beens’

And Siamese twins

Florenz Ziegfeld’s dead

I’ve got a Coney Island in my brain

9. Lulu

There’s a corpse or two

In your hair Lulu

And you never had the time

For the fire-escaping kind

And you look like gold

In your hangmans’ coat

With your pockets full of Gin

Hang the past that roped you in

Roped you in

And the head you have

Is the head I have

‘Cause you’re not afraid to die

Close your eyes and wave goodbye

And the head you have

Is the head I have

‘Cause I’m not afraid to die

Hold my head and wave goodbye

10. Butterfly

Lay back and I’ll kiss your throat

While you talk on the phone

And hang up on your husband

If you want to be alone

It might be right, it might be wrong

It might be the unknown

But, we won’t think about it

‘Til he’s standing in the door

Shakin’ like a butterfly

Shakin’ like a butterfly

Shakin’ like a butterfly for you

With thoughts as dark as the pavement

Pitch black in the locust sun

He’d never even met a woman

Who’d had the procedure done

But, Friday night when the clinic’s bright

This Clergy-fathers son

Will stand upright

For the ‘Right to Life’

With a bible and a gun

Shakin’ like a butterfly

Shakin’ like a butterfly

Shakin’ like a butterfly undone

The air is thick with righteous men

But, your control is paper thin

I’d like to be a fly up on the wall

When you break down your cocoon

And watch the shattered pieces fall

I’ll give you a secret

That I know you’ll never keep

You give me the killing floor

And I’ll promise not to leap

‘Cause deep inside our skulls

There is a nest of small cocoons

You’ll wake one night in a cockroach sweat

Underneath an insect moon

Shakin’ like a butterfly

Shakin’ like a butterfly

Shakin’ like a butterfly stuck through

Shakin’ like a butterfly

Shakin’ like a butterfly

Shakin’ like a butterfly it’s true so true

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The Secret Of My Excess

Release Date : November 29, 1996
Artist : Solo
Format : CD, Digital Download
Catalog ref. : Shake The Record Label