1. |
Vain Glorious
02:29
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Vain Glorious
Why don’t you get off the leash?
Of Pavlov’s pride
satisfaction, salivating,
the favor of your dripping teeth.
When I give, I give freely
Where do you get off?
I’m not your dog, baby,
You’re mine.
When I give, I give freely,
When I give.
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2. |
Skyscraper
03:03
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Skyscraper
You’re like some kinda skyscraper
that just popped up overnight.
A new silhouette on the skyline,
a new shape in the night.
I don’t know if you’re sturdy,
I can’t tell if you’re slight,
I can’t tell my up from down,
I don’t know my wrong from right.
Dropped a penny in the ocean
Just to see if it could swim.
The ripples ran out in commotion
to satisfy your simple whim.
But your penny it sunk to the bottom,
With your sanctity and your sin.
Picked up by passing shark
when the waves came rushing in.
Lead me into temptation
Forgive me for my sin
Seems to me you’re still running,
Even when you’re home and dry.
Eating life by the skin of your teeth,
You never stop to wonder why.
I don’t know if you’re stupid,
I can’t tell if you’re sly,
You fill me up with your mischief
And you leave me with no alibi.
Lead me into temptation
Forgive me for my sin.
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3. |
Suffering By Request
03:02
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Suffering By Request
Yeah, you got ‘em
from the streets to the white house,
millions of people
suffering by request.
Looking for another nose to blow,
scab to pick discomfort
to bleed for.
Lying in drunk infested gutters
of sweet cigar poverty
Or crying in 14K gold
mounds of caviar and opportunity.
Grasping each pain in the ass
with purpose and utter excitement.
Yeah you got ‘em
living their one thing after another lives
with dedication and belief.
Fulfillment born of sacrifice and punishment.
Eluding any good fortune
For the drive and aberration of a bad situation.
Ending each testimonial complaint
with that same comforting reassurance,
no use complaining, it doesn’t help anyway.
Yeah you got ‘em,
From the streets to the White House,
millions of people,
Suffering by request.
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4. |
Alone
03:11
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Alone
Got here alone
Alone as anyone gets anywhere
Got here alone,
Alone as anyone gets anywhere.
A journey shackled inside and out
With heavy totes
And the paradoxical confusion
Of perpetual uncertainty
My sense of humor, my savior
My soul makes my outlook
So personal, so fine
Got here alone
Reacting to the same fucked up world
like every other American kid.
And I don’t know anyone who gets it, gets me, gets anything.
What I hear in the scattered moans of music, I see, I feel
But one riled look in the mirror and my insanity’s
Apparent, alarming, yet dead.
Got here alone
and there’s nothing quite like it,
and no way I’m sharing this path.
One day I look up and there in the bright of day,
a feather falling.
Once in the sky and now beneath my feet.
An instance later, I feel the descent of a thousand birds
and I’m encompassed and hard pressed to choose
between the flock and my own scattered feathered thoughts,
I got here alone.
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5. |
Wild Dogs
02:17
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Wild Dogs
I hit the road, immerse myself in song.
I hit the road, immerse myself in song.
Gasoline scented afternoons
and the promise of evening’s seediest asylums.
A run down, amped up world
of overly sensitive types, like me.
We wail like wild dogs, we’re eager we know.
We wail like wild dogs, we’re eager we know
Dank and decaying these temples
of the won’t dos and degenerates,
these places, the offices
of the misunderstood types, like me.
Got something to make, got something to sell.
Got something to make, got something to sell.
Smearing that line between hypocrisy and mock.
But it don’t matter, it don’t matter one tiny bit to us.
We’re only here because we got no place else to be
that we can stand.
Disdain and discomfort
For and of the fetters wrapped around us
For and of the fetters at society’s will
Soul in a box, crammed down deep,
years of compression, suppression and subjugated grief,
peering at our hearts, for a week or a couple of days, now and then.
Come alive in some pre-fabricated paradise.
Forgotten, like so many photographs,
buried in the broken dust of rinky-dink, trinky-dink trinkets,
thought to quiet our reason or soothe our excoriating bones
because the box always seems so much goddamn smaller
every time we try to cram back in what we left out
for a week or a couple of days, now and then.
Worry not, your swollen soul will soon shrink.
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6. |
Highway 61 Revisited
03:15
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Highway 61 Revisited
Oh, God said to Abraham, "Kill me a son"
Abe said, "Man, you must be puttin' me on"
God said, "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 said, "Where d'you want this killin' done?"
God said, "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"
Oh, Howard just pointed with his gun
And said, "That way, down Highway 61"
Well, Mack the knife 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"
Then 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 says, "is much too white"
He said, "Come here and step into the light"
He said, "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 roving gambler he was very bored
Trying 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"
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7. |
Pinball
02:46
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Pinball
You’re a pinball, pinball
Stuck in the bumpers
bouncing wall to wall
You’re a pinball, a pinball
Straight down the middle
There ain’t nothing at all
You’re a pinball, pinball
You’re spinning round round round round round round round round round
Then bang bang bang bang bang!
Straight up the ramp and rolling real fast
You’re off and running the game is gonna last
Pay no attention to what’s happened in the past
End game don’t matter when you’re having such a blast
a shiny little orb on the move
And that lane you’re rolling in sure seems pretty smooth
but it’s really rather shaky, cause the player’s pretty shrewd
blood on the glass, you got something to prove
when the game is over and you find you didn’t win
You’ll just get back on that ramp go for another spin
Whoever sets you rolling they don’t know where you been
Can’t see those scratches, the condition that you’re in
rolling and popping and super energetic
busy looking at the lights enjoying the aesthetic
you think you’ll spin forever, so you’re unapologetic
down the drain again, so pathetic.
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8. |
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In-skirts
My soul clangs against my brain
Like an empty prisoners cup runs against cold metal bars.
Radiating and disturbing the silence
of an otherwise ignorant peace.
Chambered in its hopeless plea for freedom,
settles back onto to its tiny cot, bewildered,
dingy with grief in a sea of wrinkled, restless dismay.
No saving’s grace, no hero’s ride,
no best-ever recipe (file baked inside)
can free me now.
This is the in-skirts of reality
This is where we get stuck
Stuck moving
From one parent to the next
Your mom, your dad, your teacher, your boss, your GOD
all saying stick with us kid and you’ll always be lost but,
breathe easy, whatever it is, it isn’t your fault,
you can’t go blind if you got no eyes.
It’s ignorance perfected, humming, hypnotic, whole-heartedly horrendous.
GET UP OFF YOUR KNEES
and stop begging your captor for freedom.
The answers you need are quiet, like thieves.
And get rid of that cup, it’s empty.
The river is full friend, the river is life.
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9. |
Predator
03:25
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Predator
One plus one is two, well that a lie
One plus one is three, you can’t deny
You bait, you bite, like a predator should
You’re just trying make every bad seem good
One plus one is two, yeah that’s a lie.
Give them what they want, secrets and flattery
It’s your mundane little game of assault and battery
You once told me crawled through the darkness just to finish a sequel
How you stood tall and strong but still had to look through the peephole
You got down on your knees, crushing their hearts underneath them
Dancing in your dungeon, trying to bury all your sin
But you don’t win, you don’t win.
Give it all you got but you ain’t got the power
You crouch back into your past like a natural coward
You once told me crawled through the darkness just to finish a sequel
How you stood tall and strong but still had to look through the peephole
You held the world in your hands but it was still over your head
And all those things that you promised, all those thing that you said
Well they’re dead, they’re dead.
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10. |
Whore-Drama Queen
04:18
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Whore/Drama Queen
You got these people, we all got these people, yeah you know these people always in the middle of something they got to justify, verify, pacify with an air-tight alibi, a reason why. Proclaiming the all fairness-ness of things like love and war. Meantime, you’re shortchanged in the chokehold of their thoughtlessness and then they look at you, yeah, they look at you, like, you can’t judge me, I already judged you first.
Well, I’m here to say there’s no difference between a vile dirt-bag or a self-righteous hypocrite. They’re both the same, they’re only human. They say shit like, I’m only human and I make mistakes, so sue me, I’m only human and if it wasn’t me baby, it’d be someone else and I don’t know but I don’t like you and I don’t even need a reason why. Then they sit back smug and they smirk and they smirk and they smirk and they sit back smug thinking, I bet I got what it takes to steal all the joy outta your life and I might just try that. Yeah? Well, this is for them, this is for them.
You serve so deserve
and try to conserve your reserve
oh what nerve to be on the curve
and what hope you might dream
on the sly, you don’t cry, never pry,
only try to keep up the lie
that tells you you’re all
keeps you there for the call
blind to the wall, free for the fall
into the dirt, deep in the ground
paralyzed and pissed, immorally bound
and still hanging around for the sweet sickening sound
of the next story teller that comes around. Whore.
It’s all over your face, it turns up your nose
Trips across your lips as the whispers blow
Wasted words, wasted friends,
Your intolerable discomfort and dramatic ends
Onto the next one and off with their head
Is it something they did, maybe something they said
It might take a while to get them gone
But it drives your conversation and it writes my song
Whatchya gonna do when everybody’s gone
How you gonna live, with no one left to turn on
Will you choke on your words, try to make amends
With your intolerable discomfort and dramatic ends
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11. |
The Nature of Mankind
02:47
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The Nature of Mankind
The nature of mankind terrifies me
Focused fears, intimidated tears
Humiliating and antagonizing eyes seer
Deep into a twin
The missed point, unfathomable after all this eventuality
I mean, we got individuality on a flat note
strongest trait shoved down our throats
divine gift denied and freewill categorized
Heartless, confused, pathetic do-gooders
for the human interest,
casting illusionary shadows of their own superior individuality,
between men, among men and above all, above men.
Well be thankful, it’s an exclusive ignorance
Well-bred, exquisite and elite
Reason’s lost
Lost to an impudent state of understanding
Crippled by the notion of leadership
I mean
What the hell
Is superior individuality anyway
Let me tell ya
It’s a manipulative, deceitful, brain bathing act
Resigning the common to their differences and struggle
Blinding and nullifying their similarities and strengths
Mutated soul fabric, troubled perception, genetically evolved
And now, organically ours
Are we lost, lost forever
Never to know the equality of men as men
Fragmented fossilized ability
Deep within our hearts
Rekindled in our stillest moments
But then lost in the constant push of our collective consciousness
Thoughtless, destructive and numb
Functioning on a few bad ideas
They high price of the uncommon
leaves us with our dignity spent
We suck, I’m terrified
I tried in looking out, out looking in
It didn’t work,
it made me cold
Colder than the ageless bud of compassion
darkened, cold, unrealized, dormant
within the humanly heart of mankind
But I’ll will say, risking the cliché
In unity alone is compassion truly blindly alive
there you see it all
equally hungrily, maternal and whole
But our somehow failed vision traps us
In cages of isolated confusions
Leaving us blind to the true nature of mankind.
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Battered Suitcases Phoenix, Arizona
Battered Suitcases describes its music as "uniquely beat rock and roll" and lives up to that description stunningly. The band offers a truly new and original sound, introducing a whole new genre in the wide world of rock 'n' roll. Battered Suitcases songs infuse the sanctity of spoken word with the rawness and pump of rocking punk, with a touch of swagger. ... more
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