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Denture / Doorknob Mini-Album Lyrics
Calculator Love Bought myself a calculator At the corner store Brought it home an hour later Added up the score If you really love me darlin' Count it up and see And we can solve our problems With some trigonometry The square of the sum of the hypotenuse of the radian times the denominator I love you I'd wanted to do this song for a long time, but I had no idea what it was about. Now I do. You can't solve your romantic problems logically! And you can't get Alvin to speed rehab because he's too wiry and quick to catch. The Sailor Who Went Insane The sailor who went insane The sailor who went insane Two long years adrift on the sea Somewhere I surely would rather not be His accordion his only companion He often would call it D'Artagnan These two Musketeers, alone for two years Adrift in a boat on the sea At once an island on the horizon 'Land ho!' he cried Jumped in the water and swam for the shore Never to speak to D'Artagnan no more The sailor who went insane The sailor who went insane Two long years adrift on the sea Somewhere I surely would rather not be D'Artagnan! Land ho, D'Artagnan! Happiness and Loveliness Raise your hands up to the sky And dream of something beautiful Never ever ever dream Of something less than beautiful Happiness and loveliness and honesty and peacefulness And placidness and cleanliness and charity and hopefulness Grow a forest with your love Embrace each other wonderfully Then take an axe and chop them down Just pretend that they are trees Phoniness and emptiness and loneliness and insanity And hopelessness and ignorance Anger, angst, and misogyny Smash your brothers with a mallet Run them over with your car Kill kill kill kill kill kill kill Then have a few down at the bar Oh my God, it's the wrath of the Lord! The weird noises are whale song. The wrath of the Lord was simulated; nobody was smitten during the making of this song. Poonanny John This song was improvised by my brother Eliott and me. The phone call at the end is by Kevin. Tea Time CHORUS: Fire on the water/It's time for tea Fire on the water at the bottom of the sea Water for you/Coffee for me Fire on the water/It's time for tea Man vs. Nature/Nature vs. Man Soda tastes better when it's straight from the can CHORUS Hate vs. Love/Love vs. Hate Pardon me sir but I'm already late Life vs. Death/Death vs. Life Butter it's a butter it's a butter butter knife One vs. two/Two vs. three Me vs. you in a coconut tree Fists of fingers/Parties of five Button-up shirts and switchblade knives Tables all set set/Time for dinner Button-up shirts in the middle of winter Eye for an eye/Tooth for a dollar Sit down stand up/See who's taller Sun vs. moon/Moon vs. sun Put another nickel in the nickelodeon Gotta be stupid to have any fun CHORUS I had been doing songs strictly on the keyboard for a long time. I wanted to get back to roots and pull a lo-fi Tom Waits thing. Surfing in Hell Surf! What a way to spend eternity! You surf now! Toes to the nose on a wave of fire! Hang four. This was supposed to be an instrumental, but I fudged it all by putting lyrics into it. Silly me. Oh well, at least they're appropriate lyrics. Fission or Fusion Fission or fusion (4x) Fission: a nuclear reaction in which a single atom dwindles in coherency and splits apart in an explosion (total degradation, particles in motion) with the evolution of about a hundred million electron volts of energy. So, you see that we have the capacity to cause a nuclear chain reaction in a fraction of the time it takes to blink your eye to annihilate a bit of our reality, and make way for the freedom of humanity. It's the conversion of matter to energy. MC squared must equal E. CHORUS: Lemme hear you say fission Rock the house Lemme hear you say fusion Rock the house Lemme hear you say fission Rock the house Lemme hear you say fusion Rock the house Fusion: from the Latin, fusio, which means a melting, of the protons and the neutrons of two atoms in an opposite reaction to the nuclear reaction called fission in that, instead of blowing apart, the atoms start to coalesce in the best way that they can and they slam into each other. (A microscopic mosh pit for the subatomic.) And they stick together and continue on forever indefinitely, releasing tons of energy, and the heat and the light of the land of the free, and blowing the hell out of our enemy. CHORUS Fission or fusion (4x) I had already had a hit with the math song, "The Standard Metric System," and I have always been on a sort of Schoolhouse Rock/The Letter People/PBS-Funk kick. And who's gonna add in the part about using nuclear energy to blow up other countries? I am! Bill Nye, here's one for your eye! Rumblecookie (Freestyled--this is a transcript) I got my pants rolled up I got my socks rolled down I'm gonna meet you out by the edge of town We're gonna rumble Like a couple of cookies that are rumbling My air conditioning works But my heater don't I got to find you something made of stone That I can give you Cause I like to give heavy things as gifts (They're very nice) My front yard is full of water My front yard is full of water My front yard is full of water Can I marry your daughter? I got the peas on the edge of my knife I got a bunch of flowers for your lovely wife I got a big reflection in the fat, fat mirror On the wall of the bathroom and the shower stall Whatever that means... I wanted to try a song that had no preplanning involved. Everything was first take, and it shows. Lizard and Fish (LIVE) This song was performed live at the Phoenix Theater in Petaluma, CA sometime in March of 1999. I always like playing Lizard and Fish live because I don't have to play it to a backing track. That means I can screw around with it and do what I want. This recording is the sound from a video taken of the show. Judah wasn't expecting me to say "Fish solo!" Hence the weird pause and the crowd's laughter as he tries to compose himself enough to blow bubbles in the water. Outside My Window (LIVE) Holy crap. This was the weirdest thing to ever happen to me at a show. During the entire performance, this freaky-looking drunk guy with one tooth and googly eyes was standing in the back. He had a voice like a chain saw, and he would shout out Dylan lyrics when I was talking to the audience. He wouldn't shut up through the whole show. Then, after I finished my last song, somebody called for an encore. I said I didn't have any more songs, but I suggested someone else could sing while I played. I was only half serious, but when I started to play music, the drunk guy came up on stage and grabbed my microphone. He started singing a song he had been telling me about earlier in his noxious, motorbike voice. I guess it was called Outside My Window, because he kept saying that over and over. Afterwards, He asked me for some change to make a telephone call. I asked him if the Waffle was after him. It was bizarre. Then he wouldn't stop following me around. He told me about how he still had his Peavey and his harp and we should hook up on the flip side and play out. I actually told him it would be a good idea--I hope he never sobers up and finds out where I live. Poopoo Bridge As I was on my travels I came across a man Who charged a toll to cross The trestle spanning Poopoo Ridge I didn't need the money And since the name was funny I laughed as I crossed The Poopoo Bridge Oh, I drew my inspiration from Melville. |
