Monday, March 09, 2009


People Got A Lotta Nerve, Music & Lyrics By Neko Case

Fair warning. If you click on that vid there will be returning. It'll take you back to your daddy's Ford to wild scallions growing up alongside gutted roads to the flat bench with your almost sixteen year old girl smushed up just as close as she can sit beside without you driving with her in your lap. There's a rifle in the gun rack enough gas to get there and back so you're driving off to find Paris in the dark.

She was right there with you too on the stainless steel cover of the cooling fan you sat on when you were nine watching people in the pavilion dancing and drinking their heads off to the Country Playboys singing promenade all the way swing your corner lady and promenade the hall. This girl is right where you're from doesn't even think about fighting fair she does not compromise and she told the whole music industry to go fuck itself and it did. So if you choose not to click on the vid I understand but here's what she had to say:
So the saying says an elephant never forgets. Standing in the concrete cave, sway inside and sing! They walked over the ocean and their dreams they dreamed awake until the lights grew dim. Until the cop cars came. Everybody tells me this is crazy yes I know but I'm a man man man man man man man eater! But still you're surprised prised prised, when I eat ya.

You know...they call them killer whales but you seemed suprised when it pinned you down to the bottom of the tank where you can't turn around it took half your leg and both your lungs and I craved, I ate hearts of sharks. I know you know it and
I'm a man man man man man man man eater but still you're surprised prised prised when I eat ya. It will end again in moon-lit song, it will end again in moon-lit song.
As an added bonus, Neko Case has been banned for life from the Grand Ole Opry for taking off her top during a performance. Let's go see her when she comes our way.

5 comments:

Vincent said...

Well, I liked it but mainly because it reminded me of Nanci Griffith, and then I got to thinking about her as if we were old buddies or maybe lovers, which is ridiculous because all I'd ever done is make a compilation tape of her songs copied from somewhere.

That the poetry of her singing evoked landscapes I'd never known made no difference ... and then I recalled one of her songs about a conversation with a taxi-driver in Belfast during the Troubles, and her soulful compassion, which veered off into waiting in line at some cafeteria somewhere and confronting some prejudice, whether racism, fattism or what I cannot remember ...

So I Googled Nanci Griffith Belfast and discovered she was there a few days ago, performing at Currie Primary School on the Limestone Road whilst she was over here for the Belfast Nashville Songwriters Festival. Here: http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/community-telegraph/north-belfast/news/nanci-comes-lsquofrom-a-distancersquo-to-treat-kids-14201726.html

I've never been to Belfast either, but the magic of this woman is to give you through her songs false memories of places and situations you've never been.

Vincent said...

Song is It's a Hard Life Wherever You Go

I am a backseat driver from America
They drive to the left on Falls Road
The man at the wheel's name is Seamus
We pass a child on the corner he knows
And Seamus says, "Now, what chance has that kid got?"
And I say from the back, "I don't know."
He says, "There's barbed wire at all of these exits
And there ain't no place in Belfast for that kid to go."

Chorus
It's a hard life
It's a hard life
It's a very hard life
It's a hard life wherever you go
If we poison our children with hatred
Then, the hard life is all they'll ever know
And there ain't no place in (Belfast) for these kids to go
(Chicago)
(this world)

A cafeteria line in Chicago
The fat man in front of me
Is calling black people trash to his children
He's the only trash here I see
And I'm thinking this man wears a white hood
In the night when his children should sleep
But, they slip to their window and they see him
And they'll think that white hood's all they need

Chorus

I was a child in the sixties
Dreams could be held through TV
With Disney and Cronkite and Martin Luther
Oh, I believed, I believed, I believed
Now, I am a backstreet driver from America
I am not at the wheel of control
I am guilty, I am war and I am the root of all evil
Lord, and I can't drive on the left side of the road

MarcLord said...

Vincent,

it's not ridiculous at all and I've long felt the same way as you do about Ms. Griffiths. It's a marvel that all the other guys don't get her but that's ok means there's less competition. ;-)

and thanks for digging up that song.

Still Life Living said...

Well that's a show I would want to see in person.

Wally da Weasel said...

You guys can forget about Nanci Griffith. She's all MINE.
(I dumped Julia Roberts for her)