Maybe you’ve never loved that way. Maybe you have. Me, unlike the guy in this song, I’ve never had a girlfriend (or in his case, wife) steal all my belongings. (One GF kept taking my razors. I pretended not to know. People are funny.)
The song itself was written as part of my 1996 project, The Barista Cycle.
My younger friends should note that a Stingray was the iconic 60’s model of the Corvette sports car as well as a ‘banana-seated’ Schwinn bicycle, a short profile, chopper-barred bike that held a hegemonic grip on America’s youth in that far-off decade. I sort of wanted to capture the sense of a couple of kids fighting over a Stingray, one of them tugging on the handlebars, the other pulling hard on the ‘chicken bar’ on the back of the long seat.
Sherry
Sherry, you stole my stereo
my dog Bill, my car and my Mac
You can keep the rest of it
but I’m here to tell you
I’m gonna get that Corvette back
Give me back my Stingray and I’ll let your sister go She followed me from Austin but she’ll go home if I’m the one that tells her so…
All the way through high school
I was the one who was supposed to break your heart
then we settle down
and you get bored and
you tear our world apart
Give me back my Stingray…
I thought that we were happy
that just goes to show you what I know
I thought I changed all the locks
but I missed that one, you and your tweaker friend
took everything I owned
Give me back my Stingray and I’ll let your sister go She followed me from Austin but she’ll go home if I’m the one that tells her so…
Death squads and slaughter in El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras… genocide against inconvenient indigenous peoples, murder of labor workers, missionaries, nuns, and priests — paid for, in large part, by US taxpayers with a wink and a nod from our government leaders and our legislators.
This song is not long on subtlety or craft, I’ll admit it.
What it has is no shortage of is corrosive, eat-your-guts-out anger… courtesy of yours truly. That’s pretty much how I walked around during the ’80s… a hard-tempered steel spring coiled tightly inside me, ready to snap. It was a time when the “loyal opposition” were gutless toadies… the spectacle of the Iran-Contra hearings is still burned into my mind.
The relentless covering up of ever-nastier, ever-more shameful secrets, greater crimes against the US Constitution, the US people, and the world, from the government of the popular Ronald Reagan, papered over by trepidatious Democrats…
For every Jack Brooks, there were ten Daniel Inouyes… seemingly ready and eager to pave the way for the presidency of GHW Bush just a few years later. The “investigation” was a disgrace almost as shameless as the offenses it investigated.
Anyhow… it still makes me mad.
HAVE YOU EMBRACED THE BEAST?
Have you embraced the beast? I see the mark is on your face Have you embraced the beast? Are you a slave of greed and hate?
Have you embraced the beast?
Do you serve the war machine?
Have you embraced the beast?
Did you trade in your soul on (for) the finer things?
Have you embraced the beast?
Do your taxes buy bullets for fascist death squads?
Have you embraced the beast?
They’ll be coming to your hometown before too long . . .
Have you embraced the beast? I see the mark is on your face Have you embraced the beast? Are you a slave of greed and hate?
This is one of literally dozens of kiss-off songs I wrote for this one girl. We kept breaking up and getting back together. We did it for a couple years. Our relationship was the engine that drove much of my creative output in those days. If we weren’t cursing each other’s shadows and vowing never to have anything to do with each other, we were falling in love all over again.
It irritated the hell out of our friends, without doubt. And, just between you and me, I don’t think I could put up with that kind of nonsense, now. But when I was 25, it was kind of what I expected in life…
I’ll likely be doing this song again a bit later in AYoS — and I’m sure I’ll be anxious to give the next version a properly s— kickin’ feel. I’m afraid I recorded this version when I was dead tired night before last after a long day of web database work.
Still, the other songs I recorded that night (“Magic” and tomorrow’s “Have You Embraced the Beast?”) had a bit more spunk. This work business… I’m sure no one mentioned it when I was signing up for earth duty…
L.A.’S NOT SUCH A BIG TOWN
Well, I hardly know where you’re coming from
but it ain’t hard to see where you’re going to
what you’re coming to)
Hey hey, Darlin’
I just can’t save you now
You hold on to me, so damn tight
then push me away — I walk home alone through the night
thinking about how
I’d be seeing you around
Hey, hey, Darlin’, guess I’ll be seeing you around After all L.A. ain’t such a big town Hey hey Darlin, I hope you ain’t feeling down cause those blues will sit on your head jack your heart and turn your life around
Now you always argue about everything
In your domain irrationality’s king
I got a list of topics
a mile long that can’t be brung up
You called me up on the telephone
and asked me if I was alone
I said yes —
you said good –and you hung up
Hey, hey, Darlin’, I guess yer feeling proud after all) ya cataloged my faults told the whole goldang world out loud Hey hey darlin, I guess it ain’t so strange You tore up my body, broke my heart, and threw away my brains
Well, I tried to talk out all those things
but your inattentive condescendance stings
Hey hey darlin
there’s no point in talking now
Well I never had the money for diamond rings
nor the guaranteed returns wise investment brings
Hey hey darlin,
I guess I’ll be seeing ya around
Hey, hey, Darlin’, guess I’ll be seeing you around After all L.A. ain’t such a big town Hey hey Darlin, I hope you ain’t feeling down cause those blues will sit on your head jack your heart and turn your life around
Ok… I don’t believe in “magic” exactly — but I do believe in mystery in the esoteric sense.
This song doesn’t reflect that because it was — like many of my songs — not written from my point of view. Rather, it takes the form of a (hopefully) character-revealing soliloquy from the song’s protagonist.
He’s clearly a guy at a point in his life when he feels everything of significance is known and those clinging to the idea that life has purpose or meaning or mystery are simply fooling themselves, unrealistic pollyannas clinging to a foolish, if comforting, self-deceit.
And, yes, I guess, maybe that was me, once, at a time when I was overwhelmed by the implications of the anachronistic and simplistically determinist world view I had at the time.
As a teenager, my extremely conservative school district had little use for science, offering the bare minimum to support state requirements. And that, unfortunately, left me with a stunted, 19th century view of the world.
It wasn’t until I got to college and was exposed to a proper exploration of the scientific method and contemporary scientific findings and explorations that I started seeing the world as the wonderful and mysterious place I now find it to be. And I don’t think that’s actually a paradox.
Most folks think they know a lot more than they actually do. Their lives are a gloss of undigested facts, false assumptions, and irrational misapprehensions they’ve simply been indoctrinated with or adopted to fill ontological voids.
I’ve long tried to balance my own skeptical nature and the respect for science fostered by my classic liberal college education against my perhaps juvenile lust for the unknown and the just plain weird, all the while still accommodating my rediscovered sense that there is some mystery central to life that is perpetually just on the verge of being answered — but that never will be.
For me, that balance means using the eyes and brains God and/or nature gave me to observe and measure the world, to collect facts and use my intellect to weave those facts into knowledge. It also means not assuming that everything — or almost everything — is known or that authorities, whether spiritual or intellectual, are always right.
The more I find out about how the world really works — the more mysterious and “magical” life really seems.
MAGIC
I don’t believe in Magic
that stuff’s for young girls
Self-deception is tragic tragic
I’m a true believer in the real world
I don’t believe in love
that’s just a social fiction defined by pain
I don’t believe in the meaning of life
it’s just a meaningless story scrawled by a fool in the dirt
again and again
I don’t believe in magic I’m a true believer in the real world Self deception is tragic tragic I’m a charter member of the real world
I don’t believe in god
I don’t believe in humanity
I don’t believe in abstract knowledge
ideology is insanity
I don’t believe in destiny
any fool can see
the world’s just atoms floating in space
that’s the bottom line on reality
I don’t believe in magic I’m a true believer in the real world Self deception is tragic tragic I’m a charter member of the real world
model of the Corvette sports car as well as a ‘banana-seated’ Schwinn bicycle, a short profile, chopper-barred bike that held a hegemonic grip on America’s youth in that far-off decade. I sort of wanted to capture the sense of a couple of kids fighting over a Stingray, one of them tugging on the handlebars, the other pulling hard on the ‘chicken bar’ on the back of the long seat.
