"Most of the songs were twisted autobiographies. 'Gowin' Up,' 'Does This Bus Stop,' 'Blinded by the Light,' 'Spirit in the Night,' 'For You,' 'Lost in the Flood,' 'Saint in the City,' found their seed in people, places, hang-outs, and incidents I'd seen and things I'd lived. I wrote impressionistically and changed names to protect the guilty. I worked to find somethin that was identifiably mine."

CLICK TO PLAY SONG

The ragamuffin gunner is returning home
Like a hungry runaway
He walks through town all alone
"He must be from the fort"
He hears the high school girls say
This countryside's burnin' with wolfmen fairies
Dressed in drag for homicide
They hit and run, plead sanctuary
Neath the holy stone they hide
They're breakin' beams and crosses
With a spastic's reeling perfection
Nuns run bald, through vatican halls
Pregnant, pleading immaculate conception
And everybody's wrecked on Main Street
From drinkin' unholy blood
Sticker smiles sweet as Gunner breathes deep
His ankles caked in mud
And I said, "hay gunner, man that's quicksand
That's quicksand, that ain't mud
Have you thrown your senses to the war
Or did ya lost 'em in flood?"

That pure American brother
Dull-eyed and empty-faced
Races Sundays in Jersey
In a Chevy-stocked super eight
He rides her low on the hip
On the side he's got "Bound for Glory"
In red, white and blue flashpaint
He leans on the hood tellin' racin' stories
The kids call him Jimmy the Saint
Well that blaze and noise boy
He's gunnin' that bitch
Loaded to the blastin' point
He rides head first into a hurricane
And disappears into a point
And there's nothin' left but some blood where the body fell
That is, nothin' left that you could sell
Just junk all across the horizon,
A real highwayman's farewell
And I said "Hey kid, you think that's oil?
Man, that ain't oil that's blood"
I wonder what he was thinking
When he hit that storm
Or was he just lost in the flood?

Eighth Avenue sailors with satin shirts
Whisper in the air
Some storefront incarnation of Maria,
She's puttin' on me the stare
And Bronx's best apostle stands
With his hand on his own hardware
Everything stops, you hear five quick shots
The cops come up for air
And now the whiz-bang gang from uptown,
They're shootin' up the street
Oh that cat from the Bronx starts lettin' loose
But he gets blown right off his feet
Oh and some kid comes blastin' round the corner
But a cop puts him right away
He lays on the street holding his leg
Screaming something in Spanish
Still breathing when I walked away
And someone said "Hey man did you see that?
His body hit the street with such a beautiful thud"
I wonder what the dude was sayin'
Or was he just lost in the flood?
Well, hey man, did you see that,
Those poor cats are sure messed up
I wonder what they were gettin' into,
Or were they all just lost in the flood?

Next Page   Album Page   Home Page   Intro Page


West Chester University
History 650
Seminar in 20th Century
American Popular Culture
Dr. Charles Hardy
Fall 2003
Joseph O'Brien