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Stars And Hearts And Lightning Strikes

by Duncan Graham And His Co-Accused

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1.
All the roads are one road: you know how I feel It's like time's wounded heel in a barefoot shoe Treading golden splinters into the floor of Bellevue And I have committed no crime I couldn't banish the clocks, couldn't shut out the tick-tocks Couldn't stop up my ears to the chime All the kids are trembling (before the Bastille) You see revolution: I just see spinning You want a happy ending but all I got's beginnings And I want no part of your fight I couldn't banish my love to those dominions above Where the key goes aloft with the kite I don't care if the Angelus never rings I don't care if the fat lady never sings at all I don't care if the current is strong And the eddies, they drag me below I won't tell the river to stop its flow All the gods are one god (he just gets around) Like the whole damn world in a half arsed gesture Like the taste in my mouth When I remember how I kissed ya Last night when I was young Before you banished my soul to that opposite pole Where the moon burns its feet on the sun I don't care if I spent too long at the fair I don't care if I never really belonged there I don't care if the money was spent Where it never was meant to go I won't tell the river to stop its flow All the seas are one sea (the beach it is blessed) It's like Chinese whispers Mixed with Russian vespers In the crash of the wave on my breast And it happens all night Till the sheets are soaking wet Perhaps if I'd rowed on the moon's silver road I'd have never got caught in the net I don't care if we fuck and never cum I don't care if we can't finish what we've begun I don't care if I piss off my muses And the last line refuses to show I won't tell the river to stop its flow
2.
Midnight, Black Ruby Hotel I fall into the light and it washes my eyes so well Smoke rings from Cygnus X1 Come floating in and dance in the stagelight I don't know why I get it in my mind that it's all wrong And I don't know when I'm going home, maybe never I saw the singer by the twelve pines ten years ago Picking buttons to blow his mind His absinthe turns to pernod by transubstantiation His jokes in Esperanto getting lost in the translation We got time If you just recline and shut your eyes You can hear the hum as they all turn on and untie their lines And the drummer just gets on with it And the dharma just gets lost in all of the noise
3.
Oranges and lemons, he was the belle of St. Kevin's He hocked his tiny arse to the whole fifth class Kissin' them better like the lady with the lamp Curing what ails ya in the house of the rising damp He talks like Lester Bangs and bangs like Lester talks 1% excited, 99% just bored He can't give head 'coz he's got thirty two left teeth And he starts to giggle or forgets to breathe He wants to break into your car And fall asleep beneath your stars Here comes the candle to light him to bed And here comes the chopper to chop off his head You owe me your hard on says the sweet St. Martin You owe me to meet me at midnight in the garden We'll scare the apples right off of the tree And scandalize the neighbourhood By swallowing the seeds Me, I was entranced by the spastic way he danced Merce Cunningham caught up in a Bob Fosse trance Clearing the kitchen by centrifugal force The keys to the city a-janglin' in his purse He wants to learn all the names of God But the minute he does, well, the whole thing stops Here comes the candle to light him to bed And here comes the chopper to chop off his head With his little clouds of rock'n'roll and Brut 66 His poppers and his soda bulbs His pockets full of teenage kicks His thrills, pills and bellyaches His phasers set to stun His Oxford shoegazers left out in the sun He tosses out one liners from St. Thomas Aquinas Lord, make me good, but not till I'm ready Stolen wine is sweeter & it makes the night look pretty 'Tis pity, it's so hard to be a saint in the city He wants a glimpse of his next life It's not promising, but in town the rumours are rife From ice cream headaches at the crack of noon To wet dream heartaches & brides left behind in June He's got the radio tuned between stations He's trying to pick up Venus or Mars But the full moon is sapping his patience And there's chatter going on between him & his stars He's trying all the numbers in his pocket But nobody's making the scene He's dropping all his drugs on the carpet And sighing through those old dirty magazines He's singing with Sviatoslav Richter As he rips through Beethoven's fourth And Melbourne's so cold in the winter When the beautiful people go north
4.
Night Train 14:04
When you press your hand against The frantic beating of my breast I fall into the sinner's rest And get on board the night train I leave you drowsing in the gloam As madness climbs onto her throne And bids my sufi soul come home Night train, night train With Hermes' touch upon mine eye I cross the Styx without my bride And touch down where the bodies lie Night train, night train, night train And all the deaded folk I knew Come far and near into my view And all the tumblin' times accrued Are crowded on the night train Past midnight when the sirens moan For destinations yet unknown The maiden, nymph and sacred crone Play rummy on the night train The fates are hunched around their light Play scissors, paper, rock all night The needle, thread and sewing knife Too dull when on the night train John Keats is in the dining car Smoking reefers at the bar He's left the windows all ajar Night train, night train, night train And if he hears the nightingale His tie unknots, his face goes pale His heart beneath the clacking rail Midnight, night train Oscar Wilde, the émigré The fin de siecle Queen of May Reclines upon the empty page Surrenders to the night train And in the passage, knocking doors Comes Diaghilev collecting for The salon of the Russian whores Now open on the night train While Truman, Gore and Tennessee Whose gothic Saturnalia's free Are fucking sailors three by three Night train, night train, night train My porter comes, my fare unpaid My bad side and my bed unmade My lips uncombed, my trousers frayed His epaulets, his gold brocade His winning smile, his unafraid His jacket falls, his buttons splay He lingers on the night train As night unwinds its gentle noose And all the rays of dawn break loose I lightly skip from the caboose Sayonara, night train With Orphic strains from far ahead I drink the Lethe and leave the dead I leave my bachelors unwed My vespers and my psalms unsaid My incubus unquenched, nor fed My absinthe drained of all its lead The Eastern sky is glowing red I find the path where others fled And crawl back in my marriage bed Forgetting of the night train My sufi soul is slowly drawn My Ruth amid the alien corn I find you standing in the dawn Untravelled on the night train I fall out of the sinner's rest And comes the beating of my breast When soon you press your hand against The siding of my night train
5.
I will be born in the Horse Latitudes Where the winds are too damn quiet And in way too good a mood The Roaring Forties bruise my feet The trade winds muss my hair like wheat Into art school attitudes I'll dot my "i"s a little queer With stars and hearts and lightning strikes Till my local gods appear If they're not here by seventeen I'll blow my chance of ever being Teenager of the year When I crash into the scene I am unrescued: no one notices a thing I try to slip in through the back Another bust up dressed in eighteen shades of black I'll be their dumb suburban boy Fucked up, farting, friendless With my charms left unenjoyed The thin faced man will glide right in With stars and hearts and lightning strikes Inside his pale blue eyes We'll be tappin' on a vein Trying to mix the blood up With those little bits of rain But I'll find there's no reward The stone clings tighter to the sword Than before I ever came I'll be almost destroyed Sending my bags on ahead into the void When I gets a bright idea I'll make a pretty noise until those wretched gods appear When I pick up my machine I won't kill fascists That's a whole other scene Mash notes in my tambourine From the local chapter Of the Mattachines I'll strum like I could make a bunch of fives To smash the Buddha Into his next hundred lives Before my daemons get ya You're just dancing about architecture Till my time arrives I will never be a star I'll realize the nineteenth time I pawn my guitar Folks may piss on my parade But I am only the next gig away from the light John Hammond will not walk into my show His pockets stuffed with contracts And a half a key of blow A world tour, crash and coma And a graduate diploma From the Betty Ford, you know I'll never make it to the crossroads for to deal 'Coz that assumes I got A soul in here to steal I'll be cutting corners Hanging round in saunas Trying to catch the devil's heel I'll get close before I fail My hands will slip upon the tiger's tail And as I watch the gold and black recede I lift my shooter but I cannot get a bead Maybe I'll take liberties with love Using Andrew Marvell And that His Coy Mistress stuff And if you should thus refuse Till the conversion of the Jews Well, it don't seem long enough I'll be catching zeds until I will awake to find Your hand inside my till Hey man, I say, that's okay If you want me now to pay Well, I'll put you in my will I'll sell the rights to my last breath The cards predict I'll be star-spangled to death With a bomber up my arse, I'm ripping off Karl Marx Once is tragedy, this time it's just farce I'll have nothing left to do To close the heavens down And wipe them from my view 'Coz when the blanket's pulled up tight The spirits keep me up all night Too bad they missed their fucking cue I'll be too tired to get it down All those grand gestures And those mock heroic sounds Hepped up like Norman Mailer On a Benzedrine inhaler Can't you slow the whole thing down? I'll be strung out and annoyed Throwing my prayer wheels on ahead into the void When I get's a bright idea I'll make a racket till those wretched gods disappear When you bury my guitar There won't be strings enough To play another bar Some other trumped up troubadour Can lead you through some other door But nobody makes it far Next time I think I'll come out somewhere new Bein' born is easy It's just hard to choose who to Perhaps I'll be a player In a temple in the Himalayas Chasing down the truth I'll be almost alive When I hear that the master has died Leaves me pissing on his grave I was only a candle away from the light The wind undresses the rose Until the bud Is all that shows The dharma's in disgrace It hides its pretty face Until the last veil goes And me, I think I'm through with bein' born Just leave my stupid body In the wastes of Forest Lawn And if you have to wake me Make it sunset and let me make my own way Back into the dawn When I slip out of the scene I will be chuffed if no one notices a thing Every sunrise has its back I will be drifting into those eighteen shades of black When will this cycle ever end Why am I stuck inside of Mobile With the Memphis blues again? Those stars and hearts and lightning strikes Can just get up and on their bikes 'Coz I won't do this again I'm through Bein' born
6.
Unready 03:08
I wanna be crystal clear There's more than can be seen with your eyes So bring your whole self round here I'll show you the tears that fell from your eyes You didn't realize you could be as unready as me One day you may bring the treasure home But the more gets lost, the more you carry The more you have to get on loan And you ask: When will I ever be ready To make my own way sure and steady? I don't know, but I guess it won't come at all There's a lightning rod in your back pocket I bet you never knew you had And strange desires in your mixed up heart That'll visit the jitters on mum and dad And your every little reflex action seems to blow out And knock your empire down Just when you thought you're on a straight line You notice everything goes round & round & round Between you and I, I don't think you're ready To be ready for these things That chaos quietly brings Unready, you will always be unready
7.
So Long 09:42
Goodnight, my mad city: I'm leaving you tonight I hope you don't mind if I drink you dry But your bars are so pretty and they're open all night And if the jacks don't mind and my friends don't mind I just might take me a little more time I want to be sure of one thing: When I fall out the door, I won't be missing anything Fare thee well, my lovers, I'm leaving the game The only thing that bothers me I wish I'd caught some of your names And if you get too lonely, just remember I'm only One sun in a sky full of stars I want you to realize: When you kiss me the once You kiss me every damn day of my life So long, so long, I've been here so long That I've charted every inch of the air So long, I've been climbing to the house of song That I've worn a half moon in the stairs It took an hour to pack my things And an hour to pawn my rings An hour to buy my ticket and an hour to cry An hour to make love to this one last guy Before the moment I ever said hello I was already making my goodbyes I couldn't believe that it would every last For so long I tried Keep the party rolling till I get back Just pretend I went for cigarettes And I lost my way back in the dark And if the music's loud and the laughter's loud When my cab pulls out you won't hear the sound I wish I could make up my mind I wanna go, I wanna stay I wanna leave myself behind So long, so long, I've been here so long That I've charted every inch of the air So long, I've been climbing to the house of song That I've worn a half moon in the stairs It took an hour burn my mail And an hour to paint my nails An hour to throw all my kittens in the creek An hour to wipe the last glitter from my cheek Before the moment I ever said hello I was already making my goodbyes I couldn't believe that it would every last For so long, I tried

about

DUNCAN GRAHAM
Stars And Hearts And Lightning Strikes
Full Length CD - Released November 2007
Tripper's Advocate Records - Catalogue No. TRP 006

Stars And Hearts And Lightning Strikes is Duncan's second solo outing. Fifty four minutes, seven songs, about four thousand notions, three guest musicians, and a heap of wrongful intent. Duncan gathers together the same crew he used on Faggot Anthems And Drug Ballads: An Adventure In Lo Fidelity, and adds the sublime violinist Jan Palethorpe for extra hooey.

credits

released November 1, 2007

Duncan Graham: Acoustic Guitar, Bass Guitar, Lead Vox, Backing Vox
Rex Watts: Acoustic Guitar, Electric Guitar, Mandolin, Backing Vox
Paul Huntingford: Electric Piano, Electric Organ, Mandolin, Drums, Backing Vox
Jan Palethorpe: Violin

Recorded and Mixed by Paul Huntingford and Rex Watts from April 2006 to January 2007 in Castlemaine, Footscray and Newtown

Night Train recorded live in Rex's loungeroom on a weary Monday night in 2006, after three days of hard playin' at the Maldon Folk Festival

Mastered by Mark Woods: contact at www.e-pop.com.au

Cover Star: Peter Davis, in Dublin in the early 90s
Photography by Kleo Dogaris
Layout and Design by Duncan Graham

(I'm Through) Bein' Born offered to the memory of Rex's brother Robbie Watts, who passed away while we were recording thew album

All songs written by Duncan Graham

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