Music

Black Books

On the wall above her bed in a room in a European city
There's a mark for every man who's ever had the pleasure
And up there, I'm immortalised forever
Somewhere around number 26 or 27

And each mark relates to a story in a book
With descriptions of places and accounts of stolen looks
First page: a quote from Dante that you took
And baby I'm in your black books
Baby, I guess that I'm in your black books

So, for sure, I got a thing for European women
Probably a symptom of the city that I live in
They write their stories in books that they've been given
With good pens and quotes from novels that they're reading

A naked girl in front of you who's kind of been around
In my own way, well I find that so profound
And the clincher is that she fucking writes it down
And baby I'm in your black books
Baby, I guess that I'm in your black books

A boy says to this girl "oh, does it have to be this way?"
As she flips him on his back again, rubs him up the wrong way
He says "darling, can I call you that, I don't know what this means,
"It's like I'm staring through a window at a tableau of your scene"

'Met a girl on the plane coming from Berlin
Couldn't read the language her books were in
Wake up beside her by the morning din
Sunlight reflecting on those black books that I'm in

I said: "Baby, one day we will be old"
She said: "So many lovers this year, all told"
And this is the life to which I'm sold
As my head looks up at the writing on the
The writing on the

Wall above her bed in a room in a European city
There's a mark for everyone who's ever had the pleasure
And up there, I'm immortalised forever
Somewhere around number 26 or 27

And each mark relates to a story in a book
With descriptions of places and accounts of stolen looks
First page: a quote from Dante that you took
And baby I'm in your black books

Baby, I guess that I'm in your black books

Bratislava

The past is such a pretty thing
When you were drunk and seventeen
Rolling round under stars and bars
On the streets of Bratislava

The party happened every night
We step into the morning light
And never stop, and never fight
On the streets of Bratislava

Where do we go from here?

The less you try the better it is
Thinking that it comes to this
Still seeing you through days and years
The streets of Bratislava

Well your spirt comes and spirit goes
When there's nothing left to lose
But love
When there's nothing left to lose but love

Where do we go from here?

'Sit in my favourite café bar
Contemplate the empty heart
While far away the stars collide
I can't stop thinking of it

Despite the friends and cigarrettes
Despite the life I love the best
My heart
My heart has come to this

Where do we go from here?

Fanfare for the Girls

We're so far away from home right now
The magic of the new
Where those blondes and buildings unify my life
Where the architecture's right
Those women beautiful, not trite
With my needs and wants and feelings out tonight!

Well, we'll chase them down the boulevards
We'll chase them anywhere
Russian bars and secret police, we'll meet you there!
Well we'll set this town alight
With the dancing and the fights
And the taxi driver who can't get it there...

Well it's hard to find a girl here in this beautiful old town
And a private dance won't satiate my friends
So it's a fanfare for the girls
And a requiem for the boys
Fancy free in this foreign land...

We'll throw money at the problem
We'll throw drinking at the brain
But under Marshall Tito's portrait, how she stares
Well she's tearing up the pieces of my perfect Western heart
With Eastern promise that's reflected in my band

Well it's hard to find a girl here in this beautiful old town
And a private dance won't satiate my friends
So it's a fanfare for the girls
And a requiem for the boys
Fancy free in this foreign land...
In this foreign land!

Well if not now, when will it happen?
If not now, will it ever come true?
Well if not now, when will it happen?
Will it ever happen to you?

Last Tango

Baby,
You’re a lose moralled girl,
But with a certain complection
With timing like this,
What are you doing ‘round here?

Oh baby,
Let’s go somewhere where no-one will find us
And there’ll be no-one around to remind us
But please, oh baby
Oh baby, when’s this tango gonna end?

(When’s this tango,
When’s this tango gonna end?)

All around the world
Bucharest, Bratislava (kiss me)
All around the world
What are you doing round here?

Oh baby,
Let’s go somewhere where no-one will find us
And there’ll be no-one around to remind us
But please, oh baby
Oh baby, when’s this tango gonna end?

When’s this tango,
When’s this tango gonna end?

Baby, baby
Let’s go somewhere where no-one will find us
Baby, baby,
Let’s go somewhere where they’ll never know
No, where they’ll never know

And it’s true that this dancing alone, it won’t stop you
From falling right into something together
But please oh baby,
Oh baby,
When’s this tango gonna end?

When’s this tango,
When’s this tango gonna end?
Oh baby,
When’s this tango gonna end?


With thanks to the Kaizer's Orchestra for musical inspiration.

I first saw 'Last Tango in Paris' when I was living in NY. I had just spent ten hours on a train coming back from a week visiting people in Montreal and I still had nail polish on from the previous night - we were in a bar called Brutopia and we had late night Poutin at 4am and I nearly missed the train in the morning. I had only brought one book which I finished 45 minutes into the ten hour journey with one fag break. I think I just thought. So I got back to NY and went up to the I. House where I was staying and went to movie night, procured Ben & Jerry's from the USA Gourmet Number 1 deli on the corner of Broadway and La Selle and watched it. There was a woman involved, but then again there usually are with these things.

No Gak Required

1-2-3, oh
Fifteen voddy reds on a school night out
No gak required
Phil Collins, No Jacket Requried
No gak required
I’ve got a girl upstairs and two others in the lounge
No gak required
I’ve got property interests in Tel Aviv
No gak required!

I was pretty straight edge when I wrote this song
But since then everything has gone so wrong
No gak, no gak, no gak
No gak required!

V.F.M. from the Swedish chicks
No gak required
Yo, ho, ho and a bottle of rum
No gak required
Progressive rock on the Isle of Sheppey
No gak required
Why didn’t you play ‘My Disgrace’?

I was pretty straight edge when I wrote this song
But since then everything has gone so wrong
No gak, no gak, no gak
No gak required!

No gak required

Sex

Well those sweet little girls
Those who’ve loved and who've spurned me
When night comes around
They come back around here

Well the ghosts of these girls
How they float down my memory
Well I see how I feel
And feel how they felt for me

Oh those girls with bees in their bonnets
And the boys with ribbons in their hair
Oh, I swear
I was there

And those wide-trousered boys
Each of them a gentleman
Fancy free youth
Loved and lost on Soho Square

I've had pleasures enough
Enough for time not to take me
And all my regrets
Are lost on a lustful sea

Oh those girls with bees in their bonnets
And the boys with ribbons in their hair
How I swear
I was there

Smelling Salts

Well, an English boy to Prague he goes
The raffish hair and literary asunder
He walks the streets all day
Though he knows there's something missing from his life

On a trip to buy tomatoes
He catches sight of an ex-military bunker...
Used to be sedated
Now he's so happy selling smelling salts...

Well, the crowds they come from far and wide
To see the vegan smelling salt collection
As his soon-to-be wife looks on in pride and joy
At the exploits of her boy

Well it started with an accident
And we all know that accidents, they happen
(Oh, how they happen...)
Used to be sedated
Now he's so happy selling smelling salts...

Used to be sedated
Now he's so happy selling smelling salts!

South America

A call across the land and sea
Through those crashing waves of polarity
You took him by the hand tonight
Walked together under the moonlight
Oh, it’s calling me tonight

I’m going to South America
I’ll still love you forever
I’m going to South America
It’s calling me tonight

I can’t do my job tonight
When the waves are calling me off on the next flight
Let him take you by the hand
Walk together on that golden sand
Oh it’s calling me tonight

I’m going to South America
I’ll still love you forever
I’m going to South America
It’s calling me tonight

It's calling me
It's calling me tonight

Sweetness, Our Love

Sweetness, our love will never die
Through river deep and mountain high
I see that look between your eyes
The one to make young lovers cry
Oh, love

What can I do to make it so?
But this is certainty, I know
I see that look between your eyes
The one to make young lovers cry
Oh, love, love love

Sweetness, our love will never die
Through river deep and mountain high

Tampa Bay

Met a girl and blew my load in Tampa Bay
It wasn't rape; it was Chardonnay

Aaaaaaaaaaaaagh! (Oooooooooooooooh...)

Repeat

Teenage Slave

Yes she was a teenage slave
Buttons on her shirt were all undone
Yes she was a teenage slave
The buttons on her shirt were all undone

University comes

Yes she was a teenage slave
The only words she couldn't say were
"Stop doing that
Stop doing that"

Three months in a dungeon
And the only words she didn't say were
"Stop doing that
Stop doing that"

University came
And came and came and came and came and came

Titanic

Met a girl, and she’s got soul
She’s got a little thing that I gotta know
Everytime I see her walking down the street
In the H+M dresses and the shape of her teet, oh
Girl I gotta tell you
Girl I gotta tell you
So Titanic
So Titanic, yeah

Well your man, he needs a hand
It’s ok baby ‘cos I understand
Everytime I see her walking down the street
In the H+M dresses and the shape of her teet, oh
Girl I gotta tell you
Girl I gotta tell you
So Titanic
So Titanic, yeah

Tell me ‘bout your boyfriend, bet he looks so fine
But he’ll be small and ugly when he knows you’re mine
It could be for a night or just an hour or two
But girl you’re so Titanic, so Titanic, yeah!

She went down like the Titanic,
She went down like the Titanic,
She went down,
She went down,
She went down, like the Titanic.


First line references 'Tampa Bay', to which this is an obvious cousin. Also marks the return of my falsetto, if only for four words.

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