Saturday, January 27, 2007

"I was alone I took a right. I didn't know what I would find there."

When I was a kid I loved The Beatles. I still do. In particular, my favorite song was Yellow Submarine. I have no idea why. It sort of sounds like a kid song I guess. My favorite line even to this day (I am listening to Revolver in my car now) is, "And we live a life of ease. Everyone of us has all we need. Sky of blue and sea of green in our Yellow Submarine" and then there is this yell that I really like.

I also really liked Sam Cooked as a kid. I still do. Now, his music isn't very kid like. In the summers I went to daycare at my private Baptist school. I would take my Walkman and a Best of Sam Cooke tape my mom had and listen to it most of the day. It was awesome. At said private school they once called my parents cause I was singing one of my other favorites. It is called Tweeter and the Monkey Man by the Travelling Wilburys.

Tweeter and the monkey man were hard up for cash
They stayed up all night selling cocaine and hash
To an undercover cop who had a sister named Jan
For reasons unexplained she loved the monkey man

Tweeter was a boy scout before she went to Vietnam
And found out the hard way nobody gives a damn
They knew that they found freedom just across the jersey line
So they hopped into a stolen car took highway 99

(chorus)
And the walls came down all the way to hell
Never saw them when they're standing
Never saw them when they fell

The undercover cop never liked the monkey man
Even back in childhood he wanted to see him in the can
Jan got married at fourteen to a racketeer named bill
She made secret calls to the monkey man from a mansion on the hill

It was out on thunder road - tweeter at the wheel
They crashed into paradise - they could hear them tires squeal
The undercover cop pulled up and said everyone of yous a liar
If you don't surrender now its gonna go down to the wire

(chorus)

An ambulance rolled up - a state trooper close behind
Tweeter took his gun away and messed up his mind
The undercover cop was left tied up to a tree
Near the souvenir stand by the old abandoned factory

Next day the undercover cop was hot in pursuit
He was taking the whole thing personal
He didn't care about the loot
Jan had told him many times it was you to me who taught
In jersey anythings legal as long as you don't get caught

(chorus)

Someplace by rahway prison they ran out of gas
The undercover cop had cornered them said boy, you didn't
Think that this could last
Jan jumped out of bed said there's someplace I gotta go
She took a gun out of the drawer and said its best if you don't know

The undercover cop was found face down in a field
The monkey man was on the river bridge using Tweeter as a shield
Jan said to the monkey man I'm not fooled by tweeters curl
I knew him long before he ever became a jersey girl

(chorus)

Now the town of jersey city is quieting down again
I'm sitting in a gambling club called the lions den
The TV set been blown up, every bit of it is gone
Ever since the nightly news show that the monkey man was on

I guess Ill go to Florida and get myself some sun
There ain't no more opportunity here, everything's been done
Sometime I think of tweeter, sometime I think of Jan
Sometime I don't think about nothing but the monkey man

I didn't get in trouble or anything. They were the ones listening to it. Doing drugs, transvestites, shooting cops, stealing, gambling, all those things in one song. You can imagine how it went over at the Baptist school when I was five.

2 comments:

Mark Brown said...

Hi Lauren. Yellow Submarine was my favorite, but now i am "apeshit?" over the new "beatles" album "LOVE"
Brian epstein and his son took the original 16 track tapes, and did MASH-ups of all the stuff for a cirque du soleil show in Las vegas.
Simply not to be believed, so great.
Mark

Lauren said...

I haven't heard it yet, but I would love to see the cirque show!