1. |
Crooked Mind
03:46
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How was that walking on the water in the village?
Did you get a big head when you saw their eyes?
And when they surrounded you with their rough brown hands
Did you just keep walking in your white robe disguise?
Like when you stayed up all night
With your panda mask eyes
≈
When the last blinder has fallen from the horse’s eyes
When he freaks out I think that makes good sense
I know I wouldn’t want to be fooled all of the time
Into just moving in one direction through a fence
Expected to be dense
Does this make sense?
≈
When I gaze on the wall of time I can see the design
Of your crooked mind
≈
While you have been parting the waters to let us pass
Have you been noticing anything strange?
Like me standing bewildered, worried for your end
What’s to become of a force that won’t change?
In this future past tense
This can’t make sense…
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2. |
Economy Crashes
03:55
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Every time I try to behave
Myself I just slip away
And the economy crashes
Stock market falls
The economy crashes
All the commodities sold
Don’t go on banking on wall street
Opportunity knocks me down
Opportunity knocks me around
Every time I work up a sweat
I look up and I’m nowhere near yet
The economy crashes
Stock market falls
Economy crashes
All the collateral damage
At the federal reserve
Opportunity knocks…
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3. |
Anita and AL
04:27
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Gentleman prefer blondes
(Yet) gentleman marry brunettes…
She was an actor
On the train back to the west
Next to no less than a man than
H.L. Mencken…
All the while just behind their seat
Sat a woman with a wicked pen
Noticing the way this blonde bombshell
Could get attention of the men…
Gentleman prefer blondes…
But this one brunette in particular
Truly understood
Why they so prefer
Al Capone always wanted to lead a gang
Since he was a baby
If anybody disrespected him
He would gnash
Just go crazy
Once he asked a stiff a question
Just to get his dull expression
Just to prove that no one talks back
Just to show that death is not that tough…
Gentleman prefer blondes…
(This is why I don’t need money; just a diamond’s right for me.)
Give me your tired and your poor
Huddled masses yearning to be free
Your wretched refuse and your, teeming shore
Send those the homeless and the tempest tossed to me…
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4. |
Bitter Little Critter
02:42
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I’m a bitter little critter
Someone did a number on me
I see now why when I walk by my friends throw fruit at me
Don’t give me false consolation
I’m a greater bitter hater
Than all mass humanity
My bones are sharp, my legs apart, reject defiantly
Don’t give me bland affirmations
Somehow need this degradation
I need to be around where the grass grows
Found near the hallows
I long to be in bed with her when she goes
Seen at her window
I’m a bitter little critter
Someone better look at me
I speak with knives, play with lives, but I still have some needs
Don’t give me your accusations
Ground down to mastication…
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5. |
Reservations
02:44
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Won’t you lay your head on the ground?
You can hear the sound
Of a distant train making its way out of town
The one we both have reservations on
≈
When you pray in the throes of doubt
I am sure it helps you out
With the distant train making its way out of town
The one we both have reservations on
≈
In the days of that great wave
On the old Milwaukee road
Then the distant train, making its way out of town
The one we both have reservations on
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6. |
Birdcage
02:36
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I don’t want to be
Merely pushing your daisies
Somebody better put me in a birdcage
Where you can keep an eye on me
I don’t want to be
Bending down on my 2 knees
Just to have to fit into a birdcage
With which circumstance has fitted me
I don’t want to be
Fighting with you to feel free
Batting losing feathers in this birdcage
In which I am fated now to be
But I’m gonna dance with these curtains open
Looking through these bars into your brown eyes
So you can see how they keep me in a cage
Yeah I’m gonna dance with the curtains open
Gazing at stars, only birds can fly
On a cloudy day, when it’s about to rain
You don’t want to be
Simply looking after keys
You knew you put somewhere that fits a birdcage
In which love compels this bird to be
You don’t want to be
Stricken with some rare disease
Somebody better put you in a birdcage
Before you get designs to flee
I don’t want to be
But then it just occurs to me
Maybe love is only possible in birdcages
Incarcerations make you free
So I’m gonna dance with these curtains open
Taunting into rage, my executioner
So he will kill me fast, and with little pain
I’m gonna dance with the curtains open
Looking through these bars into your brown eyes
I can only love, inside your little cage.
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7. |
Get Down
01:57
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Get down and put both hands on your head
You don’t want to be dead, do you?
Don’t want to be 6 feet under in a box
With the rocks and potato silver backed bugs
And a thought that Plato might have not have thought of
Get down and put your head under your hands
You don’t want to die young do you?
Don’t want to be pushing daisies in the dirt
Like a rare meal cooked by Fuchsia Dunlop
At her breakfast table Confucius was talking about it non-stop…
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8. |
Tank Man
04:26
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You look like a wide angle lens
A wide angle lens
Tiananmen Square, it’s a gate of heavenly peace
Look tank man!
Everything is like a dream…
You look like a wide angle lens
A wide angle lens
Tiananmen Square
Capital in Beijing
You look like a wide angle lens…
≈
God away for the weekend
Took the train to Tiananmen Square
We were joining friends on a hunger strike
Shooting for the democratic moon
Dreaming what a future might be like
As Heshang ("River Elegy") had encouraged us to do
But the People’s Liberation Army
Drove in tanks that June Sunday
If one of us hadn’t thought of you
He’d have died
≈
Blood is lovely in a way
No one could appreciate but the one
In front of the tanks
The one, in front of the tanks
Bones are dirt and dusty ash
Only to a Party-backing collectivist
The People’s Liberation Army…
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9. |
Air
01:05
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Didn’t we get to the end a little faster than we should have done?
I know I wasn’t ready
And in fact it seemed we’d just begun
So what accounts for your preemptive sounded alarm?
Gone is your charm
And your claims of “harming”
My “harming”
Have all the weight of air…
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10. |
Boat
03:01
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Once she’s off her boat she just gets rid of it
“Bye bye”
You saw the river go dry
Once she gets so close
Needn’t be near to it
“Bye bye”
Laying coins in her eyes
Let’s set the record for the fastest to the car
Last one there’s a rotten egg
Cause you gotta work for love
You’ve got to beg for love
Got to plead on your knees
Not from above…
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11. |
Pillars
02:58
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Did I make you cry
That time I kicked your gut in?
Well you needed to
Yeah you were skating scott free just floating by
Did I make you scream
That time when we were loving?
When it was all through
You just kept on staring up at the sky
And I think I’m gonna die in a cold gray pew
Where pillars fall and the temples crumble
Die here below with you
Where the killers meet, and I delight in making you cry
So I’ll make you cry
Gonna kick your gut in
Cause you need it too
Yeah you’ve been skating scott free just floating by
Think I’m gonna die in a cold gray pew
Look at how it’s changed
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Matthew Caleb Rockford, Illinois
Original songs of Rockford, IL singer-songwriter Matthew Caleb. These are DEMOS. Everything is a
demo.
Header and background photos by Reka Ehrentreu
reka.ehrentreu@gmail.com
Contact Matthew at soap.flossers@yahoo.com
... more
Matthew Caleb recommends:
The Art of Mothering
by Special Explosion
This album is an absolute cover to cover joy. Prog-structured, heavy-light, full-stop, to blasting off moments, first rate songwriting...
go to album
This record cover to cover is full of first rate hooks, infectious cascading proggy drumming, and all glued together with the genius vocal and songwriting...
go to album
Day of the Tiles (EP)
by The Human Hearts
Franklin Bruno is one of the most criminally underappreciated songwriters. Aside from ongoing solo work (music and writing, he's a poet and philosopher of music), Human Hearts is his musical home.
go to albumIf you like Matthew Caleb, you may also like:
Backed by a rotating cast of collaborators, the Australian singer-songwriter refines her folk-tinged indie pop sound.
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Habibi's garage minimalism has a bit of post-punk, bubblegum, and indie in its DNA, but remains something entirely, coolly their own.
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Echo Dancing
by Alejandro Escovedo
The legendary Alejandro Escovedo returns with another country-rock scorcher.
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