1. |
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Back in the summer of ’99 it was play all night and waste all our time.
Nine years later seems we turned out fine: half a dozen diplomas and some cheap red wine.
Now I’m looking for some answers, trace the memories back.
Nine more years until we crack.
Celebrate the death of what we knew.
It’s just a sophomoric notion that your dreams come true.
A life’s just time to waste and someday even we’ll be old.
Compromise is not a choice, it’s the one and only goal.
We’ve had our fun and played our games,
tried so hard to keep the flame alive but now it’s time to get a job.
Don’t you know I tried to be the very best that I could be,
take advantage of my assets and my opportunities.
And I’ve spent a lot of money on those universities;
wave my little flag of academic sovereignty.
Still, I try to cheat the code and ignore I’m getting old
for a wasted Saturday and a punk rock show.
Clutching at the vapours and I time I used to know,
still unable to convince myself to let it all go.
Every single weekend spent hanging with the band.
It’s really too bad we were our only three fans.
Write a song and play it loud, play it ‘cause we suck.
Still living for the weekend ‘cause we don’t give a fuck.
Now we all have different answers and we all have separate lives,
and we all have different reasons why we left that all behind.
Can you celebrate the death of what we knew?
I’d rather have my angst and eat it too.
Time’s so fun to waste, but even we are getting old.
Dreams don’t pay the rent and they’re just too hard to uphold.
So buy a tie and cut your hair,
shake my hand and sell your share.
I guess it’s time we get a real job. Get a real job.
It’s time to get a job, time to forget your mom, I’m moving on, it’s time to get a job.
Time to pay the price and measure up, to wash your hair and give a fuck,
to shut your mouth and earn your way, to get somewhere and find your place.
Forget the past and finish class, the 90’s are not coming back.
Forget your band, the time’s a waste, the music doesn’t get you paid.
Forget your dreams, forget your youth, forget your lame excuse for truth.
I guess we’re getting older. I guess we’re getting old.
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2. |
Flight of the Scotsman
02:49
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Is it Heathrow? Is it Soho?
Find myself awake again on a plane by myself with your hair on my sweater.
The reasons to go or venture alone,
I swear I don’t know. Call you up on the phone when I touch down in Chicago.
Snack box on the plane and our taxes have been filed; hope I don’t go to jail, hope we don’t go to jail.
Life’s not a film, but we know how it ends: it drags on into duldrum and denouements back into pain.
And Felix says: He says I’m a bitch and he says you’re an ass and we trust him ‘cause he could teach Sean Connery class.
And somehow everything works out somehow in the end in spite of our bickering and the actions we choose to defend.
I have no defense.
There’s snot in my eye and I’m almost asleep, but I keep coming back to why I couldn’t keep
my mouth shut or my temper, docile and bay, why I only listen to what I have to say.
Choke down a smoke just as soon as I can disembark from the flight of the Scotsman.
Vancouver is behind, no need to check it twice. On a voluntary exile from my own paradise.
My action’s blocked up and I’ll be back another week. Read a magazine and miscalculate myself right to sleep.
In a drawer by the bed, a dozen pictures of you. Traded twenty-some cards for a taste of something new.
Here we are, alone and a continent apart, but I’m sure we didn’t mean to dismantle each other’s hearts.
I’m no 007.
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3. |
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You cut me down, I’ll push you back, and I’m not going to take it back.
You never said you’re sorry that I took your place.
And you never said you’re sorry that you couldn’t keep the pace.
And I want to take my fist and slam it in your face.
You never took it back, never had to face:
the things that I have loved are the things you have replaced
with an urge to destroy the entire human race.
Restraining order: Can’t see Nicole.
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4. |
American Tobacco
02:59
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I don’t know who you are, so you must be something evil.
And I’ll call myself better ‘cause I know I’m always right.
I am America and I make the world turn,
then I bust it into pieces and complain it’s still a mess.
It’s who we are. With a gun and a bible and a flag;
one nation under god, indivisible we stand.
We’ll tell the modern world that you all can go to hell,
then we’ll say a little prayer ‘cause you don’t any better.
You know who we are, yeah, we are American,
so we’ll buy a gun and not use the metric system.
It’s who we are. Saturated and engorged with twice the fat;
turn the television on and have yourself another Big Mac.
We’re the land of the lazy and the home of the depraved.
I wish I was Canadian.
Chicago’s where I’m from and it will bite you in the ass.
It’ll suffocate your future and annihilate the past.
Maybe I can pretend I’m from Manitoba, then
I could face the world in a less objectionable skin,
I could not hate from where it was I happened to begin.
Don’t you try to tell me that I haven’t got the right
to look for something better and to shit on your spotlight.
Talk is fucking cheap and I am sick of playing nice.
Yeah, it’s time to take some action, yeah, it’s time to be precise.
You can have my birthright and your 50 stars and stripes.
I’ll take that motherfucking flag and shove it up your ass.
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5. |
Scholarly Convictions
03:53
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I talk to myself when nobody’s home, and always ignore the telephone.
I take decent notes, I’ve done so for years. I’m very well off with no financial fears.
I’m not a punk, I’m often a geek. And I’ve long since decided that you are a freak.
That’s not unfair, that’s a matter of fact. I’d rather study probability than practice my tact.
But the freaks of the world flip me off and proclaim:
We’ll write the laws, we’ll ignore what you say,
we’ll take your scholarly convictions and we’ll throw them away.
I talk to myself; don’t know what you said. Probably just the echo from the void in your head.
You’re just a mouth, a symptom at best, a statistic to be averaged with all of the rest.
College will pass and grad school too, and you’ll find yourself alone in the zoo.
I don’t take requests. I play my own songs. You can have your own opinion, but I’m sure you’ll be wrong.
But please, by all means, opine away.
We’ll write the laws, we’ll ignore what you say,
we’ll take your scholarly convictions and we’ll throw them away.
We’ll stay with you close, like a knife in the back,
and we will hope that you succumb to a quick heart attack.
It’s not like I’ll never try, to give in a bit or to bend to a lie.
I know it’s self-indulgent, dismissive at best,
but I won’t change my answers just to conquer your test.
So throw them away.
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American Tobacco Vancouver, British Columbia
Vancouver, Eola, and all points in between.
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