Wasn't in the Bargain
Life on the Fly
In the Vicinity
Just Joker Blues
Miss Tony
Another Kind of Trade
Things Without Names
Antarctica
Yours for Today
All songs words and music by Azita Youssefi
©2004 Streamsdream, BMI
Drag
City Records
album credits
When the devil comes to take his pay
You look into his eyes and know your sorrow
Cursing that you never thought you’d see this day
You didn’t have to borrow
There won’t be dancing and you won’t get laid
You’ll never catch a pardon and you know it
Wasn’t in the bargain
Is Mephisto having a party?
Well I think that
I will go
It’s just another sister
Darting into
The picture
In between the flicker I have seen
A light
Terrible like a king
Some are lost behind each time the portal closes
Some are left to sing
You shook his hand your friends could hear you
say
You gotta break some eggs to make an omelette
Then your little piece of action didn’t play
Your view of life was hardened
The VCR's in pawn the curtains drawn
You ain’t sitting in no fancy garden and now you see it
Wasn’t in the bargain
Is Mephisto having a party?
Well I think that
I will go
It’s just another sister
Darting into
The picture
In between the flicker I have seen
A light
Terrible like a king
Some are lost behind each time the portal closes
Some are left to sing
Life On The Fly
Something blew yet I didn’t feel it
The sky was wrong and I lost my way
Longing for a different day
Life on the fly
Well yeah that’s the life here
You walk around looking at corn-cobs
Toking from your bag of sci-fi beer
While the marketeers vie
Life on the fly
I plan on doing nothing with premeditation
When I get to Hollywood
Set me on the destination
Make it good
The shit was strong and I didn’t need it
You just get high and then you wanna come down
Heave a little each time your feet touch the ground
Life on the fly
And so why return here?
Looking around for my man with the mellow eye
Even though he don’t make ya hungry anymore
When your fly is burning out
And your burn has flown
I plan on doing nothing with premeditation
When I get to Hollywood
Set me on the destination
Make it good
See no future retain no past
Say my friend how can you ever last?
Hanging on like a two and half inch cigarette ash
No laugh no cry
Cause that’s the way of life here
You check around you may realize
There’s some picture you been carrying in your mind
But the memory no longer seems
One of a kind
And where it’s from is not clear
Did the image come off of a movie screen?
Or is it from your own life history?
Just one of hundreds that each day pass sight unseen
Into the compound eye
I plan on doing nothing with premeditation
When I get to Hollywood
Set me on the destination
Make it good
In the vicinity
Your friend is a killer
Papa broke
Took a poke
But will he make it to the show on time?
Just let go that last thin dime
In the vicinity
Just let your hair grow
In the vicinity
Where you could pull the trigger
Papa lie
No telling why
Still you take your hand away another time
Scale that fence outside his swimming pool
In the vicinity
Await the cool sunrise
Baby spit up softly
I learned the ghost again
Burning up and down the coast
And no hope for a friend
I’m not close but… (In the vicinity)
I think I will see you
Not close but… (In the vicinity)
Sometime I see you
In the vicinity
The houses are bigger
Davey sez
Press your luck
Place your bet when you don’t give a fuck the reason why
Kill the light on those rippled hills
In the vicinity
No prescription refills
Baby spit up softly
I learned the ghost again
Burning up and down the coast
And no hope for a friend
I’m not close but… (In the vicinity)
I think I will see you
Not close but… (In the vicinity)
Sometime I see you
Just about everybody in this town
S’got something going on with my clown
I said
Just about everybody in this town
S’got something going on with my clown
Jack has got him bending back
Stephanie’s got him on bended knee
By the time he check in to my shack
He roll over and he go to sleep
Just about everybody in this town
S’got something going on with my clown
But
But me
Pam got him over hooking up cable
Frank got him dusting his coffee table
By the time he stumble in to my stable
He’s unwilling and mostly unable
Sometimes you must admit that you know
The scene from the sorriest show
That you’ve ever seen
But the going is hard when you’re on your own
It’s tough just to see on
Beyond the joker come home
Cy got him wearing a dotted tie
Sue got him dressed in a crossed-out tee
By the time I spy him with my little eye
Am I gonna recognize what I see?
Just about everybody in this town
S’got something going on with my clown
I said
Just about everybody in this town
S’got something going on with my clown
But
But me
Miss Tony wrote this song
I’m singin' it
It was a different mind
At that time
That’s Miss Tony way to teach you
When you are swingin' it
Down the line
She say why don’t you sing
Ooh wa ooh wa ooh wa ooh wa oh
Now I’m doin' it
I don’t know who or what or why I sing
But Miss Tony do
Ah but Miss Tony do
Move your head out that back pocket
Into the thick of it
You pay your money
And you will see a show
In which Miss Tony will try to reach you
So that you start diggin’ it
Where you go
So then why don’t you sing
Ooh wa ooh wa ooh wa ooh wa oh
Like I am doin' it
You don’t need to know who or what or why to sing
Because Miss Tony do
Hey hey because Miss Tony do
You see Miss Tony knows
When you’re moving in the shadows
When you’re moving in the sun
Listen kids it’s
Half a dozen of another
Or six of one
So then why don’t you sing
Ooh wa ooh wa ooh wa ooh wa oh
Like I am doin' it
You don’t need to know who or what or why to sing
Because Miss Tony do
Ah because Miss Tony do
When it’s late at night
I don’t wanna do nothing
I look at your expression
In the pictures that I find
And my heart is beat
My mind is broken
I am running out of candles and
I am running out of speed
I know we made another kind of trade
That time
I don’t ask what it’s for
Driving out to the aquaduct
After the bars had closed
Back when we were young stragglers
All alone in a silent world
I go over the pictures
And wonder what’s become
You change your address
You make yourself new again
I imagine it’s another kind of trade
Inside
I don’t know what it’s for
You always like to laugh
Hell I don’t mind to watch you laughing
And when you say you’ll call, well
I can see it’s not gonna happen
I suppose you think that
It don’t mean nothing
But just to be where you are
And catch you looking back at me
It’s another kind of trade
That buys
My way through the door
My way through the door
My way through the door
I feel the flames
Licking at the door
Wind and the water flow
And the guide
This thing that sears me
When I awake
In those eyes
The world of it is starting
Over and over again
And it might not be anyone that you wanna know
It might not be anywhere have you been
Things I have wished for
But never seen tell me
How do I know them?
Ribbons of light
Dancing past my window
After the afterglow
If they ask you
Who’s that on the ridge tell them
How should I know that?
It might not be anyone that you wanna know
It might not be anywhere have you been
When my love’s high
He keeps the morning bright
So things without names
Flare in the modern way
When you write the song
How do you hear it
Before you compare it to something else?
Running down the lawn
After someone you trust
Drown out: the fire’s below?
If I could find someone
To know my mind
Even if they did tell me how could I know that?
Things I have wished for
But never seen
Do not include the face of God
It might not be anyone that you wanna know
It might not be anywhere have you been
When my love’s high
He keeps the morning bright
So things without names
Flare in the modern way
Antarctica
I gave him the gun
We was in we was in
I gave him the gun
And this was in
No place in the world that you know
Say I got a problem
Head like an oven
You see
Could take me a while to settle it
But I’ll never settle it
With you talking to me
When the last mobster is gone
We go too in an icy dawn
You can’t consider it land
And you can not call it the sea
I’m alone with what seems like your suitcase
And in your suitcase
Is a hand
For me
When the last mobster is gone
We go too in an icy dawn
Where the first flat starts to crack
We step out we don’t get back
A deserted complex of townhomes built high in the air
Remembering you and your family there
The plummeting view down the cliffside stair
To a swimming pool that opens to the ocean below
This was no place in the world that you know
Say I got a problem
Head like an oven
You see
Could take me a while to settle it
And until I settle it
Won’t you leave me hung on the tree
When the last mobster is gone
We go too in an icy dawn
Where the first flat starts to crack
We step out we don’t get back
Antarctica
I gave him the gun
We was in we was in
I gave him the gun
And this was in...
Antarctica
I gave him the gun
We was in we was in
I gave it to him
And this was in
No place in the world that you know
If I was the next one bombed
Could you uh could you keep me on?
Would you lock the door to my place?
Could you keep a straight face on?
And tell me to run along
And tell me to go
I seen you before on a hell-bent streak
I know you don’t hear me when I try to speak
I try to reason I try to make sense
For we will surely not be here again
The choice is yours only when
The choice is
Yours for today
Yours only because
It’s for today
You take the mind of many place
Under your wing
Doing the things that I love
Will you return at the end of the day
The things that you stole?
I never know
I can only hold you above
Azita Youssefi: Piano, Electric Piano, Keyboards and Vocal,
Guitar on 9
John McEntire: Drums and Percussion
Matt Lux: Electric Bass Guitar
Jeff Parker: Guitar on 1,2,3,5
Rob Mazurek: Cornet on 4,5,7
Aram Shelton: Alto Sax, Clarinet on 8
Engineered by John McEntire at Soma Electronic Music Studios,
Chicago
Assistant Engineer: Tim Iseler
Mastering: John Golden
Cover Painting: Dmitry Samarov
Cover Photo: Suzy Poling/Selina Trepp
