One for the Jerk

The more I read other blogs, the less I want to blog. I don't mean that in the clearly, patently offensive way it most likely sounds. It's mostly just that it's a lousy, rainy day here in lovely Charlotte, North Carolina, and the first twelve blogs I came across this morning, mainly by random chance, were either complaining that the writer never does anything fun anymore or wondering weather everyone's life begins to go sour when they enter their thirties (and I just turned 40 last week). Or it could be that mybest friend, with the best of intentions, sent me a slate of two-doxen Slate articles on why higher education is either useless of becoming useless. Slate. Where dumb assholes who can't write go to die.

But I have decided to cheer up. I baked some breadrolls, I'm gonna slice up an Asian pear (YUM!) and wash that down with some nice, cold water. In the mean time, call this a comparative study. Jerk of All Trades has spent some time posting some lyrics to his favorite power ballads, which got me thinking about a couple of my favorite lyrics. I like lyrics that are plain yet cryptic, imageric yet flat, lyrics that prove, in short, that the artist is clearly insane. Two of my most favorite are by Mark Knopfler, from the original Dire Straits album: Wild West End and Lions.

Wild West End
Stepping out to Angellucci's for my coffee beans
Checking out the movies and the magazines
Waitress she watches me crossing from the Barocco Bar
I'm getting a pickup for my steel guitarI saw you walking out
Shaftesbury Avenue
Excuse me for talking I wanna marry you
This is the seventh heaven street to me
Don't be so proud
You're just another angel in the crowd
And I'm walking in he wild west end
Walking with your wild best friend

And my conductress on the number nineteen
She was a honey
Pink toenails and hands all dirty with money
Greasy hair easy smile
Made me feel nineteen for a while
And I went down to ChinatownI
n the backroom it's a man's world
All the money go down
Duck inside the doorway gotta duck to eat
Right now feels alright now
You and me we can't beat
Walking in the wild West end
Walking with your wild best friend

And a gogo dancing girl yes I saw her
The deejay he say here's Mandy for ya
I feel alright to see her
But she's paid to do that stuff
She's dancing high I move on by
The close ups can get rough
When you're walking in the wild west end

The thing I love in particular about this lyric is that, listening to the album, it souds like Mark is singing something someone else wrote for him. Or maybe that's just me.

Lions
Red sun go down way over dirty town
Starlings are sweeping around crazy shoals
A girl is there high heeling across the square
Wind blows around in her hair and the flags upon the poles
Waiting in the crowd to cross at the light
She looks around to find a face she can like.
Church bell clinging on trying to get a crowd for Evensong
Nobody cares to depend upon the chime it plays
They're all in the station praying for trains
Cogregations late again
It's getting darker all the time these flagpole days
Drunk old soldier he gives her a fright
He's crazy lion howling for a fight.
Strap hanging gunshot sound
Doors slamming on the overground
Starlings are tough but the lions are made of stone
Her evening paper is horror torn
But there's hope later for Capricorns
Her lucky stars give her just enough to get home
Then she's reading about a swing to the right
But she's thinking about a stranger in the night
I'm thinking about the lions tonight
What happened to the lions.

See what I mean? Crazy. The man is nuts.