Those Oldies But Goodies-Folk Branch-Bob Dylan’s “Desolation Row”-In The Summer Of Love

Click on the headline to link to a YouTube film clip of Bob Dylan performing Desolation Row.Desolation Row Lyrics

Bob Dylan

They're selling postcards of the hanging
They're painting the passports brown
The beauty parlor is filled with sailors
The circus is in town
Here comes the blind commissioner
They've got him in a trance
One hand is tied to the tight-rope walker
The other is in his pants
And the riot squad they're restless
They need somewhere to go
As Lady and I look out tonight
From Desolation Row.

Cinderella, she seems so easy
"It takes one to know one," she smiles
And puts her hands in her back pockets
Bette Davis style
And in comes Romeo, he's moaning
"You belong to Me I Believe"
And someone says, "You're in the wrong place, my friend
You better leave"
And the only sound that's left
After the ambulances go
Is Cinderella sweeping up
On Desolation Row.

Now the moon is almost hidden
The stars are beginning to hide
The fortunetelling lady
Has even taken all her things inside
All except for Cain and Abel
And the hunchback of Notre Dame
Everybody is making love
Or else expecting rain
And the Good Samaritan, he's dressing
He's getting ready for the show
He's going to the carnival tonight
On Desolation Row.
Now Ophelia, she's 'neath the window
For her I feel so afraid
On her twenty-second birthday
She already is an old maid
To her, death is quite romantic
She wears an iron vest
Her profession's her religion
Her sin is her lifelessness
And though her eyes are fixed upon
Noah's great rainbow
She spends her time peeking
Into Desolation Row.

Einstein, disguised as Robin Hood
With his memories in a trunk
Passed this way an hour ago
With his friend, a jealous monk
He looked so immaculately frightful
As he bummed a cigarette
Then he went off sniffing drainpipes
And reciting the alphabet
You would not think to look at him
But he was famous long ago
For playing the electric violin
On Desolation Row.

Dr. Filth, he keeps his world
Inside of a leather cup
But all his sexless patients
They're trying to blow it up
Now his nurse, some local loser
She's in charge of the cyanide hole
And she also keeps the cards that read
"Have Mercy on His Soul"
They all play on penny whistles
You can hear them blow
If you lean your head out far enough
From Desolation Row.
Across the street they've nailed the curtains
They're getting ready for the feast
The Phantom of the Opera
In a perfect image of a priest
They're spoonfeeding Casanova
To get him to feel more assured
Then they'll kill him with self-confidence
After poisoning him with words
And the Phantom's shouting to skinny girls
"Get outa here if you don't know"
Casanova is just being punished for going
To Desolation Row.

At midnight all the agents
And the superhuman crew
Come out and round up everyone
That knows more than they do
Then they bring them to the factory
Where the heart-attack machine
Is strapped across their shoulders
And then the kerosene
Is brought down from the castles
By insurance men who go
Check to see that nobody is escaping
To Desolation Row.

Praise be to Nero's Neptune
The Titanic sails at dawn
Everybody's shouting
"Which side are you on ?"
And Ezra Pound and T. S. Eliot
Fighting in the captain's tower
While calypso singers laugh at them
And fishermen hold flowers
Between the windows of the sea
Where lovely mermaids flow
And nobody has to think too much
About Desolation Row.
Yes, I received your letter yesterday
About the time the door knob broke
When you asked me how I was doing
Was that some kind of joke ?
All these people that you mention
Yes, I know them, they're quite lame
I had to rearrange their faces
And give them all another name
Right now I can't read too good
Dont send me no more letters no
Not unless you mail them
From Desolation Row.
********

This is the way it started with Gypsy Love and me. “Hey Mister, do you want to buy some flowers for your girlfriend?” And just then, girlfriend-less, I started to say no but something, something from deep inside me, or maybe her, made me said this, “Sure, but since I don’t have a girlfriend why don’t you just keep them and wear them in your hair.” Something about that sentiment struck a cord in her so we continued to talk, talk a lot for the next several minutes even though many people, many customer people were walking by this moonless night, this moonless Boylston Street 1966 Friday summer night. And that is the way it started, I swear.

Of course Gypsy Love was just the pet name that I gave her a little later, and it is better for all concerned that we just leave it like that, although not for any particular privacy, things better left unsaid, or let sleeping dogs lie reason, it wasn’t like that with us in our time, the time of our time, other than Gypsy Love says more about her, about me, and about what happened to us in those last year days that I want to tell you about than her real name. Naturally, naturally unless you might want to think otherwise, she was no more of a gypsy than I am. Long, flowing blonde hair, fair almost alabaster white skin, flashing blue eyes, bedroom eyes we called them around my old neighborhood, in my old high school days corner boy-sizing up the girls days a few years back, kind of thin, kind of hadn’t had a good meal in a while thin, and wearing no make-up, as is the fashion these days is not my picture, and I am sure not yours either, of a dark-skinned, dark-haired, dancing-eyed gypsy girl with a rose in her teeth doing the tarantella, or something like that.

No, the gypsy part came in because of the flowers. Now, right this 1967 minute, you cannot go down any city street, any decent-sized city street on a Friday night, a boy and girl-filled Friday night, and not have some enterprising real-live gypsy girl, maybe twelve or twenty who knows, trying to sell you some woe-begotten, faded, wilted, or worst, plastic, christ, plastic rose, singular rose, by the way, for your girlfriend. All the while cheapskate embarrassing you when you sheepishly bluster out "no thanks." Or directing you, no steering you, to some Madame LaRue ancient gypsy-mother in the window fortune-telling lady. An ancient gypsy mother woman who will, for small, very small, change, and knowing whom to pitch her spiel to, start running life’s wheel of fortune. But wouldn’t the lady also like to know love’s fortune for an extra thin coin at you. And then, always, always looking into her crystal ball, or the cards, T.S. Eliot’s dread tarot cards, and, whee, thankfully predict love’s delights. And that is the long and short of it for the gypsy part. The love part is self-explanatory or should be, and if it is not you will catch the drift as I go along.

And, let’s say in 1962 or 1963, on some other moonless Boylston Street night, some high school moonless night looking for one of the latest, cheap date, coffeehouses that dotted the street and were the rage those few years back that real gypsy girl would have been left to ply her trade, her rose-pedaling trade (maybe an older sister might have been working some other, more adult, scheme, but in that boy and girl-filled night I was not noticing that scene since I was girl-ed up and working my charm on said girl) with no fair-haired gypsy love girl competition. But see in 1966 (or 1967 as I am writing this) all hell has broken loose in the land. There has been a jail-break among the young, among some of the more adventurous or alienated young, who have decided, and rightly so, that suburban, white picket-fence, college, then graduate school, then a respectable profession, and then, yes, then, then, then a straight line replication of dear mother and father is not in the cards. And one does not need a fortune-telling lady, ancient gypsy-mother or not, tarot cards read or not, to know that death street. So some, and Gypsy Love included herself among the some, decided that the jail-break was worth the risk, worth the risk for a little while anyway. And then see what happens.

But jail-break or not, picket-fence security or not, squaresville or edge city, you still need dough, dough to keep off the hairy, not woman friendly streets, dough to keep body and soul together, hell, dough for the yarn to start up that shawl-making business that was the direct reason that Gypsy Love was selling flowers (not suburban boy and girl in town for a weekend look at the hippies night roses, and certainly no plastic throw-aways, just cut flowers suitable for hair, and medieval garlands to prance around the Boston Common). And, like I said, obviously not getting enough business to keep her from being not enough to eat thin. Because, after all that was a summer of love, not this year’s “officially” proclaimed one, proclaimed from this shore to San Francisco and every unattached (and maybe some attached, who knows), fair-haired former alabaster white-skinned fairy princess is also selling flowers, or something, to keep the wolves from the door.

So, naturally, once I knew the score, that talking several minutes that I held Gypsy Love up (although, as it turned out, she was more than happy to be talking rather than selling flowers) made me feel guilty and I offered to spring for a little dinner for her. Either out of hunger, or some spark between us that she also felt, she said yes, an empathic yes, or at least that is how I am going to tell it. So, "old pro" Boylston Street denizen that I had become we went into the Olive, a cheap coffeehouse that also served light meals, light meals in the dark so I hoped. So we ate some supper, not too badly served that night, a not drunk chef must have been on duty, and then left satisfied. And headed for her garret over on Commonwealth Avenue.

Yes, it was certainly a garret no question. And I have been in such places before that, no problem, I am, if anything, no snob when it comes to living quarters . What I didn’t expect, didn’t expect when she invited me over was that she shared the place with about six others, boys and girls alike, some paired, some not. And that was also okay, or rather it turned out okay, because among the denizens of that place was a guy, no, a gallant, who knowing that he could not compete with the Gypsy Love flower-sellers of the Boston night sold dope instead. And good stuff too, primo Acapulco Gold and Columbia Red that he got from some Spanish girl, no that is not right, some Mexican girl, some sunflower sunshine Juanita girl connection that he had made over in Cambridge Common where he hung out during the day.

So that night, that moonless Commonwealth Avenue garret summer night, Gypsy Love and I got “high,” 1966 (or 1967) high, not old-time alcohol-induced twenty college generations before Saturday night fraternity row beer-kegged, not old-time alcohol-induced whiskey, whiskey with a beer chaser like my father and his working class cronies over at some local Dublin Pub, not rye whiskey with a water chaser like I used to like to drink and still do when there is no sweet weed, sweet tea as I like to nickname call it, not scotch neat, martini dry, manhattan on the rocks Mayfair swells high like the squares out there with the picket fences not oblivion, forget, remember to forget, raging against the day, against the night high, but mellow, insightful high. And this stuff was so strong, so laced with whatever chemist’s knowledge-laced, and with whatever nutrient rich volcanic ash grown side of some desolate latin mountain that we really couldn’t sleep. Maybe Gypsy Love couldn’t sleep because, like I noticed when I first started talking to her, she was so thin and the good non-drunken chef food earlier and then this laced-primo dope kept her up, and I because she was Gypsy Love and I was too busy drinking her in for the first time to waste time on sleep.

So we “split” (left the premises, or went out, for the squares, okay) the scene at the walk-up garret with it menagerie of humanity, also all laced- high as far as I could tell as we closed the door behind us, around two o’clock in the morning to “goof” on (not make fun of, not serious, hurtful make fun of anyway, but more like let’s let the dope take its course, observe the late hour night life, again for the squares, and again okay, okay) the Boylston Street scene. Strangely, most of my late, late night, improper Boston late night scene, really wasn’t spent in Boston, but rather in Cambridge, in Harvard Square, specifically since about 1962 at the all-night Hayes –Bickford right up from the subway station, kind of a budding literary hang-out place but in any case a long way refuge from bad high school home scenes, and later to soak in the night life, and catch a few ideas, if only by osmosis. All for the price of a refillable watery dregs cup of coffee and maybe a soggy Danish or stale three o’clock in the morning yesterday muffin.

But this Boylston Street scene was something else, 1966 something else. Something at once more alive, more viscerally alive than the, when you really thought about it, staid and now well-worn late night Bickford literary scene with its ritual low important conversation hum, its frantic writerliness, and its slow drum tattoo beat to define “cool.” And, at the same time more destructive, not Vietnam War nightly television waste destructive that the mad daddies in D.C. had already cornered the market on, and were not letting go of despite many anguished cries, but more the sense that this was the last chance for happiness, or sanity, or some such thing and we had better grab it now before it blows away with the winds, or we get tired of riding it and go back to the cocoons. A madness scene, and let’s leave it at that, leave it at that until the dope wears off.

Sure, the jugglers, juggling all improbable combinations of materials from bowling pins to ninja sticks, and clowns, Charley Chaplin tramp clowns, claribel clowns, Disneyland clowns, squirting, spraying, belching, bellowing, bestriding bicycles, bouncing balls and baby cars, and whatever seven other things clowns do, were out in force. No hip town, no college night town from east to west, from Cambridge to Berkeley, Ann Arbor in between, no cultural oasis town from the Village to Venice Beach, Austin in between, America or Europe, continental Europe Paris the hub, London in between was “hip,” (not squares for the squares, got it) without a plethora of those brethren.

Or the one-trick pony Monte guys sitting at little tables or on benches “organizing” a game, cards, walnut shells, peas-in-a pod a specialty, acrobats, maybe some circus castoffs or Olympic failure cases, bouncing off each other, sparkling uniforms making an arc to off-set the trickiness of the action, and maybe in a couple of years Vegas in the big tent, into the dead air night. And anyone else with any talent, any mimic money, spare-change, put the dough in the hat right in front of you, please, talent to keep the wolves away from the door.

And sure a zillion guitar players, and some nights in Harvard Square a few years back that might have been a low-ball estimate, now electric, electrified in the post-Dylan night, and diehard acoustics, trads, trying to maintain but losing the battle in the sound night and have the empty hats to prove it. Plugged in or on the edge though, singing, crooning, bleeping, basheeing, bahai-ing, rama-ing, hari-ing, and just plain old-fashioned vanilla screaming, along with tambourines, kazoos, wash tubs, triangles, oboes, hautboy, water glasses of various sizes, anything that could, or would, or should, make music, enough music to keep those ravenous wolves away from that damn door.

And guys and gals, angel love guys and gals, hop-headed or harmless, bejeweled or buckskinned, selling every kind of dope from every arm, reaching into every pocket for a pill here, some tea leaves there, more rare, an eight ball of this, and rarer still then although now I hear about it more, maybe a girl-boy combination for a permanent float. And every kind of kid (mainly), some college preppie out on the Boylston Street night, maybe tired, too tired from that fraternity beer-keg and some lame three hundred freshman in a telephone booth, or a Volkswagen joke, some suburban high school break-out kid looking to forget the corner boy action, or the last dance, last high school dance failure, and didn’t want to go home, some car-full of girls (always a car-full, never less) from a different suburb, looking, well, looking for those “hippie” guys that look kind of cute now, now that mother and father don’t approve of hippie guys, and streams of boys and girls in all colors and shades and all uniforms just getting in from the long bus ride from Bangor, or Montpelier and intent, serious intent , on breaking out of that hayseed world, buying those fifty-seven flavors and smoking, dropping, or swallowing it right here on the premises, the street premises and wilding out (going crazy with joy, ecstasy, fear, freak-out) before hard dawn hits the streets

But also every hipster, dipster, grifter, drifter and midnight sifter who had enough sense to catch sleep during the day and come out at night and do his or her rube-taking madness. Some badass madness, some not from the suburbs, not now anyway, madness, police-worthy madness. The clash between the dope-infested madness and the lumpen-greed head madness, the known world’s madness in new form, would define that last summer, for good or evil. But right then for good, for the good Mexican night dope that was just beginning to wear off and let sleep take its course. And then dawn came, or just that few minutes before dawn, when heavy, lumpish human outline figures start to take distinctive shape, Gypsy Love and I could look over on Boston Common hill and see the outline forms of hundreds of sleeping bags, tent city resident pup-tent, oddly Army surplus, homemade lean-too dwellers, park bench newspaper-pillowed sleepers, whatever, sheltering the summer of love refugees against that moonless night. And just at that pre-dawn moment I knew that Gypsy Love and I were solid for that moment, and for some other moments, and for a while too but that when the colds came, when the skies turned granite grey in revenge, when the yellowish, brownish, orange-ish leaves started falling we would have had our moment.

In The Heat Of the Be-Bop 1960s Rock Night- Ya, We Were All Exiles On Main Street- “The Rolling Stones: Stones In Exile- A DVD Review

Click on the headline to link to a YouTube film clip of Howlin' Wolf performing Willie Dixon's classic Little Red Rooster. I am sure that Mick and the boys will gladly take a back seat to Howlin' Wolf on this one.

DVD Review

Rolling Stones: Stones In Exile, The Rolling Stones, directed by Stephen Kijak, 2010

In the old days, the old high school days when such things mattered, my best friend at North Adamsville High School (we actually went back to old North Adamsville Middle School days together), Frankie, Francis Xavier Riley to give his full moniker, spent endless hours arguing over the merits of The Beatles vs. The Rolling Stones as the primo rock band of the times. The times being the early 1960s, the time of the edge, just the wee edge of the beginning of the uprisings associated with our generation, the generation of ’68.

I will get into the specifics of that Frankie controversy a little later but for the purposes of this review of a film documentary about the making of the Stones’ 1972 album, Exile on Main Street, the real controversy is over whether this album was their best ever or not. At that point Frankie and I had lost contact so that I will just give as my opinion that for pure blues-ness, pure Stones’ foundational blue-ness, for country rooted-ness, and for musicianship it is hard to argue that any other Stones' album was better. And that opinion, now with the benefit of the documentary footage and current interviews with many of the personalities from Mick Jagger and Keith Richards to the sidemen, hangers-on, gofers, and their manager during this period, Marshall Chess (son of the legendary blues label founder, Leonard Chess), about how it was produced, and what it all meant, still holds up.

I noted in the headline that in the 1960s we, at least those of us who were politically alienated from mainstream Western social norms or at wits end for some other more personal reasons, were all exiles on Main Street. Main Street being a convenient term of art for all that was square, not cool, up-tight, piggish, and a thousand other words we used to separate our youth culture out from the ticky-tack little white house with the picket fence dream that passed for social reality then (and, unfortunately, now, well kind of now). For the Stones this notion of exile, self-imposed exile, not glad-tiding self-imposed exile to hear the lads tell it, had another element. They had to flee England in order to escape from some terrible tax burdens that had accumulated and for which they did not have control over solving (or money to pay). So off to the south of France they go, to live and to produce the new album and in order to get some dough.

Of course, with such well-known edge city crazies as Mick and Keith this was not going to be a Sunday in the park. Along the way they picked up musicians, groupies, hangers-on, bag men, bad guys, dope dealers and everyone with a little cache who could get to France and be around the scene. And that scene included, surprise, surprise, dope of every kind- from pills to smack (heroin, then, as now, not a “cool” drug staple), booze by the buckets full, women, sex, and everything else under the sun. Let’s leave it that the scene was the epitome of the slogan “drug, sex and rock and roll” and along with the expression “live fast, die young and make a good corpse” will get you the flavor of what went on just about right. Oh ya, in case you forgot, it also included an incredible amount of work by Mick and Keith writing material, all members playing riffs until arms got sore, throats died and fingers began to bleed. Not a recipe that your mothers would suggest for making successful careers, of any kind. But just the right recipe to unleash the rock energy built up in one of the great rock bands that every exited, then and AARP and old age home-worthy now.

Take an hour out and look at some serious rock history. Then go up in the attic and dust off the album, or check it out in your CD collection, or download it to your iPOD, or Google it on YouTube but listen to it. Especially the blues-ish stuff like Tumblin' Dice (that will get even grandpa out of his rocking chair); Sweet Virginia; Sweet Black Angel; and the rootsy (Robert Johnson rootsy) Stop Breaking Down.

Now back to serious Frankie business. The Frankie business of figuring out the real places of The Stones and The Beatles in the rock pantheon, for eternity. Back on those hot, steamy, endless summer nights standing (or sitting on the curb) beneath those North Adamsville street lights when that question mattered, mattered as a "universal one" question. I am not sure exactly when I first hear a Stones song, although it was probably Satisfaction, and it was probably up in Frankie’s cluttered bedroom, a place that served as a refuge from my own storm-tossed house what with my mother’s tirades against, well, against anything that I might do, or might think of doing. You know that song, or have heard about it.

However, what really hooked me on The Stones was when they covered the old Willie Dixon blues classic, Little Red Rooster. If you will recall that song was banned, at first, from the radio stations of Boston. Later, I think, and someone can maybe help me out on this, WMEX broke the ban and played it. And no, the song was not about the doings of our barnyard friends. But beyond the implicit sexual theme was the fact that it was banned that made me, and perhaps you, if you are from the generation of ’68, want to hear it at any cost. That says as much about my personality then, and now, as any long-winded statement I could make. And that is what also set Frankie and me apart on this question.

See, Frankie was from no where on the blues. And I mean no where. Although Frankie reigned supreme as the king hell king of our corner boy high school scene (headquartered at the local pizza parlor, Salducci’s, owned by a mad-hatter of a zen pizza-maker, Tonio, who loved Frankie practically like a son for some reason never explained, at least that I could figure out) and was cool in many things, he was pretty square in his music tastes. He never got over Elvis, really, and followed his ever depressing descend into Blue Hawaii-dom (or worst) avidly, and Frankie really believed that Roy Orbison was a demon (there is a story behind that belief which involved the machinations of his girlfriend, Joanne, which need not detain us here). Carl Perkins was another idol, and I need not speak of the fact that he almost cried when they started picking on Jerry Lee Lewis just because he married his cousin, or something. Thus far though we were not that far apart.

But get this. He, king of the be-bop night, no question, a guy whom I talked about universal things to and got a thoughtful talking back to on, took it in strife when guys like Fabian, Booby (oops) Bobby Vee, Conway Twitty (be serious), Bobby Darin, the Everly Brothers, and Rick Nelson, jesus, Rick Nelson led the musical counter-revolution in the late 1950s and early 1960s. Music that made me, on certain days, abandon the transistor radio that was central to my home life peace. (Ya, that Ma thing mentioned previously). So when The Beatles turned up he was kind of nonplussed by them, and I swear he actually said this one night and I will quote his words exactly just in case there are any legal ramifications over it- “They did a nice cover of Twist and Shout”-jesus christ. Even I saw them as a breathe of fresh air then.

Now you get the idea of the musical gap that developed between us. That hearing of Little Red Rooster, moreover, began my long love affair with the blues, although somewhere deep in my psyche, my projects boy psyche, I had that beat in my head way before I could name it. I swear I grabbed every Muddy Waters, Joe Turner, Ike Turner, John Lee Hooker album that I could get my hands on. And then branched out to such esoteric stuff as the work of blues pioneers like Son House, Robert Johnson, and Bukka White (he did Panama Limited and Aberdeen Mississippi Woman on the sweat-dripping National Steel guitar and flipped me out, and still flips me out. Google those on YouTube) and other early country blues boys. Some of this also got mixed in at the time with my budding interest in the folk music scene, the folk protest music scene. And that is probably why, although the blues, particularly the Chicago blues, also influenced The Beatles, it is The Stones that I favor. Their cover on Rooster still holds up, by the way. Not as good, as I found out later, as the legendary Howlin' Wolf's version but good.

I have also thought about the Stones influence more recently as I have thought about the long ago past of my youth. Compare some works like John Lennon's earnest, plaintive Working Class Hero and The Stones' agitated Street Fighting Man (yes, I know these are later works, later than the be-bop corner boy schoolboy night, but they serve to make my point here) and I believe that something in the way The Stones from early on presented that angry, defiant sound appealed to my sense of working class alienation. Let’s leave it as they “spoke” to me and The Beatles didn’t. Frankie, always caught up with some twist (although mainly the Joanne mentioned above) moved to less defiant sounds. But he was the king hell king corner boy, and bailed me out of tough situations, tough girl situations and some other semi-legal things, more times than not so he draws a pass on his vanilla tastes here. Thanks, Frankie.

Note: If we were really thinking about comparisons between rock groups the better one is actually not The Beatles vs. The Stones but Stones vs. The Doors. On any given night in the late 1960s when Jim Morrison dug deeply into his psyche and bared his shamanistic soul (and dug, dug deeply, into his medicine bag as well) The Doors were the best rock band in the world. No question. But when you start to list the all-time classic Stones hits from Gimme Shelter to Tumblin’ Dice (like I say the one that will still get even grandpa up and about) and how they stand the test of time The Stones win hands down.


Street Fighting Man Lyrics
Artist(Band):The Rolling Stones
(M. Jagger/K. Richards)

Ev'rywhere I hear the sound of marching, charging feet, boy
'Cause summer's here and the time is right for fighting in the street, boy
But what can a poor boy do
Except to sing for a rock 'n' roll band
'Cause in sleepy London town
There's just no place for a street fighting man
No

Hey! Think the time is right for a palace revolution
'Cause where I live the game to play is compromise solution
Well, then what can a poor boy do
Except to sing for a rock 'n' roll band
'Cause in sleepy London town
There's just no place for a street fighting man
No

Hey! Said my name is called disturbance
I'll shout and scream, I'll kill the king, I'll rail at all his servants
Well, what can a poor boy do
Except to sing for a rock 'n' roll band
'Cause in sleepy London town
There's just no place for a street fighting man
No


"Working Class Hero" lyrics- John Lennon

As soon as your born they make you feel small,
By giving you no time instead of it all,
Till the pain is so big you feel nothing at all,
A working class hero is something to be,
A working class hero is something to be.
They hurt you at home and they hit you at school,
They hate you if you're clever and they despise a fool,
Till you're so fucking crazy you can't follow their rules,
A working class hero is something to be,
A working class hero is something to be.
When they've tortured and scared you for twenty odd years,
Then they expect you to pick a career,
When you can't really function you're so full of fear,
A working class hero is something to be,
A working class hero is something to be.
Keep you doped with religion and sex and TV,
And you think you're so clever and classless and free,
But you're still fucking peasents as far as I can see,
A working class hero is something to be,
A working class hero is something to be.
There's room at the top they are telling you still,
But first you must learn how to smile as you kill,
If you want to be like the folks on the hill,
A working class hero is something to be.
A working class hero is something to be.
If you want to be a hero well just follow me,
If you want to be a hero well just follow me.


The Red Rooster
Howling Wolf

I have a little red rooster, too lazy to crow for day
I have a little red rooster, too lazy to crow for day
Keep everything in the barnyard, upset in every way

Oh the dogs begin to bark,
and the hound begin to howl
Oh the dogs begin to bark, hound begin to howl
Ooh watch out strange kind people,
Cause little red rooster is on the prowl

If you see my little red rooster, please drag him home
If you see my little red rooster, please drag him home
There ain't no peace in the barnyard,
Since the little red rooster been gone

Willie Dixon