HONKY TONKIN WITH ....
The Mekons



I CAN'T FIND MY MONEY
People say I'm happy and I like a drink or two
Suspended in the darkness I weep like a child
The Policeman smiled he was proud of his town
He knew he was the only law around
I called you on the phone a million miles away
They told me you had gone how long they couldn't say
I shut myself in a cupboard and put on your clothes

And as for you my darling there's nothing more to say
We talked ourselves to death just lie awake till daym
And in the mornin' sunshine I'll spit like a dog
And steal all your clothes while you're sleeping like a log
I sleep the sleep of faithlessness
Lying underneath your bed of nails
Listening to your cries in the silence of the night
>As your body crashes down above my happy smilin' face
Oh kind Policeman please take me to jail
My crimes arc as many as the lines on my face
The beds l've tossed and turned in
The goodbyes I have said
Stretch out like gravestones on the road ahead
I can't find my money
Oh no! I can't find my money ....

HOLE IN THE GROUND

There's a hole in the ground and it's 6 foot deep
The earth is black and the walls are steep
And the whistle keeps blowin' on the Sheffield train Breath like thunder,
Cry like rain
I wish I had the money to make one last call
They wrote your number by the clock on the wall Well they don't make a
sound
But the wheels go round in the night >Hole in the ground
Sledgehammer pounds out the light!
Raise my voice above the noise and
Tear my throat like sheets of paper
If the earth should open up
Is there really any wonder?
Do you really care anymore Johnny?
I don't know if I do dah
I woke up this mornin' to the sound of steel
There's a black van crawling up an empty street
And sweat is dripping in a tunnel so dark
With furrowed brow and blistered feet
there's a wheel off my wagon and a tolling bell
Axle dragging on the road to hell
>Been this way for so long now
I don't think I'll ever shake it
I can feel what little power
Gettin' less by every hour
I stood up above this town
and watched the rain come pouring down

KEEP ON HOPPIN
There's a bust of General Franco in the corner And the bible lies unopened
on the floor
A veteran with broken feet will counsel to the blind
As the smell of petrol floods in from the car outside the door
The old glass eye has had it's day by Christmas
>And there's talk of death in soft familiar lies
A monopoly on faded hope
Illnesses and pain
The wet behind the ears just cannot fill
the shoes that size
So keep on hoppin'
Little stunted arms and legs
Out in the big wide world
Keep hoppin'
Waiting for the day to dawn and fate to cast the die

CHARLIE CAKE PARK
Like an identification parade
Feel like death while the children grow
A young grey face in the shade of the Armley P.O.
Pushing prams or walking sticks
Getting the money from under glass
clothes don't fit too well
Down in Charlie Cake park
You can hardly walk on your heels
stagger out blind between the bikes and cars
Frozen in the headlights glare down on Suicide Road
Walking under ladders for a living
You know we should be running round the pubs and bars
We know we'll never go short
And we'll never grow tall
In a flat above the chemists
Andy and Claire are dressing to kill
But they don't come out till after dark
In Charlie Cake park
You can't avoid the broken glass -
When you're ground and weathered like a stone
leaving footprints in the mud like the words on a grave
So unlikely so mundane
Scatter breadcrumbs in the rain
With a paper bag for a mask
In Charlie Cake park
as the chronic illness brews
We know we should feel a fraud
But the whole place never moves
And nothing will change

IF THEY HANG YOU

In the early days I would say
Tell me about the girl who used to live across the way
Out on a drunk
Down in the bay
No idea you'd ever live as long as you did
She lay on your bed cold in your arms
Wishing she could be somewhere else
Maybe that same night I would say
So you're stubborn about the girls
Footsteps on the stairs late in the morning
Behind the blinds that shun the noon day light
Staring at the page burnin' midnight oil
If they hang you I'll have a few sleepless nights
At the witch-trial you would not reveal
The names of comrades that you never knew
Bad diseases
Kill or cure
always like a man who says what's on his mind

PRINCE OF DARKNESS

He is the Prince of Darkness
he holds old friends in such high esteem
he sees a red town and wants it painted black
For the Catholic girls at Halloween
Well you know he said to me "I've waited seven years
And I am a very patient man
After all those things that we've gone and done
still need someone to tell
His pleasures were a mystery to us all
You'd never see him out after dawn
In a German sea-port town
He takes coffee in the red-light
And now he is the Prince of Darkness

KIDNAPPED
There's no weapons left to fight with
On independence day
The sunshine over buildings
Steep as cliffs above the sea
The air conditioning just shut down
As we all left our rooms
For the showdown on the first floor
Down the corridor from me
There's no beer left in the bar room
Storm is blowin' in
There's no blood left in the Hospital
These men were drunk all day
The ants make trails along the walls
To carry off our skin
To the bank vaults and arsenals
The bathrooms and the bins
Bones inside my fingers arc sharp as razor blades
I'm not locked in here with you
You're locked in here with me
Feel so trapped and lonely
Nowhere left to go
We know we've been kidnapped
Now this place must Burn!
You see the rich folks riding
In flashy limousines
Ridin' through the ghetto
To the ring road shopping mall
But we'll go down to the city
Meet some people there
In the Albert and the Faversham
We'll go steppin' out

SYMPATHY FOR THE MEKONS

Here comes pride riding for a fall
Have him washed down and brought to my tent
Dust him over and bring him in
It's time we started movin'!!
He's a fly with a broken wing
He's the vomit in the corner
The empty sky looks down on us all
As we crawl back into the furnace
Woo Woo Wah ooo ooo ooo
Woo Woo oooh!
Here's to a band that deals in the facts of life
In their 10 short ugly years
I wish the Mekons good fortune
I sold them fame and riches
And good health
I like my friends
I feel unfit for them
It makes me sad they'll all be gone
I hold the sword, I hold the hammer
In the winter of the world
History has a stutter
It says w..w..w..watch out!
Here comes the devil up the stairs again
Have him plug into my personal stereo
Watch out here comes lust and here comes fever
There goes the devil riding on a nun
He's a man that deals in the facts of life
In all his 10,000,000 years
I think I backed a winner
Lust
Fever
Plague
Chief Constable back on your head now!

SPIT
Hide yourself until they're buried
Like a dog you'll forget them you're better
off that way
There's no-one to turn to
Those swingin' bodies
Are the shadows of your dreams
Roar through you like a fire
Cold grey ashes are all a fire gives
Are all a fire leaves
That's the best that he could do
A life torn in two like a rag
That ragin' beast whose breath in my nostrils
Sweeps through my brain
Let it pass
We can be sure that in the end
The dregs will taste just the same
That scarching heart I look back on that
and laugh like a drain

THE TRIMDON GRANGE EXPLOSION
Oh let's not think of tomorrow, lest we disappointed be
Our joys may turn to sorrow as we all may daily see
Today we may be strong and healthy, but soon there comes a change
As we may learn from the explosion that has been at Trimdon Grange
Men and boys left home that morning for to earn their daily bread
Never thinking that by the evening they'd be numbered with the dead
Let's think of Mrs Burnett, once had sons but now has none-
By the Trimdon Grange Explosion, Joseph, George and James are gone
February has left behind it what will never be forgot;
Weeping widows, helpless children may be found in many a Cot
Now they ask if father's lrft them, and their mother, she hangs her head
With a weeping widow's feelings, she tells the child its father's dead.
(Tommy Armstrong)

This song was written by Tommy Armstrong in the 1890s. Almost 300
Northumberland Miners were killed in the disaster. At the time this song
sold over Two Million copies of broadsheet music.

GIN PALACE

Down in the Glen there's a band of old men
Drinking their cider till dawn
Warming to fires made of ashcans and tyres
The outcasts on Liberty hill
In the Gin Palace now!
We're swaying together as one
Ill-defined features and hair stood on end
The Dandys the Fops and the Goths
Come on and get dressed baby pull on your pants
We're going to go out tonight
Through the dirty dark streets
So cold and so bleak
See the lights turn fog into gold
A community centre for the hopeless
The brains of the dispossessed
Sometimes it turns reeling into your arms
Cling together excited and laughing
Strangers flung together on a fast fun-house floor
It turned you out of your bed
The right to stew in your own juice
The freedom to freeze and die
Inside so hot so bright and so loud
The people all talking at once
Flashing dark eyes shining red lips
Beautiful glistening clothes
In the Gin Palace now!
We're swaying together as one
They've cashed in the chips on our shoulders
In the Casino economy
Place your bets