Gravestone EP

SONGS
Nashville Radio/Death of Country Music – Jon Langford’s Hillbilly Lovechild, Rerelease on: Makin Singles – Drinking Doubles, Blodshot 100, Dec 2002
Dollar Dress (Live) – Waco Brothers
Return Of The Golden Guitarist – Mekons

LYRICS:

NASHVILLE RADIO

Drinks and pills and Nashville radio, my life will never be the same
Chills and spills from Maine to Mexico, riding on my funeral train

In every town there’s the same tribulation, in every state that I wake up in
The night before is a dim recollection of powers and bottles and sin

There’s a bored little stranger heading out the door just about half my age
Blood on the walls and glass on the floor, I don’t think I even made it on stage

Doctor, Doctor, sign my prescription, I’m in trouble again
Ever since I was a tiny little baby, I couldn’t get rid of the pain

Drinks and pills and Nashville radio, my life will never be the same
Spills and chills from Maine to Mexico, riding on my funeral train

I shake my hips but I walk like a cripple, and my body is getting too thin
I can count every one of my bones in the mirror, poking through my cold white skin

There’s a shiny star on the dressing room door, but I’ll be out in the back of my car
Cause I don’t know a soul I can trust with the money or to tune up my guitar

Drinks and pills and Nashville radio, my life will never be the same
Chills and spills from Maine to Mexico, riding on my funeral train

Doctor, Doctor, sign my prescription, I’m in trouble again
Ever since I was a tiny little baby, I couldn’t get rid of the pain

I can’t sleep without the engine humming, and the wheels rolling night and day
I can’t sleep without the Nashville radio, slipping through the chemical haze

Playing some song that I should remember , with the DJ calling my name
Play my song on the Nashville radio, my life will never be the same

Ever since I was a tiny little baby I couldn’t get to sleep at night
I’d be listening to the Nashville radio hours before daylight

They threw me off the Grand Ole Opry cause I couldn’t behave
I didn’t know how many friends I had until I was lying in a cold dark grave

I gave my life to country music, took my pills and lust
If they don’t play my songs on the radio, it feels like I never was
(feels like I never was)

Fat sweaty cop in an Alabama lock-up looked at me and laughed
Said he heard my songs on the Nashville radio, asked me for my autograph

He said, “Doctor, Doctor, sign my prescription, I’m in trouble again
Ever since I was a tiny little baby, I couldn’t get rid of the pain”

THE DEATH OF COUNTRY MUSIC
(also from Waco Brothers album COWBOYS IN FLAME)

My body is a temple
Safer than a prison
I done some demolition
And in a world gone wrong

The death of country music
Rattles round the planet
We light the flame and fan it
Deep into the night

Where the city casts its shadow
We leave the straight and narrow
Tomorrow and forever
Seems so far away

Where the dance floor’s overcrowded
The music’s getting louder
The people do some breathing
While they’re cheating death

Tonight the west is sleeping
The desert will be creeping
Inch by inch
Across the continent

And the bones of country music
Lie there in their casket
Beneath the towers of Nashville
In a deep black pool of neglect

So we cast our nets in the water
Drag the pool and caught ‘em
Grind ‘em up and snort ‘em
Deep into the night

And we spill some blood on the ashes
Of the bones of the Jones and the Cashes
Skulls in false eyelashes
Ghostriders in the sky

And the Hack bone’s connected to the Buckbone
And the George bone’s connected to the Hank bone
The Willie bone’s connected to the Billy Bones
We’re picking the flesh off the bone

The death of country music
The death of country music
The death of country music
We’re picking the flesh off the bones

DOLLAR DRESS (also on COWBOYS IN FLAME, WACO BROTHERS)

She is dancing with death in the Dollar Dress

There’s a box in an attic in a run down northern town
There’s a key on the shelf so you can look inside
There’s a song that will pick you up and spin you round
A photograph and a letter left behind

Can you prove you’re alive?
Do you know where you’re been today?
Sown into the fabric of your life
Washed and mended, worn away

She is dancing with death in the dollar dress

The hooter sounds and the whole town shakes again
A line of ghosts clock out at the factory gates
Cousins, sisters and brothers are spirited home
They fill the streets and make the traffic wait

Will the flag still fly
If the wind don’t blow today?
It’s sown into the fabric of your life
Washed and mended, worn away

THE RETURN OF THE GOLDEN GUITARIST

His grip is not frozen in one old G chord
Looking for thousands of bodies
With luck he might make it without losing his way.
The return of the golden guitarist

His eyes are as flat as an old 45
That somehow never quite charted
Out of his mouth spews vinyl and wax
The return of the golden guitarist

It’s time to come clean, to come back this way
Time to come back in the harness
You’ve stolen our lust, now he has found
The return of the golden guitarist

What gives him the right to talk that way
Pray silence, now don’t get me started
You got freedom of speech, but you got nothing to say
So welcome the golden guitarist

His eyes are as flat as an old 45
That somehow never quite charted
Out of his mouth spews vinyl and wax
The return of the golden guitarist

Posted in Discography.

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