albums that i like a lot
The Residents’ “Gingerbread Man”, 1995
track seven: The Aging Musician
(Narcissus knows no one naked)
run, run, run, run, run, run, run, run
run, run, fast as you can,
run, run, fast as you can
run, run, fast as you can,
you can’t catch me, i’m the gingerbread man
once upon a time i played electric guitar
& they said i was a rock & roll star
now nobody calls me on the telephone
so i sit & watch my tv all alone
maybe if i put a bullet in my brain
they’d remember me like Kurt Cobain
& the parasites on mtv
would wipe their eyes & act like they knew me
but i wouldn’t be a hero, i’d be dead
just a note beside a corpse that read
“if you like to pretend that you’ll never get old
you got what it takes to rock & roll”
Jagger, he was a poet! none of this “three chords & a hairdresser” crap. i just need a couple of players, with a couple of really good players, i could have a band again, go back on the road … (c’mere, boy!) play real music, none of this computer crap. real music! we could go- we could go big! whatever happened to music? now it’s all about marketing & media coverage, goddamn mtv! everything was okay before mtv! & gun control, like gun control’s gonna stop anything! a trooper mk iii’ll stop just about anything! (c'mere, boy! schnauzer, where’s uzi? is he outside?) nothing’s right anymore, not even tv! Davy Crockett said it all when i was a kid, “if you’re sure you’re right, then go ahead on”. now, nothing’s right … goddamn mtv!
once he winked, & the women would swoon. once he lived in limos & watched the world through the darkest of glasses. once he played & sang for millions around the world
now his primary relationship is with a pair of fox terriers. now he collects guns instead of royalties. now he watches tv constantly & still laughs at the old cartoons & sitcoms that formed the bulk of his obsolete & sadly naive values
the aging musician feels betrayed by a culture that once embraced but no longer needs his simplistic songs praising the virtues & failures of true love. & if he could still evoke even a false belief in those songs, maybe he could still make it on the nostalgia circuit
but it’s so much easier to be bitter
