Daily Goat #059 - Green Olives (Unreleased, 1994 live @ Thalia Hall)
The little lemon blossoms
In perfect animation
And your tangerine perfume
Tasted like salvation
Green olives on the tree
Falling down on me
And you coming through the light rain
Effortlessly
And will we then arrive
At the house justly appointed
To find you in your splendor
Righteous and anointed
Green olives on the tree
Falling down on me
And you coming through the light rain
Effortlessly
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Daily Goat #058: Snow Crush Killing Song - Sweden (Live @ The Empty Bottle)
When I ask you to look at me
You look away
I ask you to tell me something nice once
You come at me with all your hot lights on display
I know you're changing
Damn you
I know you're changing
Goddamn you for that
When the snow stacked up outside
You looked around
I could see you from the window
I could see the snow coming down
I know you're changing
Damn you
I know you're changing
Goddamn you
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Daily Goat #057: Nine Black Poppies - Nine Black Poppies (Live @ Mercury)
"You know, there was a book when I was a kid, uh, by Erma Bombeck, and it was called, uh, something about life being a bowl of cherries, I think she had a punchline. But really, if this - this song had another title, it would quite obviously be 'Life Is Just a Bowl of Cherries'." - John Darnielle
When I got home I meant to give you some sweet chrysanthemum
The wind chimes were ringing all wrong
And you were standing in the doorway singing along
And I tried to rememeber how nice it had been
A long long time ago
But I couldn't remember
I honestly could not remember
And a package came for you today from the Hunan province
The postmark burning jet black in the summer sun
Someone was changing, someone was changing from the inside out
And I turned around to face you
Sweet peas in the garden, all in full bloom
And I thought I heard the traces of an old song murmuring in the room
Like a half-remembered conversation, but I let it fall away
And then I could not remember
I honestly could not remember
And a package came for you today, from the Hunan province
The postmark burning jet black in the summer sun
Someone was changing, someone was changing from the inside out
And I turned around to face you
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Daily Goat #056: We Bite - cover (Live @ The Empty Bottle)
1-2-3-4!
We walk the streets, I'm out to get you
We bite
Just a feast of gore and blood
We bite
Carnivores live for pleasure
We bite
Strike out like a wolf's endeavor
We bite
And when I get some blood, I rip your throat
Some blood, I rip your throat
I want some blood, I rip your throat
To get some blood
We bite
We bite
We bite
We bite
And when I get some blood, I rip your throat
Some blood, I rip your throat
I want some blood, I rip your throat
To get some blood
We bite
We bite
And when I get some blood, I rip your throat
Some blood, I rip your throat
I want some blood, I rip your throat
To get some blood
We bite
We bite
We bite - here we go
We bite
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Daily Goat #055: Twin Human Highway Flares - Full Force Galesburg
"This was the first love song I ever wrote for my wife, before she was my wife." - John Darnielle
You turned to me and asked me if I'd always be your boy
As we drove across the river into western Illinois
And on the railroad bridge, half a mile of solid steel
Wheels were spitting out sparks, scraping at the rails
Wind in your hair all right
Sunset spilling through the rear window
Your white t-shirt hugging your shoulders, beaded with sweat
On the day that I become so forgetful
That all of this melts away
I will burn all the calendars that counted the years down to
Such a worthless day
As we walked across the parking lot toward the motel office
We were walking with a benediction on us
Light was everywhere, the building stood against the sky
Like a monument to desperation two floors high
A mile and a half from the river
We went back to the car to get our overnight bags
Sunset spilling through your earrings all over your body
When we shut the motel room door behind us, we knew we'd hit the motherlode
On the day that I forget you, I hope my heart explodes
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Daily Goat #054: Song for Dana Plato - Songs for Peter Hughes
The three month ride sticks in your mind
As though the insides of your head were a big screen
And coming in on the evening wind
It's the unmistakable scent of Brilliantine
What kind of memory serves, what kind of world is it that
Comes headlong at you and then swerves at the last possible second
It's this one
Yeah, it's this one
And it's easy to slow down
And it's easy to slow down
And it's easy just to lie out by the blue pools
In the squinting sun and slow down
And it's easy to slow down
And in situations like these
It's sometimes useful to think of life as one long continuous evening
That never turns into night
Hey hey
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Daily Goat #053: The Diaz Brothers - Transcendental Youth (Live @ Jordan Lake)
"This song is about how it is extraordinarly important that we have mercy on the Diaz Brothers. It's called 'The Diaz Brothers.'" - John Darnielle
Cops and robbers, strictly bargain line
Spend the wet night tracking visions through the pines
Draw my arms into my hospital gown
See the sky open up and rain down
Rain down
Mercy for the Diaz brothers
Mercy for the Diaz brothers
Hear my rivals on the western wind
Hard to know who might or might not be your friend
Work by the plutonian light
Forbidden rosary prayers all night
All night
Mercy for the Diaz brothers
Mercy for the Diaz brothers
Beam of a flashlight
All night in the woods
Hunt us like dogs
And then string us up for good
Keep one step ahead of enemies
Foretell worse things than such frightful nights as these
Lead us to the beach by our hands
And bury us there in the sand
Mercy for the Diaz brothers
Mercy for the Diaz brothers
Mercy for the Diaz brothers
Mercy for the Diaz brothers
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Daily Goat #052: Distant Stations - All Hail West Texas
"The song is like a study of inaction, right, of a guy who — if you write indie songs, usually your early narrators are, they think being a stalker is a romantic thing to do. You find this, that all young indie songwriters, myself included, is, they think, 'What is a more romantic figure to cut than a guy who is obsessed with some girl and is stalking her?' Hopefully, though not always, you grow out of that. But you still are interested in these guys who are tormented by these feelings that they have. So, my stalkers don't do jack, that's their new thing, they sort of just think about it and maybe, you know, walk past a building whose name is the same as the state where his intended lives." - John Darnielle
I found an old rock in the dry dirt outside
the door of my motel room.
it was a triangle with soft rounded edges
and a split down the middle of one corner.
it was darker than English moss.
green like the soft frills of a peacock's plume.
I waited for you, but I never told you where I was.
it was you who taught me how to write these kinds of equations.
I waited on the steps for you,
and I hid in the bushes whenever a car pulled into the parking lot.
you taught me how to listen to these distant stations.
distant stations.
I saw the sky break.
I threw a rock at a crow who was playing in the mulch of some rose bushes by the motel office.
missed him by a good yard or two.
I sang old songs from nowhere.
Los Angeles.
Albuquerque.
I said a small prayer for the poor and the naked and the hungry.
and I prayed real hard for you.
I waited for you, but I never told you where I was.
it was you who taught me how to write this kind of equation.
I waited on the steps for you,
and I hid in the bushes whenever a car pulled into the parking lot.
you taught me how to listen to these distant stations.
distant stations.
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Daily Goat #051: Love Love Love - The Sunset Tree (Live @ The Fillmore)
"This is kind of like 'Cubs in Five', if it were a serious song about death." - John Darnielle
King Saul fell on his sword when it all went wrong
And Joseph's brother sold him down the river for a song
And Sonny Liston rubbed some tiger balm into his glove
Some things you do for money
And some you do for love love love
Raskolnikov felt sick and he couldn't say why
When he saw his face reflected in his victim's twinkling eye
Some things you'll do for money
Some you'll do for fun
But the things you do for love are gonna come back to you
One by one
Love, love is gonna lead you by the hand
Into a white and soundless place
Now we see things
As in a mirror dimly
Then we shall see each other
Face to face
And way out in Seattle, Young Kurt Cobain
Snuck out to the greenhouse and put a bullet in his brain
Snakes in the grass beneath our feet
Rain in the clouds above
Some moments last forever
But some flare out with
Love love love
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Daily Goat #050: See America Right - Tallahassee (Live @ The Society of Ethical Culture)
"It's a song about love, the love you feel for a person who can drink you under the fucking table. Takes its title from the Greyhound Bus Lines." - John Darnielle
I was driving up from Tampa
When the radiator burst
I was three sheets to the wind
A civilian saw me first
And then there was the cop
And then the children standing on the corner
Your love is like a cyclone in a swamp
And the weather's getting warmer
I was getting out of jail
Heading to the Greyhound
You said you'd hop on one yourself
And meet me on the way down
I was shaking way too hard to think
Dead on my feet about to drop
Went and got the case of vodka from a car
And walked the two miles to the bus stop
Got on the bus half drunk again
The driver glared at me
Met up with you in Inglis
Thumbed a ride to Cedar Key
If we never make it back to California
I want you to know I love you
But my love is like a dark cloud full of rain
That's always right there up above you
Hey!
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Daily Goat #049: Damn These Vampires - All Eternals Deck (Live @ Upstate Concert Hall)
"This is a song, um... this is a song about mirrors." - John Darnielle
Brave young cowboys
Of the near north side
Mount those bridge rails
Ride all night
Scream when captured
Arch your back
Let this whole town hear
your knuckles crack
Sapphire Trans-Am
High beams in vain
Drive wild broncos
Down the plain
Push up to the corner
Where the turbines hiss
Someday we won't remember this
Crawl 'til dawn
On my hands and knees
God damn these vampires
For what they've done to me
Tie those horses
To the post outside
And let those glass doors
Open wide
And in their surface
See two young, savage things
Barely worth remembering
Feast like pagans
Never get enough
Sleep like dead men
Wake up like dead men
And when the sun comes
Try not to hate the light
Someday we'll try to walk upright
Crawl 'til dawn
On my hands and knees
God damn these bite marks
Deep in my arteries
Crawl 'til dawn
On my hands and knees
God damn these vampires
For what they've done to me
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Daily Goat #048: Going to Utrecht - Nine Black Poppies
In the morning I looked down
Through the third story window overlooking town
Across the water somewhere, you were sleeping over there
I couldn't believe it, I couldn't believe it
Not if I saw it with my own eyes
With my own eyes
With my own eyes
With my own eyes
With my own eyes
In the morning I looked down
Through the third story window overlooking town
And I saw you, and I know you saw me too
I couldn't believe it, I couldn't believe it
Not if I saw it with my own eyes
With my own eyes
With my own eyes
With my own eyes
With my own eyes
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Daily Goat #047: Dark as a Dungeon - cover (Live @ Subterranean)
Come and listen you fellers, so young and so fine
And seek not your fortune way down in the mine
It will form as a habit and seep in your soul
'Til the stream of your blood is as black as the coal
Well, it's dark as a dungeon and damp as the dew
Where the dangers are doubled and the pleasures are few
Where the rain never falls and the sun doesn't shine
It's as dark as a dungeon way down in the mine
It's many a man I have known in my day
Who lived but to labor his whole life away
Like a fiend with his dope, or a drunkard his wine
A man must have lust for the lure of the mine
Well, it's dark as a dungeon and damp as the dew
Where the dangers are doubled and the pleasures are few
Where the rain never falls and the sun doesn't shine
It's as dark as a dungeon way down in the mine
The morning, the evening, the middle of day
They're the same to the miner who labors away
And the one who's not careful will never survive
One fall of the slate and you're buried alive
Well, it's dark as a dungeon and damp as the dew
Where the dangers are doubled and the pleasures are few
Where the rain never falls and the sun doesn't shine
It's as dark as a dungeon way down in the mine
I hope when I die and the ages will roll
My body will blacken and turn into coal
Then I'll look from the door of my heavenly home
And pity the miner that's digging my bones
Well, it's dark as a dungeon and damp as the dew
Where the dangers are doubled and the pleasures are few
Where the rain never falls and the sun doesn't shine
It's as dark as a dungeon way down in the mine
It's as dark as a dungeon way down in the mine
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Daily Goat #046: Sail On (cover) - Transmissions to Horace
Sail on down the road
'Bout a half a mile or so
Well I tried to make you stay
But now you're going
It was plain to see
That a small town boy like me
Just wasn't your cup of tea
That was wishful thinking
I gave you my heart and I tried to make you happy
You gave me nothing in return
You know it ain't so hard to say
"Would you please just go away"
You come to comfort me
But I don't need your sympathy
And the way you look at me
Well it's condescending
I feel my stomach churn
And didn't you ever learn
Not to tell somebody something if you don't mean it
I gave you my heart and I tried to make you happy
You gave me nothing in return
You know it ain't so hard to say
"Would you please just go away"
Sail on
Sail on
Sail on
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Daily Goat #045: Ghosts - Hail and Farewell, Gothenburg (Live @ Covent Garden Rough Trade 03-23-1996)
I went down the road today
Just in the old way
And a black dog hobbled past me
His tags jangled on his collar
It made me wish I was dead
It made me wish I was dead
And a familiar sun on me
Just like it would always be
Rocky soil, dry land
I knew it all like the back of my hand
It made me wish I was dead
It made me wish I was dead
Terrific view from here
Sky's clear
Sun's high
I let things lie
And I know what is and isn't mine
And it was good to get back to the sunshine
But five years is a long time
And I spent five years in Sweden dying for you
I spent five years in Sweden dying for you
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Daily Goat #044: New Star Song - Beautiful Rat Sunset
"It's actually based on genuine experience, except for the 'you' being addressed in the song -- there was no 'you', right. But I really did spend, uh, a good fourteen hours up in, uh, far northern California and, uh, this is about that afternoon where I watched all four movies at a four-plex, and none of them were any good." - John Darnielle
I hung pictures of you from every lamp post in town
As the humidity climbed into numbers I don't care to repeat
The air was heavy and the sky was alive
And the Pacific Starlight train wasn't due in 'til 11:45
I thought about how cold you must be
I thought about things I thought that I'd soon be forgetting
I thought of you up in Canada as the lightning storms lit up
All downtown Redding
There were teenagers in mini-trucks coming around every corner
You could taste the adrenaline coming out through their skin
I came to the well-lit doorway of a sheet music store
I saw my face in the glass, sat down in the doorway and I settled in
I thought about how cold you must be
I thought about things I thought that I'd soon be forgetting
I thought of you up in Canada as the lightning storms lit up
All downtown Redding
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