Monday Song Lyric - late

Well, its about 96 hours late.

Get over it. Thats Rock and Roll for you. It doesn't matter what you do, as long as you eventually show up. Be loud. Be outrageous. Be drunk. Be Bad. Just show up and don't bore the audience.

I've always thought too many rockers take themselves way to seriously, like Sting and his enviro loon politics. Sure the guy is a great musician (seeing him perform at Royal Albert Hall is still one of the concert highlights of my life - though it pales in comparison to Clapton's performance a couple of weeks earlier) but he should be angrier. His recent songs have left a lot to be desired because they are about weird left wing political dilusions and not sex (especially the tantric kind) drugs or rock and roll.

Sting of course, isn't the only washed up old rocker who see's himself as a modern day left wing Trotskyite. Peter Garrett, the Bull Shannon like lead singer of 80s Australian rock band Midnight Oil also fancies himself something of a revolutionary, seeking out a seat in the Australian Parliament, as Juan Non Volokh discussed in this weeks version of the Sunday Song Lyric (the original and still the best).

Thankfully though, rock stars with no greater ambition than to just rock out still exist. Take for instance the members of Velvet Revolver. Consisting of the talent from the original Guns N Roses (guitarist Slash, bassist Duff McKagan and drummer Matt Sorum) and the top candidate to replace Keith Richards as most surprising rock star to still be alive, Stone Temple Pilots singer Scott Weiland


As Rolling Stone said in its 4 star review of their long awaited debut album Contaband(which returned Rock and Roll to the Top of the Billboard Charts)

Contraband is, in fact, tighter and hotter in construction and attack than we had any right to expect from a band that started out auditioning vocalists while being filmed for a VH1 reality show. Weiland and the emeritus Gunners are not shy about flashing pedigree: "Sucker Train Blues" opens the album with zooming-underwater bass, pneumatic gallop and flying chunks of superfuzz guitar -- Appetite for Destruction in miniature -- while Weiland pulls out his police-bullhorn-style bark from STP's "Sex Type Thing." But the chorus harmonies are closer to dirty Def Leppard, and Weiland's searing, monotonic chant - more evil monk than howling wolf - takes you right to the center of his very public hell: "Brain and body melting while there's roaches multiplying/It's the alien infection, it's the coming of Christ." For a guy routinely lampooned as a walking rehab failure, Weiland nails the sweet selfish oblivion and dumb-ass self-destruction of addiction with explosive clarity and no jive excuses.

Slither, the lead single may be the top song in the nation right now, but Sucker Train Blues rocks as hard and straightforward as any song released since 1987's Appetite For Destruction changed American music.

Sucker Train Blues
Lyrics by Scott Weiland
Music by Velvet Revolver

Hands are shakin got your finger on the trigger
Jesus ain't complainin gonna figure it out
Somebody raped my tapeworm abortion
Come on motherfuckers and deliver the cow

Brain and body melting while there's roaches multiplying
It's the alien infection it's the coming of Christ
All these sentimental halos and these consequential angels
When I'm runnin with the devil don't deliver the fight

Don't look at me now
Fell too fast your wings won't hold
Don't look at me now
Fell too fast your wings won't hold

Yeah and when I want to
Yeah I will find you
Yeah and when I want to
Yeah I will blind you

Brains are frying while the kings and queens are dying
Satan won the race and the miracle mile
Somebody raped my tapeworm abortion
Come on mothertuckers and deliver the cow
It's all over me now
Let me go, let me go, let me go
What's come over me now
Let me go, let me go, let me go
It's all over me now
Let me go, let me go, let me go
What's come over me now

Johnny sat down beside the old oak tree
Cut off his hand what did he see
All of the animals are dead
The rats have crawled through his house and out through their head
One of them ate a hole in the sky
To believe this would be a fate worse than dying

Since I missed last weeks Monday Song Lyric as well, here is a second cut off Contraband. Headspace sounds like vintage mid 90s STP with an overcharged rythym section. Its all about mental free will, and for that deserves a place in any libertarians musical collection.

Headspace
Lyrics by Scott Weiland
Music by Velvet Revolver

Me
I'm a man
Who is trudging
Best I can
Through a minefield
Built to blast
Can I make it
Will I last

Free my mind, levitate
Don't let any of those fuckers in my headspace

Please
Let me be
No more questions
No more needs
You're the cancer
You're the leech
Sent to bleed me
Of disease

Free my mind, levitate
Don't let any of those fuckers in my headspace
Let me go my own way
Burn the rest of them that try to keep me enchained

Living taking chances
Isn't all that it's meant to be
Dying with your face on
A t-shirt isn't all that original

Me
I'm the man
Will I make it
Will I last