Loud Family - Scott Miller

Days for Days

Released: May 19, 1998 (Alias Records)

Credits:

The band: Scott Miller, Kenny Kessel, Alison Faith Levy, Gil Ray

Guest musicians: Jonathan Segel, Tim Walters

Producer: Scott Miller

Cortex the Killer

I'm out in front of awful weather,
Trying to hold together air that barely clings
My empire and any autumn
Day are getting thought of as different things

Stained clothes cleaned with agitation
Lush earth scorched with expectation

We brought compasses and felt pens,
Strong as Boris Yeltsin when he looks and sees
That in the future we'll be modern
Former lives, forgotten old world monkeys

What we've seen that's really out there
Comes sidelong while looking elsewhere

Watch these legs work, I've been looking in every doorway
I've hung out where I'm not liked
But Boston students still own early evening
Sacramento, these base feet offend your ground
I have let your people down

With any action
There's an equal faction who don't agree
With their jolly cheering sections,
Priapic erections, autonomy

Sextants swung to gauge the chances
Pace kept with wrong circumstances

All we brought home was the need to convince young children
That once, this clearly was worthwhile
And for that argument, we'd need the world
As it was then
Before our crew arrived, and it came, for us, alive

How can I say without just talking
We won't ever walk on country first or last
I'm fine to reapply the steamer
Classify the lemur, wave cyclones past

When the wind's died down completely
Is all air now where it should be?

Good, There Are No Lions In The Street

We sensed a scare, but there's no scare there
Look out and, good, there are no lions in the street
We sensed a change, but the change came strange
All things get painted the right colors when we meet
Short and sweet

Will it be all that many-splendored?
Will there be return for the sender?
Will it even love us tender?
The things we've done we've only done for a little while

To be a cowboy learn how not to be an astronaut
To be a doctor learn how not to be the president
To be the center of the universe, don't orbit things

We're super fly, so the ceiling's high
Good ventilation when smoke's coming off of me
We're super clean so there's gloss and sheen
Will it remain so when cleaning is drudgery
Grudgery

Will it be what's not alteration?
Will it save the grace of a nation?
Will it come through in translation?
The things we've done we've only done for a little while

Deee-Pression

Way Too Helpful

You have your guides to you
And they're way too helpful, way too much comes through
Leave room
To for once in your life go home, worth unproved
And the earth unmoved
Leaving on a jet bus
Sitting next to just us
Diesel updraft, gliding on
Oakland airspace, riding the ailerons

Live a day not as if it were your last
But as if at night, and that day had just passed
Big old shoeliner crashed
And all that's left of you is what your mom and dad
Understand, and lovers might
Yell in your face late at night
Which could get proved wrong in the faintest light

Maybe turned in for the pay
Maybe called to end that way
Maybe just as if to say
This strange murder is what we do all day

Mozart Sonatas

When
Mozart sonatas play
When Mozart sonatas play it's fine
When Mozart sonatas play it's fine
Fine but we can hear his mind
Hear his genius mind
Hear the wheels of genius grind
And they ought to post a sign
Post a sign

When
Duchamp does readymades
When Duchamp does readymades we're sold
When Duchamp does readymades we're sold
When Duchamp does readymades we're sold
When he says "it's art" we're sold
'Cause the statement's bold
I can't see it getting old
We do anything we're told
Thing we're told

When
They said the Buddha woke
When they said the Buddha woke we heard
When they said the Buddha woke we heard
When they said the Buddha woke we heard
Heard but still it sounds absurd
Second-, maybe third-
Hand relay of what occurred
And we don't believe a word
Not a word

Businessmen Are Okay

Walking, clocking in with the residentials
It's mental, our old place is reoccupied
New is different from what we thought, more like old
More like muffler billboards when you're on foot outside

And so you're desperate enough to come around here
And curious what you're explaining away
And you think now agreements made should be kept
You've heard the prophet Elijah say businessmen are okay

Live also in the unfulfilled time
Phil is my brother's name, he's a distributor
For green mint candy, green for golf, green for growth
And sweet, so the teenagers know what it means

Do you take what is dropped like change in your hands
As what someone else thinks he's giving away
Has the arch-villain West uncurled his moustache
You've heard the wind on the Ganges say businessmen are okay
They sing karaoke

The attractive dissention in the twelfth grade
Is going to run out of dress suit legs in its way
And as if for a tasty bone the whole dog
Is going to roll on its back and say businessmen are okay
They sing karaoke

Crypto-Sicko

Kristine, tell me to be quiet
'Cause I've got some quiet to say
And I'm not sure I know
how to get out of its way
There's the cover of Fair Warning
Where there's punching out of lights
And I'm not sure I've done more
than call the kids to see the fights

False alarms, crypto-sicko, babes in arms
Cross displays, crypto-sicko, days for days

I've been that moon-age Dorothy
Keep the Dorothies on the path
And I'm inclined to think the lonely
learn to use a different math
When your thoughts are cornfield-focused
And you've scarecrowed off all birds
Who'll hear your crow-based riot act
as anything but English words?

Is it all right here, just not clear
Till someone makes it interesting
Wherein interests lie
Is that why parents don't tell us anything?

Why We Don't Live In Mauritania

She asked why my love would last for long
What in her world I base it on
I said "what a 'girl' way to relate
Throw what works fine up for debate"
And let it go
But I'll admit I didn't know
I'd assume there's some convention
To obviate the question
And move these things along

19th Street exit with the oaks
And the head-soothing shade of hoax
No city boards in '23
Stayed up nights planning routes for me
And that's fine
But I'll admit I wouldn't mind
Letting someone do the driving
Who knows where we're arriving
Despite hysteria

That's why we don't live in Mauritania
Why we like something else going on
Why we all moved to California
And not Boca Raton

I lost my backpack on the train
It had more in it than my brain
Will I now have to learn again
How to love things, each like a friend
Same deal
But I'll admit it's lost appeal
I keep filling binder pages
That I won't read for ages
Regret it when I do

New York scenes with the way they talk
Knock me out when they jazz the rock
Cold keeps Chicago boyfriends warm
I dig how they defy the norm
The West Coast, well
I'll admit it's still the most
Hanging out near Manson slayings
Industrial decayings
Inverse utopia

That's why we don't live in Mauritania
Why we like something else going on
Why we all moved to California
And not Saskatchewan
Or Sierra Leone

Sister Sleep

Girl, being close hurts
So I've called from the outskirts
With road noise at a phone booth
So we won't hear the whole truth

Bought this house, on a low bid
Where they moved out, like we did
When the needs of the renter
Pulled us far from the center

Last few holidays I was only thinking
How to get away, numb the chat with drinking
Still thinking like a son, saying something clever
They're here to push against, they won't be forever

A garment, heft me around
At arm's length, lay me out
On your chest, tuck your chin and wonder

Was it rude to sneeze? The allergist is leaving
First we do no harm, like expensive breathing
Am I saying what I'd be able to hear
Or what goes on the list ringing in the new year?

Ninety people walk
Down Haight Street, fill the block
And my job, keep my spacing even
See all ninety people
Be the even spacing

The comet brothers' friends arrive cow-eyed
Our car was dead, we ran, I swear we tried
Will sister sleep not kiss us on the mouth?
It's all we ever want from her

Hitler's icon leads the flight through space
Turns and finds its own bent lines to chase
Will sister sleep not kiss us on the mouth?
It's all we ever want from her

There's no way to a quasar
They're flung out from us too far
Just by chance, maybe not more
We can touch what we live for