![[album cover]](images/days.jpg)
Days For Days
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Release date: May 19, 1998
The band: Scott Miller, Kenny Kessel, Alison Faith Levy, Gil Ray
Guest musicians: Jonathan Segel, Tim Walters
Producer: Scott Miller
Cortex the Killer
Good, There Are No Lions In The Street
Deee-Pression
Way Too Helpful
Mozart Sonatas
Businessmen Are Okay
Crypto Sicko
Why We Don't Live In Mauritania
Sister Sleep
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
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Must be the word, must be expression
The creature stirs, must be progression Shake when I'm empty Like a bowl full of semper fi Hung by the chimney to signify, simplify What wants to be what works through me
And if I'm right in my impression
What wants to be what works through me
Gentle into that good night we could ride
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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
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
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
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
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