Nearest Thing To Hip

(album: Modern Blues - 2015)

There used to be a café a few blocks away,
open seven days, called The Brilliant Mistake
where a crow-haired girl with scarlet lips
and slender hips served up coffee and cake
on a crackling stereo the ghosts of Sun Ra,
Charlie Parker, Miles and Coltrane blew
I'd kick back in my chair, that sweet honey'd jazz
in the air, the sun shining through

it was the nearest thing to hip
it was the nearest thing to hip
in this shithole and it's gone

Everywhere that I go I see streets that are low
on distinction and high on the banal and the bland
How did we get to this? We plumbed the abyss
by the twisted grace of the law of supply and demand
Well, there's no use crying and no use sighing over
stone, wood, wire, glass and cement
but there's a little record store with a wooden floor
that ain't there no more that I used to frequent

it was the nearest thing to hip
in was the nearest thing to hip
in this shithole and it's gone

Now I need to get out of this hullabaloo
and I remember an old-fashioned old bar I once knew
with an old-fashioned barman wearing old-fashioned clothes
but when I get there it's been bulldozed

so I follow my nose down Comatose Lane
through the stripped back, ripped up wastes
of Woebegone Square
till I find myself on Deadbeat Street,
feet beginning to ache, despair in the air
the only thing bright in this blighted town
are the billboard adverts everywhere displayed
like mocking shades
And the musty, dusty second-hand bookstore
is now a scum-encrusted amusement arcade

it was the nearest thing to hip
it was the nearest thing to hip
in this shithole and it's gone