Summer Of ’99
(4:31) [3/26/99]
MP3
Liner Notes
Released my first real EP.
I should be trying to get signed,
But your song’s all I wanna hear now
‘Cause it’s the summer of ‘99:
The season that’s after spring cleaning
Makes sense from emotions of ours.
The guilt in lust compels us to catalog,
& helps us tell the little fishies from stars.
Surfing on the radio
Trying to find your “Malibu” now;
& then in the years that come next,
I hope we’ll both say it’s true how
They’ll be the best years of our lives.
One summer, I knew a babe like you:
Classic blonde with a dire streak.
She never said why she hated your Flynt role;
She’d get so mad that she couldn’t even speak.
On her guestroom’s bed, she’d swear she
Couldn’t sleep without me.
Her plant’s leaves rubbed together
Like houseflies’ hands, all doubt-free.
&, yeah, I tried to save her soul;
Instead, I nearly got stuck there, Courtney.
But now I think I’m through with all that.
Why expend your time on felo-de-se
When these are the best years of our lives
Here in the summer of ‘99?
This world’s gone wrong since we lined up to start,
But with just one song, you broke open my heart.
(Don’t wanna get out of my car to request it just now.)
In an era on an unbeatable losing streak, you
Stole my heart with one too-long-held creak.
I know how it feels: I can’t get arrested in this business, ‘cause how
(These are the days of the new Sister Alice 20 Creeds with Bushy Dog’s-Eye-Viewed
Pilot Flys.
This is the garbage heap of Tori Mono Jewel Alana Jill Alanis Poe Rebekah
Joan Vonda Fionbruglia.)
If we were Augustine’s mother,
We’d rent the veil off this illusion, & dare
To bathe in Eternity’s wisdom; we
Could drown out oceans & tell angels from air.
Ain’t no use in complaints when there’s
New Star Wars, new favorite songs,
New scriptures, ‘till He stops this
Ride & lifts us up to where we belong.
Rolling all the windows down
While hearing your song after mine,
I swear is a validation;
& the years that come after this time,
Those’ll be the best years of our lives.
We’re in the summer of ‘99. |
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REN’s perennial New Year’s Resolution is “Do more and
bitch less.” It also helps if you imagine how you’ll wax nostalgic
in the future about this time now, which makes the present more enjoyable
& the future less uncertain.
John Oszajca - “Back In 1999” / Warren Zevon - “Long
Arm Of The Law”, “They Moved The Moon” & “Transverse
City” / Phil Keaggy - “Big Eraser”
“He
wasn’t well. You know. We’d talk . . . we got to talking motorcycles.
He asked if he could borrow my bike, I said of course. He got to taking
it out every day. He was registered there as 'McGuire.' He was keeping
a low profile, you know? But after a week or two, you know, I think
that he was lonely. I’d see him around the pool. . . . He had at that
time over one hundred bikes in his collection . . . I don’t know where
they were . . . in the States.
You
know, The Great Escape . . . ? He did those stunts himself. You
know where he jumps through the barbed wire? He did that himself -----
Though it wasn’t barbed wire. He found out that I was into martial arts
and we took to sparring.
He
was in great shape ----- even though his disease ----- he was strong
as a horse at that time. A fifty-sixty-minute workout was nothing to
him. . . . I guess he was just one of those men who are blessed with
a completely perfect constitution. Though he was in great pain. I know
that he was. . .
Indians
. . . Harleys . . . Nortons . . . he had all of them. Did you know on
the old Indian the oil used to go through the frame? It flowed through
the frame. . .
I
stayed at his house in Malibu. Three days.”
-David Mamet, “Steve McQueen” (1983)
“Therefore we said: If for any man the tulmut of the flesh fell silent,
silent the images of earth, and of the waters, and of the air; silent
the heavens; silent for him the very soul itself, and he should pass
beyond himself by not thinking upon himself; silent his dreams and all
imagined appearances, and every tongue, and every sign; and if all things
that come to be through change should become wholly silent to him -----
for if any man can hear, then all these things say to him, ‘We did not
make ourselves,’ but he who endures forever made us ----- if when they
have said these words, they then become silent, for they have raised
up his ear to him who made them, and God alone speaks, not through such
things but through himself, so that we hear his Word, not uttered by
a tongue of flesh, nor by an angel’s voice, ‘nor by the sound of thunder,’
nor by the riddle of similitude, but by himself whom we love in these
things, himself we hear without their aid, ----- even as we then reached
out and in swift thought attained to that eternal Wisdom which abides
over all things ----- if this could be prolonged, and other visions
of a far inferior kind could be withdrawn, and this one alone ravish,
and absorb, and hide away its beholder within its deepest joys, so that
sempiternal life might be such as was that moment of understanding for
which we sighed, would it not be this: ‘Enter into the joy of your Lord?’
When shall this be? When ‘we shall all rise again, but we shall not
all be changed.’”
-St. Augustine (Translated by John K Ryan), Confessions (400)
“Help me please
Burn the sorrow from your eyes
Oh, come on be alive again
Don’t lay down and die . . .
Cry to the angels
I’m gonna rescue you
I’m gonna set you free tonight, baby.”
-Courtney Love, “Malibu” (1998)
“I got my first real six-string
Bought it at the five-and-dime
Played it til my fingers bled
It was the summer of '69
Me and some guys from school
Had a band and we tried real hard
Jimmy quit and Jody got married
I shoulda known we'd never get far
Oh when I look back now
That summer seemed to last forever
And if I had the choice
Yeah ----- I'd always wanna be there
Those were the best days of my life.”
-Bryan Adams & Jim Vallance, “Summer Of '69” (1984)
“4:05; in my neighborhood, when shots go off, no one bothers.
A “POP,” and a reply “POP,” and no reply . .
Dinosaurs on the quilt I wore with a girl.
Such a classic girl . . Such a classic girl . . .
They may say, ‘Those were the days . . ,’
but in a way, you know for us these are the days.
Yes, for us these are the days, and you know you’re my girl!
Such a classic girl . . Such a classic girl . .
Yeah for us these are the days . .”
-Perry Farrell, “Classic Girl” (1990) |
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