Tom Waits : Foreign Affairs
1977
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- Muriel
- I Never Talk To Strangers
- Medley: Jack And Neal/California, Here I Come
- A Sight For Sore Eyes
- Potter's Field
- Burma-Shave
- Barber Shop
- Foreign Affair
Muriel
Muriel since you left town
The clubs closed down
And there's one more burned out lamp-post
On Main Street
Down where we used to stroll
And Muriel
I still hit all the same old haunts
And you follow me wherever I go
And Muriel I see you
On a Saturday night
In a penny arcade
With your hair tied back
And the diamond twinkle
Is in your eye
Is the only wedding ring that I'll buy you
Muriel
And Muriel how many times
I've left this town
To hide from your memory
And it haunts me
But I only get as far
As the next Whiskey bar
I buy another cheap cigar
And I'll see you every night
Hey Muriel
Muriel
Hey buddy
Got a light
I Never Talk To Strangers
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Bartender, I'd like a Manhattan please
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Stop me if you've heard this one
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But I feel as though we've met before
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Perhaps I am mistaken
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G7
But it's just that I remind you of
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Someone you used to care about
Bb9
Oh, but that was long ago
Ebmaj9
C9
Now tell me, do you really think I'd fall for that old line
Fm7
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I was not born just yesterday
Ebmaj7
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Besides I never talk to strangers anyway
Hell, I ain't a bad guy when you get to know me
I just thought there ain't no harm
Hey, yeah, just try minding your own business, bud
Who asked you to annoy me
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With your sad, sad repartee
Ebmaj7
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Besides I never talk to strangers anyway
Ab
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Your life's a dime store novel
Eb
This town is full of guys like you
Ab
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Eb
And you're looking for someone to take the place of her
G7
Cm
You must be reading my mail
G
And you're bitter 'cause he left you
Cm
Cm7
That's why you're drinkin' in this bar
Ab
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Fm7
Bb7
Well, only suckers fall in love with perfect strangers
It always takes one to know one stranger
Maybe we're just wiser now
Yeah, and been around that block so many times
That we don't notice
Cm
Cm(maj7)
That we're all just perfect strangers as long as we ignore
Cm7
That we all begin as strangers
Am7
Just before we find
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We really aren't strangers anymore
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Aw, you don't look like such a chump
Aw, hey baby
Medley: Jack And Neal/California, Here I Come
Jack was sitting poker faced with bullets backed with bitches
Neal hunched at the wheel putting everyone in stitches
Bragging about some nurse he screwed while driving through Nebraska
And when she came she honked the horn
Neal just barely missed a truck
And then he asked her if she'd like to come like that to California
You see a red head in a uniform will always get you horny
Yeah and with her hairnet and those white shoes and a name tag and a hat
She drove like Andy Granatelli and knew how to fix a flat
And Jack was almost at the bottom of his MD 2020
Neal was yelling out the window trying to buy some bennies
From a Lincoln full of Mexicans and the left rear tire blowed
And the sons of bitches pretty near almost ran us off the road
And while the nurse had spilled the Maneshewitz all up and down her dress
And then she lit the map on fire Neal just had to guess
Should we try and find a bootleg route or a filling station open
The nurse was dumping out her purse and looking for an envelope
And Jack was out of cigarettes and as we crossed the yellow line
The gas pumps looked like tombstones from here
And it felt lonelier than a parking lot when the last car pulls away
And the moonlight dressed the double breasted foothills in the mirror
Weaving out a negligee and a black brassiere
And the Mercury was running hot and we were almost out of gas
Just then Florence Nightingale she dropped her drawers and
Stuck her fat ass half way out of the window to a Wilson Pickett tune
And shouted Get a load of this and gave the finger to the moon
Counting one eyed Jacks and whistling Dixie in the car
Neal was doing least a hundred when we saw a falling star
And Florence wished that Neal would hold her instead of chewing on his cigar
Jack was nodding out and wishing he was in a bar
With Charlie Parker on the bandstand and not a worry in the world
And a glass of beer in one hand and his arms around a girl
Neal was singing to the nurse Underneath the Harlem Moon
And somehow you could just tell we'd be in California soon
Open up your golden gates
California here I come
I said California here I come
Look out California here I come
A Sight For Sore Eyes
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A sight for sore eyes, it's a long time no see
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Working hard hardly working, hey, man you know me
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Water under the bridge, did you see my new car
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Well, it's bought and it's paid for, parked outside of the bar
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And hey barkeep, what's keeping you? Keep pouring drinks
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For all these palookas, hey you know what I thinks
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That we toast to the old days and DiMaggio too
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And old Drysdale and Mantle, Whitey Ford and to you
No, the old gang ain't around, everyone has left town
'Cept for Thumm and Giardina, said they just might be down
Oh, half drunk all the time and I'm all drunk the rest
Yeah, Monk's still the champion, but I am the best
And hey barkeep...
Guess you've heard about Nash, he was killed in a crash
Hell, that must of been two or three years ago now
Yeah, he spun out and he rolled he hit a telephone pole
And he died with the radio on
No, she's married and with a kid, finally split up with Sid
He's up north for a nickle's worth for armed robbery
Hey, I'll play you some pinball, no you ain't got a chance
Well, then go on over and ask her to dance
And hey barkeep...
Potter's Field
Well you can buy me a drink and I'll tell you what I've seen
And I'll give you a bargain from the edge of a maniac's dream
That buys a black widow spider with a riddle in his yarn
That's clinging to the furrow of a blind man's brow
And I'll start talking from the brim of a thimble full of whiskey
On a train through the Bronx that will take you just as far
As the empty of a bottle to the highway of a scar
That stretched across the blacktop of my cheek like that
And then ducks beneath the brim of a fugitive's hat
You'll learn why liquor makes a stool pigeon rat on every face
That ever left a shadow down on Saint Mark's place
Hell I'd double-cross my mother if it was whiskey that they paid
And so an early bird says Nightstick's on the hit parade
And he ain't got a prayer and his days are numbered
And you'll track him down like a dog
But it's a tough customer you're getting in this trade
'Cause the Nightstick's heart pumps lemonade
And whiskey keeps a blind man talking all right
And I'm the only one who knows just where he stayed last night
He was in a wrecking yard in a switch-blade storm
In a wheelbarrow with nothing but revenge to keep him warm
And a half a million dollars in unmarked bills
Was the nightstick's blanket in a February chill
And the buzzards drove a crooked sky beneath a black wing halo
He was dealing high Chicago in the mud
And stacking the deck against a dragnet's eye
And the shivering nightstick in a miserable heap
With the siren for a lullaby singing him to sleep
And bleeding from a buttonhole and torn by a slug
Fired from the barrel of a two dollar gun
That scorched a blister on the grip of a punk by now
Is learning what you have to pay to be a hero anyhow
He dressed the hole in his gut with a hundred dollar bandage
A king's ransom for a bedspread that don't amount to nothing
Just cobweb strings on a busted ukulele
And the nightstick leaned on a black shillelagh
With the poison of a junkie's broken promise on his lip
He staggered in the shadows screaming I ain't never been afraid
And he shot out every street light on the promenade
Past the frozen ham and eggers at the penny arcade
Throwing out handfuls of a blood-stained salary
They were dead in their tracks at the shooting gallery
And they fired off a twenty-one gun salute
And from the corner of his eye he caught the alabaster orbs
Of a dime a dance hall girl and stuffed a thousand dollar bill in her blouse
And caught the cruel and unusual punishment of her smile
And the nightstick winked beneath a rain soaked brim
Ain't no one seen hide nor hair of him since
No one except a spade on Riker's Island and me
So if you're mad enough to listen to a full of whiskey blind man
And you're mad enough to look beyond where the bloodhounds dare to go
And if you want to know where the nightstick's hiding out
You be down at the ferry landing oh let's say about half past a nightmare
When it's twisted on the clock and you tell them nickel sent you
Whiskey always makes him talk
And you ask for Captain Charon with the mud on his kicks
He's the skipper of the deadline steamer
And she sails from the Bronx across the river Styx
And a riddle is just a ticket for a dreamer
'Cause when the weather vane is sleeping and the moon turns his back
You crawl on your belly along the railroad tracks
And cross your heart and hope to die and stick a needle in your eye
'Cause he'd cut my bleeding heart out if he found out that I squealed
'Cause you see a scarecrow is just a hoodlum
Who marked the cards that he dealed
And pulled a gypsy switch
Out on the edge of Potter's Field
Burma-Shave
Dm7
C7/e
Dm7
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A licorice tattoo, turned a gun metal blue
Dm7
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Fm7
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C7
Scrawled across the shoulders of a dying town
Dm7
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Took the one-eyed jacks across the railroad tracks
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And the scar on its belly pulled a stranger passing through
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He's a juvenile delinquent, never learned how to behave
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But the cops would never think to look in Burma-Shave
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The road was like a ribbon, and the moon was like a bone
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He didn't seem to be like any guy she'd ever known
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He kinda looked like Farley Grainger, with his hair slicked back
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She says, I'm a sucker for a fella in a cowboy hat
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How far are you going? He said, depends on what you mean
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He says, I'm only stopping here to get some gasoline
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I guess I'm going that-a-way just as long as it's paved
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And I guess you'd say I'm on my way to Burma-Shave
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And with her knees up on the glove compartment, took out her barrettes
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And her hair spilled out like root beer and she popped her gum and arched her back
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Hell, Marysville ain't nothing, but a wide spot in the road
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Some nights my heart pounds just like thunder, I don't know why it don't explode
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'Cause everyone in this stinking town, has got one foot in the grave
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And I'd rather take my chances out in Burma-Shave
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Presley's what I go by, why don't you change the station?
Dm7
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Count the grain elevators in the rear-view mirror
Dm7
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Mister, anywhere you point this thing, has got to beat the hell out of the sting
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C#
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Of going to bed with every dream that dies here every morning
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And so drill me a hole with a barber pole
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I'm jumping my parole just like a fugitive tonight
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Why don't you have another swig, and pass that car if you're so brave?
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I wanna get there before the sun comes up in Burma-Shave
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The spider web crack and the mustang screamed
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The smoke from the tires and the twisted machine
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Just a nickel's worth of dreams and every wishbone that they saved
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Lie swindled from them on the way to Burma-Shave
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And the sun hit the derrick and cast a bat wing shadow
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Up against the car door on the shotgun side
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And when they pulled her from the wreck you know she still had on her shades
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They say that dreams are growing wild just this side of Burma-Shave
Barber Shop
Good morning mister snip snip snip
With your hair cut just as short as mine
Good morning mister snip snip snip
With your hair cut just as short as mine
Bay rum lucky tiger butch wax cracker jacks
Shoe-shine jaw breaker magazine racks
Hanging round the barber shop a side-burning close crop
Morning Mr Ferguson what's the good word with you
Staying out of trouble like a good boy should
I see you're still cutting hair I'm still cutting classes
I got a couple passes to the Ringle Bros barn bail circus afternoon
You lost a little round the middle and you're looking real good
Sitting on the wagon instead of under the hood
What's the low-down Mr Brown I heard your boy's leaving town
I bought myself a struggle buggy sucker's powder blue
Throw me over the sports page Cincinnati looking good
I always been for Pittsburgh and I lay you ten to one
The Pirates get the pennant and the series before their done
The hair's getting longer you know the skirts are getting shorter
And don't you know that you can get a cheaper haircut
If you wanna cross the border
If your mama saw you smoking well she'd kick your ass
Now you put it out you juvenile and put it out fast
Well if I had a million dollars what would I do
I'd probably be a barber not a bum like you
Still got your paper route now that's just fine
And you can pay me double because you gypped me last time
And don't you know that you can keep a little circus money
And spend it on a girl
And just remember that I give the best haircuts
In the whole wide world
I give the best haircuts in the whole wide world
Good morning mister snip snip snip
With your hair cut just as short as mine
Good morning mister snip snip snip
With your hair cut just as short as mine
Foreign Affair
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When travelling abroad in the continental style
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It's my belief one must attempt to be discreet
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And subsequently bear in mind your transient position
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C
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Allows you a perspective that's unique
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C
Am7
And though you'll find your itinerary's a blessing and a curse
Dm7
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Am7
Your wanderlust won't let you settle down
Dm7
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Am7
And you'll wonder how you ever fathomed that you'd be content
Dm7
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To stay within the city limits of a small midwestern town
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Most vagabonds I knowed don't ever want to find the culprit
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That remains the object of their long relentless quest
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The obsession's in the chasing and not the apprehending
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The pursuit you see and never the arrest
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Without fear of contradiction "bon voyage" is always hollered
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In conjunction with a handkerchief from shore
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D7
By a girl that drives a rambler and furthermore is overly
Dm7
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Concerned that she won't see him anymore
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Am7
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Planes and trains and boats and buses, characteristically
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Am7
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Evoke a common attitude of blue
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Unless you have a suitcase and a ticket and a passport
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And the cargo that they're carrying is you
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A foreign affair juxtaposed with a stateside
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And domestically approved romantic fancy
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Is mysteriously attractive due to circumstances knowing
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C
It will only be parlayed into a memory
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