Mrs. Olmstead: Perhaps you'd care to elaborate. BW: As a little kid in the street I used to hear older kids saying it. It's one of the earliest memories of my life. Older kids playing in the street at night. I'd be on the stoop or watching from a window. Too little to play with the older kids. Summer nights on the street in New York. Very early memory. These kids chanting to each other. Pee-pee-maw-maw. I don't think anybody knew what it meant or where it came from. Probably twelfth century England or the Vikings or the Moors. These kids chanting it on the street. Pee-pee-maw-maw. Pee-pee-maw-maw. Chants like that can be traced to the dawn of civilization. Like games kids play can be traced a thousand years back to kids in India. Same with incantations. It's an interesting subject. You should schedule it.
Mr. Fielder: For my closing remarks, which I promise you will be kept as brief as humanly possible, given the pronounced oratorical bias of your speaker and chairman, I'd like simply to say that this has been a most dynamic round table, surely for me a most instructive one as well, as it was I believe for all of us gathered here, although each no doubt has his or her own idea of levels of merit, remembering our own Turner Bakey and his oft-quoted rejoinder to Ed-dings' paraphrase of Larue during the Arts-Leadership Committee's brunch on genocide. At any rate, thanks one and all. And now for a dip in the pool.
•
Three tracks from
diamond stylus
Recorded on Anspar Records amp; Tapes
International copyright secured
Cold War Lover
I worked her body with a touch
Learned from the hand of a bund old man
Living in a one-room duplex
In Nashville's Chinatown
It was love truest love
Under gun
One by one
She was the butch of New Orleans
I was her sometime beau
In those murderbeds of pimps and tricks
All those ranting nights
We took what was and left the rest
And mailed the short hairs east to west
Oh funky city Funky city oh
We loved each other with a heat
Learned from the tongue of a strung-out tout
Squatting in a two-room toilet
In Tulsa's Upper Crust
It was love animal love
Under lock
Rock by rock
She was the butch of New Orleans
I was her sometime beau
In those murderbeds of queens and marks
Sultry afternoons
We said a prayer and took a hit
And went to church to nod a bit
Oh funky city
Funky city oh
She washed my body with a grace
Learned from the rub of a burnt-out case
Locked in a padded tub
In the Memphis Steamless Baths
It was love animal love
Under key
Three by three
She was the butch of New Orleans
I was her sometime beau
In those murderbeds of cons and pros
All those summer days
We reached the end and bent the wick
And placed an ad for stamps to lick
Oh funky city
Funky city oh
We broke each other with a skill
Learned from the mind of a kindly dike
Stuck in an airless shaft
In Harlem's Lonely Heart
It was love truest love
Cannibal war
More and more
She was the butch of New Orleans
I was her sometime beau
In those murderbeds of men and wives
Final quickest trip
She took a gun, a thirty-one
Put her tongue to the bluesteel tip
Oh funky cities
Mobile's paper mills
I swim in the bay
And get laid by day
And cry for my love all the night
Protestant Work Ethic Blues
Rising up in the morning
Looking down at yourself in bed
Oh rising up in the morning
Seeing your pale old body matter-of-factually dead
Oh blue
Never too white to sing the blues
Getting yourself together
Pulling day and night apart
Oh getting yourself together
Staring hard at your laminated astrological chart
Oh blue
Never too white to sing the blues
Sitting up in your plastic chair
Swallowing down some frozen toast
Oh catching that old broken window train
Take you to the place
The place
The place
Take you to the place that you hate the most
Oh yeah
Protestant work ethic blues
You got those white collar blues
Dropping down behind your desk
Crumpled in a puddly heap
Oh dropping down behind your desk
Waiting for the strength to take that existential leap
Oh blue
Never too white to sing the blues
Falling off to sleep and weep
In your three-poster bed
Oh falling off to deep dark sleep
You find yourself wearing a mask over your original head