Pere Ubu Lyrics
The Tenement Year
(1988)

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Something's Gotta Give

You got to feel sorry for the guy
No reason
Just brother feeling Man in the rain hat had to have his say
Live and let live
The old man watches the water rise
Everybody knows
Something's got to give.

Something's got to give
When it goes it starts rolling out of everywhere
Through floorboards
Cracks in walls
Oozing down the chimney walls.

A real Son of Blob job
Welcome to our town
People swept along
People swept along and how?
With goats cats dogs and hats
Oozing down the chimney backs
A real Son of Blob job
Something's got to give.

Something's got to give
Nations rise and fall
Dentist appointments forgotten by great and small
Mighty or humble
Wise man or fool
Rivulet or Old Man River
Flaps flipping out of slots every which-a-way
When it goes it starts rolling out of everywhere.

Writers: Cutler - Jones - Krauss - Maimone - Ravenstine - Thomas
©1988 Ubu Projex.

George Had A Hat

George had a hat but it wasn't where it wasn't at.

Writers: Cutler - Jones - Krauss - Maimone - Ravenstine - Thomas
©1988 Ubu Projex

Talk To Me

Talk to me
Talk to me
Yeah Talk to me.

Bears are best at the zoo
Penguins wander round like penguins will always do
Water pig ugly as an old stick
An old stick
Good ole fella
Good ole pal
Ugly as a stick though.

Talk to me.

The zoo
Like so many things that men do
fails to satisfy the needs of living things
Like them
or even you
You might find we walk the streets
Walk the streets of a sad and lonely town.

Talk to me.

Oh darling child
Don't you sob and don't you cry
If tears was enough
Then it's tears that we'd always cry
Tears make a flood
The blood is a hurricane
Everyday like off to work men carry on the same.

Talk to me.

Writers: Cutler - Jones - Krauss - Maimone - Ravenstine - Thomas
©1988 Ubu Projex.

Busman's Honeymoon

I think about old friends of mine
One day they're walking on their hands
One day they're crawling in the streets
Afraid of a strange free wide open land
Ho for the times they are calling
Ho for the times they says Go go go gone
Always in love
Always alone
Always a line for that long walking home.

Last night I saw them old friends of mine
Making most outrageous sort of claims
Burning all the books rocking on their heels
Watching awhile the heart of the flames
Ho for the times they are calling
Ho for the times they says Go go go gone
Always in love
Always alone
Always a line for that long walking home.

I see they've been talking to you
Had to be a matter of just time
What starts with you glad to be running some errand
slides with time to be walking the line
Ho for the times they are calling
Ho for the times they says Go go go gone
Always in love
Always alone
Always in line for that long walking home.

Writers: Cutler - Jones - Krauss - Maimone - Ravenstine - Thomas
©1988 Ubu Projex.

Say Goodbye

The day recedes
It slides across some boards
Had some wings
Had some dusty tides
rolling across the floor
What a strange debris left on a foreign shore
Who knows how it goes to go walking out that door?
Say goodbye
How hard I try
Say goodbye.

Some air to breathe
There's no one half so sure
as a drowning man who knows he's coming on up for more
Gimme words Gimme worth
I heard a man did pray
I've never known a fear like it
Nothing left to say
Say goodbye
How hard I try
Say goodbye.

How can I leave you when you won't go away?
To get caught in the middle
Neither night
neither day
I feel so broke up
It's harder to be sure
when the whole wide world's slowly rolling out that door
Say goodbye
How hard I try
Say goodbye.

How can I leave you
when you won't go away?
Am I a mule or a goat
Or it's my heart that's bound to stay
I might be the barricuda's nearest next of kin
Oh man here it comes
It's coming on round again
Say goodbye
How hard I try
Say goodbye.

Writers: Cutler - Jones - Krauss - Maimone - Ravenstine - Thomas
©1988 Ubu Projex.

Universal Vibration

Did you see that?
The driver's a dog
The dog had a hat
The hat had a flat
Made it look like a rat
The rat was on fire
I don't wanna know why.

Writers: Cutler - Jones - Krauss - Maimone - Ravenstine - Thomas
©1988 Ubu Projex.

Miss You

It had a hard day's night
It had a harvest moon
It had a breeze like a lover's hand
It couldn't come too soon
Take it awhile
Awhile to be there.

I heard an old man cry
Like a tortured land
Where to play through the scene
was more than he could stand
Take it awhile
Awhile to be there.

It was a long walk home
Oh to come to you
Through the heat of a rising land
I saw a writhing moon
Take it awhile
Awhile to be there.

Writers: Cutler - Jones - Krauss - Maimone - Ravenstine - Thomas
©1988 Ubu Projex.

Dream The Moon

Somewhere down a road from here
Gonna make a deal with you
Somewhere down a road from here
Tell me it won't seem like a honeymoon
Dreaming dreams
Scheming schemes
Do what seems an easy thing.

Think of all the houses
Gaze across the roofs of a tenement year
Think of all the places
See the harvest moon rise so big and near
Dreaming dreams
Scheming schemes
Do what seems an easy thing.

What the mice in the subway know
People in the streets can barely see
Quite sublime in a dusty clime
Til the next subway train comes screaming down the line
Dreaming dreams
Scheming schemes
Do what seems an easy thing.

Take a look around my face
Take away the years that have come and gone
Take a look around my face
Just another year to be hanging on you say
Dreaming dreams
Scheming schemes
Do what seems an easy thing.

Writers: Cutler - Jones - Krauss - Maimone - Ravenstine - Thomas
©1988 Ubu Projex.

Rhythm King

There's a great moon-faced fact
A great moon-face fact.

Old man don't sleep too long
River's got away and it won't go back.

Then it's time to depart
In the court of the Rhythm King
My broken heart
Promise him anything
Woe betide
The Lonely Highway
The old man cried.

There's a great moon-faced fact
Another great moon-face fact.

A man gone by
Turning on his head
Hanging by a coat he was heard to say
Hanging by a coat he was heard to say
There's a great moon-faced fact
It busted out the back like a paper sack
That's a great moon-faced fact.

Old man wait too long
Nothing be there but the pot gone black
Old man don't wait too long
Another night's pouring out
From a smoking stack
That's a great moon-faced fact
Another night's pouring out from a smoking stack.

Writers: Cutler - Jones - Krauss - Maimone - Ravenstine - Thomas
©1988 Ubu Projex.

The Hollow Earth

If the sun won't arrive in the morning
And the moon won't arrive in the evening
Too
Then we start to get a kind of picture
of how it would be to
to live without you
There's a hole in the bucket
There's a rock in my shoe
I'm working up a set of notions
of how it would be to
to live without you
Warning
Here we have the deep water
Danger
Strange Feelings.

Five o'clock in the morning
There's something happening here
I finally get a kind of picture
The point is coming through
Clouds of mystery clear
I drop down a hole
I find a hollow earth
I wake up in a land of extremes
to find the worst that could be
that everything would be
Just what it seems
Warning
Here we have the deep water
Danger
Strange Feelings.

Writers: Cutler - Jones - Krauss - Maimone - Ravenstine - Thomas
©1988 Ubu Projex.

We Have The Technology

How I wish we could take this moment and freeze it
To come back again and again and again
To hold it to the light
To turn it in our hands
To study all the angles
To find out how and why
It's got to go the way that it goes.

We have the technology
Not available before
We have the technology.

Thinkers and poets of the past
They had to leap into the dark so blindly
Whereas we stand free and upright like men
The day's golden light
Linked with our machines
Our eyes are beaming
It won't matter at all how weird things are seeming.

We need the means to dig deeper
To search below the surface appearance of things
Worlds never dreamed of
What a wonderful life
If darling that moment might be found
Wherein we come unstuck completely
Flap A from Slot B slapping in the wind.

We have the technology
Not available before
We have the technology.

Writers: Cutler - Jones - Krauss - Maimone - Ravenstine - Thomas
©1988 Ubu Projex.

Postman Drove A Caddy

I know it seemed like a good idea at the time
I knew there was trouble bound to come.

The postman drove a Caddy
A sunburnt green
rusted out land tug of a car
It was seen to race across the ridge
trailing clouds of dust
and dogs
I knew there was trouble bound to come.

Now I saw the fact
The driver was a dog
The dog had a hat
The hat had a flat
It looked like a rat
The rat was on fire
I knew there was trouble bound to come.

That fire attracted the eye of a neighbor
who turning awa shook his head
and was heard to say
I don't want to know why
which confused the pig
that ate the mailbox
that contained the letter
lost by the post office forty years ago
which happened to have been written by Albert Einstein
I knew there was trouble bound to come.

In his declining years he had divined a device
from common household items which
Harnessing hitherto unknown forces in the universe
Could put a chicken in every pot
and make it so that everyone could live a long long time
without any trouble at all
thereby saving mankind
from certain self-destruction
and enabling him to keep on going more places forever
I knew there was trouble bound to come.

Whether or not this device actually worked
was a matter of some conjecture
Seeing as how Mr Einstein had buried the plans
and only working model in a hole in the ground
I knew there was trouble bound to come.

It seemed like a good idea at the time
Was what the letter did say
Would the recipient a Mr. Tesla
Please go out and dig it up right away?

Not to worry because even if this self-same letter
were to be lost in the post
you couldn't miss the two-foot high Martian
standing there
who promised to wait and not even budge for forty years
if he had to
but then he really had to get going
P.S. take him a couple apples or something
Because he really likes fruit
Sincerely yours Albert Einstein.

Somehow I knew there was trouble bound to come.

Writers: Cutler - Jones - Krauss - Maimone - Ravenstine - Thomas
©1988 Ubu Projex.

The B-Side

Is everybody ready?
I'm off to get that head flap (fly wheel)
Sip Number One
Ah
There's nothing like a cold snow horn (dish wave)
Here comes Sip Number Two
Four Three Two One
Ho!

Writers: Cutler - Jones - Krauss - Maimone - Ravenstine - Thomas
©1988 Ubu Projex