![]() ![]() Speaking of surprise: "Do they dream of Hell/ In Heaven/ Are they restless/ With their reward/. Nothing funny about it except for everyone's surprise. ![]() Not laughable, just absurd – a whole society sold a bill of goods only to have the rug pulled out from under it. Still, there's something slapstick about desperation. TO THE HOUSE/ Stand in the Den/ Stand in the Bath/ Make your stand in the Living Room/ If you can stand to call it that."Ī little but important world is threatened and may end. ![]() Which is what "Hold on to the House" is all about: "HOLD ON/ Better HOLD ON. What makes us so special that the world can't end right here where we're standing? If one or both ends on your watch, or mine, that's no particular tragedy. The world and/or our civilization are bound to end sometime. Without getting too cute about it, everything that begins ends. Terry sings: "Well I don't predict the world will end/ And I don't presume it won't/ And I don't pretend to give a damn/ If it do or if it don't." The order of the day is a disorder that spares nothing and no one. "Queenie's Song" takes you to chichi Santa Fe on a New Year's Day when Terry discovered that some bastard shot his dog. Looking for coordinates to determine where the bottom of the world might be? This song's lyrics are a virtual map, radiating out from funky Four Corners and Cortez, Colorado. The opener, "Four Corners," hails back to Terry's classic 1975 Juarez – but, if you've seen Wake of the Red Witch, the film's oceanic imagery and fatal passions sync with the song's. In the spirit of a maze (amaze! – didn't intend the pun, but I like it), one wanders as much as listens. With a lyricist as cannily specific as Allen, such repetition not only connects the songs but creates a maze. The album is Bottom of the World, issued earlier this year – an album in which the word "world" appears or is evoked in every song. #Jesus and john wayne song lyrics movie"Wake of the Red Witch" is a song about movies and Wake of the Red Witch is a 1948 movie that's haunted Allen as it's haunted me, but in the dark all his life he's not waiting for a movie and not waiting to cross the wake of a clipper ship called Red Witch, so. Waiting for the Wake/ Of the Red Witch/ Waiting for the Wake/ Of the Red Witch" – I listen to this Terry Allen song over and over, surprised at all it evokes, and wondering why, at its end, he needs to repeat that phrase thrice. "Been in the dark/ All of my life/ Waiting for the Wake/ Of the Red Witch. ![]()
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