Elvis Costello

fox69 · 29.11.2015

"Pump It Up"

"Pump It Up"

I've been on tenterhooks
ending in dirty looks,
list'ning to the Muzak,
thinking 'bout this 'n' that.
She said that's that.
I don't wanna chitter-chat.
Turn it down a little bit
or turn it down flat.
Pump it up when you don't really need it.
Pump it up until you can feel it.

Down in the pleasure centre,
hell bent or heaven sent,
listen to the propaganda,
listen to the latest slander.
There's nothing underhand
that she wouldn't understand.

Pump it up until you can feel it.
Pump it up when you don't really need it.

She's been a bad girl.
She's like a chemical.
Though you try to stop it,
she's like a narcotic.
You wanna torture her.
You wanna talk to her.
All the things you bought for her,
putting up your temp'rature.

Pump it up until you can feel it.
Pump it up when you don't really need it.

Out in the fashion show,
down in the bargain bin,
you put your passion out
under the pressure pin.
Fall into submission,
hit-and-run transmission.
No use wishing now for any other sin.

Pump it up until you can feel it.
Pump it up when you don't really need it.

fox69 · 29.11.2015

"Punishing Kiss"

"Punishing Kiss"

I favour a good punishing kiss
It helps pass the lonely afternoons
Another stiff drink
Wipe off that lipstick
For when you reach a certain age
All the most villainous men
Can be found on Channel Ten
And I make them dance
In attendance
We will be back
In a minute or two
And he will punish that girl
Oh I forget the reason
Just look at me I'm lost in a social whirl

She was never so witty
Always struggling to be full of fun
On weekdays from midday to one
In a little black cocktail dress everyone hates
She'll be saving the world in-between fashion plates
I know what she gets up to in the back of that black limousine
And I find myself shouting at the screen
I think that it's time to turn over
They say it's harmless I know
A hundred and ten percent certain virtually real
If you need something to feel

Then favour a good punishing kiss
It helps chase the wasted afternoons
The flowers and the pearls
The long lost relations
That love sick tom boy comes in bloom
All the pointless heartache
That seems to belong in my blue bloom

Can't stand the suspense
The endless embraces
When each episode
Lends the silly pretence
Say I can turn away
When I will never miss
It starts with a joke
And ends with a punishing kiss

fox69 · 29.11.2015

"Put Away Forbidden Playthings"

"Put Away Forbidden Playthings"

Put away forbidden playthings
Amusements and distractions
And dismantle the contraption and carry it away

In time as beauty dissolves into glamour
It slips from your heart and falls under the hammer.
Put away forbidden playthings...

And never return to pluck out that jewel
Or find the thrill that slumbers still
While suffering the dream of disobeying.
Put away forbidden playthings...

fox69 · 29.11.2015

"Put Your Big Toe In The Milk Of Human Kindness"

"Put Your Big Toe In The Milk Of Human Kindness"

Put your big toe in the milk of human kindness
Have you ever seen the like of this mankind?
If a boy or girl is cute, we simply shoot to starry heights
Any maybe, any might
But always so capricious, in the face of wonder we're suspicious
And though we came from frogs and fishes
Our taste is far from fine
Put your big toe in the milk of human kindness

Put your big toe in the milk of human kindness
Have you ever seen the like of this mankind?
You take the Himalayas, you'll take Manhattan's finest mountain top
He wouldn't change his whiskey sour for any bitter crop

But always so contrary, from Father Christmas to the Virgin Mary
And though the moments of belief
Fly by before you find if you'd just unhand your mind
Put your big toe in the milk of human kindness

But always so contrary, from Father Christmas to the Virgin Mary
And though the moments of belief
Fly by before you find if you'd just unhand your mind
Put your big toe in the milk of human kindness

fox69 · 29.11.2015

"Radio Radio"

"Radio Radio"

I was tuning in the shine on the light night dial
doing anything my radio advised
with every one of those late night stations
playing songs bringing tears to me eyes
I was seriously thinking about hiding the receiver
when the switch broke 'cause it's old
They're saying things that I can hardly believe.
They really think we're getting out of control.

[Chorus:]
Radio is a sound salvation
Radio is cleaning up the nation
They say you better listen to the voice of reason
But they don't give you any choice
'cause they think that it's treason.
So you had better do as you are told.
You better listen to the radio.

I wanna bite the hand that feeds me.
I wanna bite that hand so badly.
I want to make them wish they'd never seen me.

Some of my friends sit around every evening
and they worry about the times ahead
But everybody else is overwhelmed by indifference
and the promise of an early bed
You either shut up or get cut up;
they don't wanna hear about it.
It's only inches on the reel-to-reel.
And the radio is in the hands of such a lot of fools
tryin' to anaesthetise the way that you feel

[Chorus]

Wonderful radio
Marvelous radio
Wonderful radio
Radio, radio...

fox69 · 29.11.2015

"Radio Silence"

"Radio Silence"

Signal fading, listen to what I'm saying
Testing, testing
This better be worth all of the breath I'm wasting
Maintaining radio silence from now on

Barricaded in the talk radio station
Hostage taken
The red "On-Air" light shines on
Something cheaper that passes for free speech
Will have to do

Hear him coming through loud and clear
Trickling in your ear
He'll tell you anything you want to hear

The tape starts running
He's going to tell you something
The strings start strumming
Another humdrum conundrum
Signing off now
Maintaining radio silence from now on

But there's one thing I should have said
"The hostage will end up dead"
It's just a comedy
The hostage is me

So pay the ransom
Beyond the run-out grove
Get my wife down here
A helicopter on the roof
No police marksman
Maintaining radio silence from now on

Mystery voices
Drowned out by too much choice
That's not to mention
The sad waste of this wonderful invention
Maintaining radio silence from now on

Libraries filled up with failed ideas
There's nothing more for me there
I trust in tender ink and gentle airs

Do those drug dealer still polish women made of wax?
Gangster and world leaders
Require the same protection from attack
From this distance it's hard to tell the difference
Between a king and jack
Between a poet and hack
Maintaining radio silence from now on

fox69 · 29.11.2015

"Radio Sweetheart"

"Radio Sweetheart"

My head is spinning and my legs are weak
Goose step dancing, can't hear myself speak
Hope in the eyes of the ugly girls
That settle for the lies of the last chancers
When slow motion drunks pick wallflower dancers
You come here looking for the ride to glory
Go back home with a hard luck story
I can hardly wait around until the weekend comes to town

Play one more for my radio sweetheart
Hide your love, hide your love
Though we are so far apart
You've got to hide your love
'Cause that's the way the whole thing started
I wish we had never parted

When it's late and the night gets colder
Don't lay your head on any other shoulder
Some hire themselves out for a good time
But you and I, we have been sold
So I keep on saying...

Play one more for my radio sweetheart
Hide your love, hide your love
Though we are so far apart
You've got to hide your love
'Cause that's the way the whole thing started
I wish we had never parted

Play one more for my radio sweetheart

fox69 · 29.11.2015

"Really Mystified"

"Really Mystified"

He will break your heart, if you go with him.
Tear it all apart, and that would be a sin.
I'm really mystified, I even sat right down and cried.
I'm the one that needs you, I love you constantly.
Answer me, I need you, I'm waitnig patiently.
I'm really mystified, I even sat right down and cried.
Darling, if I let you go by, I'll be living in a dream of emptiness.
The feeling in my heart, my mind and my soul, if you would surely cure my loneliness.
He will break your heart, if you go with him.
Tear it all apart, and that would be a sin.
I'm really mystified, I even sat right down and cried.
Darling, if I let you go by, I'll be living in a dream of emptiness.
The feeling in my mind, my heart and my soul, if you would quickly cure my loneliness.
He will break your heart, if you go with him.
Tear it all apart, and that would be a sin.
I'm really mystified, I even sat right down and cried.
Ooh Yeah, mystified.
Really mystified.
Really mystified.

fox69 · 29.11.2015

"Red Cotton"

"Red Cotton"

I'm cutting up her pure white dress
That I dyed red
That I dyed red
I'm putting scraps in cheap tin lockets
What time erases and memory mocks
I'll send them over the ocean foam
Right into those gentle European homes

The slave ship "Blessing" slipped from Liverpool
Over the waves the Royal Navy rules
To go and plunder the Kingdom of Benin
Where certain history ends and shame begins

Dahomey traders paid in powder and shot
Line up their prisoners and they sell them in lots
They packed them tight inside those coffin ships
And they took them to the brand new world of
Auction blocks and whips

I'm cutting up her pure white dress
That I dyed red
That I dyed red
I'm putting scraps in cheap tin lockets
What time erases and memory mocks
I'll send them over the ocean foam
Right into those gentle European homes

White is the sheet on your fine linen bed
The blood stained red on each cotton thread
The merchants gather at St. George's Hall
To unveil the kneeling slave who is carved upon the wall

Picture the scene at the Old Salt House docks
Where they loaded the iron shackles and locks
Between a sandstone crocodile, a barrel and a bale
You will see the nameless faces they were offering for sale

So, I sing the praises of God's glory
As a blue cetacean floats in the basement
An elephant on the second storey
And they queue all day to see him
In my American Museum

But the Lord will judge us with fire and thunder
As man continues in all his blunders
It's only money
It's only numbers
Maybe it is time to put aside these fictitious wonders

But man is feeble
Man is puny
And if it should divide the Union
There is no man that should own another
When he can't even recognise his sister and his brother

fox69 · 29.11.2015

"Refuse To Be Saved"
(with The Roots)

"Refuse To Be Saved"
(with The Roots)

Now that you set everybody free
What you going to do about me?
Don't want to be treated like some poor grateful clown
I'd rather go back in the sweet underground
Where I can tell the time by the colour of my skin
And I know my neighbour 'cos he's the one, yes he's the one
Who always turns me in

A woman works the tunnel in the middle of the night
Picking up every lost object in sight
Handbags, toupees, lost legs and fingernails
The black market eats up all your failures
Her transistor offers no salvation or regrets
No pool, no pets, no cigarettes
Just non-stop Disco Tex and the Sex-o-lettes

There's no name, there's no name
There's no name, there's no name
There's no name, there's no name
For the pain we'll cause you again and again
For the pain we'll cause you again and again

The Liberation Forces make movies of their own
Playing their Doors records and pretending to be stoned
Drowning out a broadcast that wasn't authorised
Incidentally the revolution will be televised
With one head for business and another for good looks
Until they started arriving with their rubber aprons and their butcher's hooks

There's no name, there's no name
There's no name, there's no name
There's no name, there's no name
For the pain we'll cause you again and again
For the pain we'll cause you again and again

They're hunting us down here with Liberty's light
A handshaking double talking procession of the mighty
Pursued by a T.V. crew and coming after them
A limousine of singing stars and their brotherhood anthem
The former dictator was impeccably behaved
They're mopping up all the stubborn ones who just refuse to be saved

I refuse to be saved