1. |
||||
Who you gonna call? Ghost Writers?
Who you gonna call? Nurse Monkeywrench?
The League of Intergalactic Hobos...
Caught this hotfoot surfing volcanoes
But only when the lava tide’s low
Touring Texarkana via tornado
Pursuing rumors of ice-blue buffalo
Hitched a northbound balloon and damn near froze
Selling kilos of snow to the Eskimos
Courting the worst-case scenario
With a chain-gang of leprechauns in tow
Oh, you have to know this ain’t my first rodeo
Hopping from fiasco to fiasco
By freight train or UFO
Openly incognito
Not your usual superheroes
The League of Intergalactic Hobos
From Jupiter to Juneau
Those hobos stuck it to the status quo
Sowing turbo-boosted embryos
Row after row, seeds of indigo
On the fast track to tomorrow
Little exploding rainbows
Tuned to the new age pirate radio
The age-old show to end all shows
And we’re all coming on for a cameo
Hopping from fiasco to fiasco
By freight train or UFO
Openly incognito
Not your usual superheroes
The League of Intergalactic Hobos
Who you gonna call? You have to know...
Who you gonna call? You have to know...
Grimy vagabonds of voodoo
Inked with tattoos of Stygian blue
On a rendezvous to the usual snafus
At the basement of Twenty-Three Skidoo
Where new planes of existence debut
Some of you’d faint from the fumes of that brew
Truth you can’t help but misconstrue
Over yonder where the coo-coo flew
From Sirius to Timbuktu
Hopping from fiasco to fiasco
By freight train or UFO
Openly incognito
Not your usual superheroes
The League of Intergalactic Hobos
|
||||
2. |
Dharma Map
03:51
|
|||
Where'd I go? Where did I go?
I went to see the guru
To score some destiny
Just enough to tide me through
‘Til I could fix my color TV
Said to me you must be new
For I have seen you before
And if you truly had a clue
You’d back right out that door
But we’ll toss darts at your chart
If you’ve nothing else to do
Maybe you’ll start to fall apart
Maybe get hooked on the glue
I come in pieces
All over the place
A hamster on a wheel
A rat in a race
Oh guru won’t you reveal
The fate written on my face
All wrapped up in my dharma map
Looking for a new tale to chase
I sat baffled in that tiny shrine
It wasn’t quite what I’d had in mind
No signs of any grand design
Indeed no guide of any kind
I tried to take it all in stride
But I didn’t know what to think
Was I being taken for a ride
Or was the map in invisible ink?
Well, we stared at the wall for a while
As I struggled not to blink
Finally the guru cracked a smile
As I turned a brighter shade of pink
I come in pieces
All over the place
A hamster on a wheel
A rat in a race
Oh guru won’t you reveal
The fate written on my face
All wrapped up in my dharma map
Looking for a new tale to chase
Said maybe this you’ll understand
You venture into unknown lands
That map is drawn by your own hand
So don’t ask me “what’s the plan?”
Right then I knew that we were through
This cat didn’t have anything new
So I stumbled out, mumbling and blue
To see about getting a better guru
I come in pieces
All over the place
A hamster on a wheel
A rat in a race
Oh guru won’t you reveal
The fate written on my face
All wrapped up in my dharma map
Looking for a new tale to chase
|
||||
3. |
Strange Loops
06:08
|
|||
I had this thought inside my head
What would happen if I said:
I had this thought inside my head
And I wondered what would happen if I said
What I am about to tell you is true
But what I just said is a lie
Just go ahead and think it through
It’s a knot which won’t untie
I found this Escher in Pandora’s Box
Under piles of mind-bending paradox
Time-traveling grand-father killing clocks
Irresistible forces and immovable rocks
It was an Escher, but not just any Escher
It was a sketch of Escher as Escher does
Dig, it was an intricate picture
Escher drawing every Escher that ever was
There seems to be no way to know
If you can really know what I mean
If you’ve ever spied the spiral glow
Or even seen what I call green
We’re a story told in alphabet soup
With just enough ink to link the chain
Just a group of strange strange loops
That the void could not contain
Yes, Escher drew a time machine
Functional in every way
Illustrating in reiterating scenes
Whatever he drew on that day
It was a nested set of images
Showing Escher as a spectator
Considering infinite visages
Of the self-generating creator
My first thought was to dive right in
But the second was more clever
So I grabbed my collection of Escher’s prints
Without a third thought whatsoever
Well, he didn’t seem surprised when I arrived
A tourist on a trans-temporal hike
But when he saw what I’d brought along
Oh, hell, M.C. Escher dropped the mike!
Vat have you done? He demanded of me
This intrusion is unauthorized!
You have broken the laws of causality
And violated my copyrights beside!
There seems to be no way to know
If you can really know what I mean
If you’ve ever spied the spiral glow
Or even seen what I call green
We’re a story told in alphabet soup
With just enough ink to link the chain
Just a group of strange strange loops
That the void could not contain
The strangest part is this living thing
Hardly seems natural at all
Strings of code self-replicating
On this suspiciously habitable ball
Which comes first:
The thought or the word
The seed or the tree?
The egg or the bird?
What sounds do they make
If none are heard?
What vision is seen
When the blueprint is blurred?
Now, what I’m about to tell you is true
But what I just said is a lie
Just go ahead and think it through
It’s a knot which won’t untie
There seems to be no way to know
If you can really know what I mean
If you’ve ever spied the spiral glow
Or even seen what I call green
We’re a story told in alphabet soup
With just enough ink to link the chain
Just a group of strange strange loops
That the void could not contain
I had this thought inside my head
What would happen if I said:
I had this thought inside my head
And I wondered what would happen if I said…
This statement is false
That statement was true
There seems to be no way to know
If you can really know what I mean
If you’ve ever spied the spiral glow
Or even seen what I call green
We’re a story told in alphabet soup
With just enough ink to link the chain
Just a group of strange strange loops
That the void could not contain
|
||||
4. |
Gonzo Bonkers
04:43
|
|||
Ha ha ha ha Hollywood
Ha ha ha ha Hollywood
Ha ha ha ha Hollywood
Hollywood’s gone awful green these days
If you listen to all the stars
Well, they sure are busy recycling scripts
While blowing up all those cars
Stick that round peg in a square slot
Oh, it’s a fam-iliar routine
Then they break out the inkblots
And ask you what they mean
But they don’t know what’s true
Anymore than you or I do
And those shrinks, they haven’t a clue
What the sky looks like to me or you
Wait, which guy?!!!
Entertain your visions in seclusion
They’ll call it a raving mad delusion
But get enough other kooks to join in
And all of a sudden they call it a religion
I’m a tad mad batty I must admit
Why deny it if the straitjacket fits?
Well, life’s a joke and we’re the butts
So not being crazy would be a little bit nuts
Always the offbeat oddballs
On the cusp of innovation
Say, maybe losing your marbles
Is the real secret of salvation
They say madness turns to genius
After fermenting for a generation
So in twenty years, more or less
We’ll redeem your certification
Oh, we’ve gone Gonzo Bonkers
The Coo-Coo done flew over
Ten miles off our rockers
And running rings around our keepers
Entertain your visions in seclusion
They’ll call it a raving mad delusion
Get enough other kooks to join in
And all of a sudden they call it a religion
I’m a tad mad batty I must admit
Why deny it if the straitjacket fits?
Oh, life’s a joke and we’re the butts
So not being crazy would be a little bit nuts
They say that I should abide the law
Not sure I get the point
Of abiding uniformed bandits
Out to stick hippies in the joint
We’re supposed to all feel terrorized
Let them rifle through our rights
But what causes me insecurity
Is getting groped to catch a flight
And it’s the greatest emergency
If the bankers don’t get paid
The sky will tumble upon us all
If their bonuses are delayed
Talk about conspiracies
And they’ll label you confused
Everyone’s got a conspiracy theory
Fluoride, vaccines, the chem-trail blues
Lizard people or the Illuminati
Yes, the details are a little spotty
When psy-ops masquerade as news
The only question is whose
Channel you choose
Entertain your visions in seclusion
They’ll call it a raving mad delusion
But get enough other kooks to join in
And all of a sudden they call it a religion
I’m a tad mad batty I must admit
Why deny it if the straitjacket fits?
Yes, life’s a joke and we’re the butts
So not being crazy would be a little bit nuts
|
||||
5. |
Velvet Valley
05:04
|
|||
Going up? Going up?
And going down...
Going down to the velvet valley
Where syrup streams come to swell
Going down to tickle my fancy
And to tickle yours as well
Diving deep in quivering caverns
Imbibing the nexus of ecstasy
Sugar-soaked flooded cisterns
Overflowing with fantasies
The secret of Nature
It’s on the tip of my tongue
It’s on the tip of my tongue
It’s on the tip of my tongue
Going down to the velvet valley
And I’m off to ring that belle
The kind that chimes luxuriously
Coaxing nectar from the well
Sipping milk of paradise
At the mouth of the sacred river
I weave a circle ‘round her thrice
So she knows I come a giver
The secret of Nature
It’s on the tip of my tongue
It’s on the tip of my tongue
It’s on the tip of my tongue
Well, they call it the Tropics
‘Cause it’s steamy hot and wet
And as far as a topic
That’s as close as it gets
Going down to the velvet valley
That’s where I’d rather dwell
Drinking all day that lovely honey
That tastes of royalty for a spell
Peeling back cloaked veils
The epicenter trembles and quakes
I barely dare exhale
As the velvet valley shakes
Ninepence in the pocket
Muffin up a canoe
Stirring up the jampot
Dripping with honeydew
Scaling Venusian mountains
Turning a blind eye to sight
Awash in Cyprian fountains
Wading through jewel-boxes of delight
Well, they call it the Tropics
‘Cause it’s steamy hot and wet
And as far as a topic
That’s as close as it gets
Climbing up the plum tree
Puddings in a ring
Sweeter than any candy
The confectioner might bring
Licking the night physic
Merging converging nerves
Frantic and spasmodic
Along hyperbolic curves
Well, they call it the Tropics
‘Cause it’s steamy hot and wet
And as far as a topic
That’s as close as it gets
Trouble comes a-knocking
With a twisted mistletoe sprig
Double-backed beast bucking
In a furious Paphian jig
It’s a venerable monosyllable
A veritable cascade
A source as inexhaustible
As the way we all were made
Well, they call it the Tropics
‘Cause it’s steamy hot and wet
And as far as a topic
That’s as close as it gets
Going down to the velvet valley
Where syrup streams come to swell
Going down to tickle my fancy
And to tickle yours as well
The secret of Nature
It’s on the tip of my tongue
It’s on the tip of my tongue
It’s on the tip of my tongue
|
||||
6. |
Shamboozled
04:23
|
|||
You’d never guess it from their tattered jackets
Four shadows sharing the glare
How they rode skyward chariots
And vaulted the moon on a dare
Well, I tell you, it was a sordid affair
How the clown confronted the crown
And both of their heads came tumbling down
Oh, go ahead and laugh
We’re a four-panel cartoon
Carried away in a hot-air balloon
Y’all be singin’ a different tune
When we’re mining diamonds all over the moon
You’d never know it from their signs and seals
Dilated eyes and visionary zeal
Spaced-out trails and quantum tangles
Loose use of phrases and estimated angles
Winding threads where the point evaporates
You’d never know they haunted the underworld
And crashed the pearly gates
Oh, go ahead and laugh
We’re a four-panel cartoon
Carried away in a hot-air balloon
Y’all be singin’ a different tune
When we’re mining diamonds all over the moon
So many variables to be shamboozled by
You’d never know it from the grit of the nitty
You’d never guess from the thick of the thin
All the worn-out grandeur and grime
Serving both shallow and sublime
Platinum-plated platitudes adorning our ears
Vying to be the ones that live on through the years
Is it the glint or the glimmer you follow?
Is it the voice or the silence you heed?
Where do I sign up for a leader
Who leads me and leaves me to lead?
Yeah, you might have thought otherwise
If they told you they even had a clue
Of what I’m telling what I’m telling to you
Never mind the teller, it’s the telling that’s true
Oh, go ahead and laugh
We’re a four-panel cartoon
Carried away in a hot-air balloon
Y’all be singin’ a different tune
When we’re mining diamonds all over the moon
|
||||
7. |
Mondegreen Stew
04:29
|
|||
There's more here, there's more here
There’s more here than meets the ear
More than anyone understands
Like an old story told fourth hand
The only constant is conversion
Everyone hears a different version
Pass it on, pass a ton
Past a one, past we won
It’s the Universe at the end of the restaurant
Where food for thought is easily bought
And chaos ordered anew
Serving misheard Mondegreen stew
Topped with poached portmanteaus
Battered earslips and eggcorns to dip
With a side of mangled malaprops too
There was an out-of-the-way cafè
So I wandered right on in
At once the audio buffet
Triggered a sense of recognition
I was offered a selection
Of sweet admonitions
Served with hot-cross puns
And double-shots of expression
There were troubadours in the rear
In the midst of an open-mike session
A parade of moron lessons
Misbegotten ballads
In rapid succession
Tossed word salads
Litanies of confession
And sea-soaked shanties
Of salty insurrection
It’s the Universe at the end of the restaurant
Where food for thought is easily bought
And chaos ordered anew
Serving misheard Mondegreen stew
Topped with poached portmanteaus
Battered earslips and eggcorns to dip
With a side of mangled malaprops too
This one sings out lull-a-byes
And we all shed a tear and sigh
That one slings barbed lampoons
Slick and dripping with crude
This one came with steam to vent
Scalding with bristling rage
Squeezed between broken laments
Mourning the darkness of our age
This one grumbles gritty blues
Woe woe woe a world of bad news
That one wails tales of mutinies
Betrayals by bygone buccaneers
Someone hails victories
Trumpeted in yesterday’s lore
Someone thunders the wonder
Of tomorrow’s rising roar
It’s the Universe at the end of the restaurant
Where food for thought is easily bought
And chaos ordered anew
Serving misheard Mondegreen stew
Topped with poached portmanteaus
Battered earslips and eggcorns to dip
With a side of mangled malaprops too
|
||||
8. |
Betty's Attic
05:19
|
|||
Betty never shirked never shirked
No, Betty never shirked, never shirked
No, Betty never shirked a day of work
She was the picture of the perfect clerk
She knew at the Bureau that mum’s the word
No matter what secrets might be overheard
She never typed off-key or misplaced her smile
Misspelled a memo or lost a file
Bosses came and bosses went
She outlasted thirteen Presidents
Betty played the undercover charade
As half a century slipped by
Mysteries mastered and history made
While her unwatched eyes spied on the FBI
Precious treasures collecting dust
Up in Betty’s attic
Alien alloys that never rust
Up in Betty’s attic
A month would not be nearly enough
To catalogue Betty’s attic
You wouldn’t believe even half the stuff
Up in Betty’s attic
Up in Betty’s attic
Up in Betty’s attic
Betty knew the name of every agent hired
Baked cakes for the burnt out, fired and retired
She knew what every coded message meant
And all the hidden passages in the vents
The closets where skeletons lay interred
How the bugs were wired to catch every word
She was the Bureau’s pride and joy
But Betty was a mole on a deep cover mission
Moonlighting covertly in the employ
Of the Arcturian diplomatic delegation
She also drew paychecks from the Romulans
The Dogons the Vogons and the Greys
If you had Sirius means, Betty had the way
Precious treasures collecting dust
Up in Betty’s attic
Alien alloys that never rust
Up in Betty’s attic
A month would not be nearly enough
To catalogue Betty’s attic
You wouldn’t believe even half the stuff
Up in Betty’s attic
Up in Betty’s attic
Up in Betty’s attic
Betty collected her own evidence
Her paranormal stash was beyond immense
She had artifacts dated centuries hence
Souvenirs from all sort of impossible events
She had Bigfoot’s very rare little toe
Road maps of Atlantis and orbs that glow
Half a dozen chunks of pure Philosopher’s Stone
A fortune in uncut Kryptonite alone
Cursed monkey’s paws and Loch Ness jaws
Wizard’s wands and vampire fangs
Vintage vinyl from the final
Concert Eurydice and Orpheus sang
Six pickled pairs of angel wings
And an array of automatic boomerangs
When Betty was found without a breath
Her collection passed to Goodwill and dispersed
What they never knew was that it wasn’t death
She’d only transferred to another Universe
So if you closely encounter something strange
Shimmering on your thrift store shelf
It’s worth at least a pocket full of change
To snag some attic stash for yourself
Precious treasures collecting dust
Up in Betty’s attic
Alien alloys that never rust
Up in Betty’s attic
A month would not be nearly enough
To catalogue Betty’s attic
You wouldn’t believe even half the stuff
Up in Betty’s attic
Up in Betty’s attic
Up in Betty’s attic
|
||||
9. |
||||
Codified bridge from beat to hippie
A rudderless vessel of psychedelic discovery
Unclean machine of perpetual perversity
Transiting altered states and cities
Fueled by sweaty adrenaline
And wanderlusty audacity
Skin blistering with palpitating authenticity
Oozing sexuality and howling holy obscenities
Under an umbrella of numinous luminosity
Scribbling notes along the envelope’s edge
Twinkling between the rock of a twisted fix
And the hard place of standing still
A high wire daredevil driving a tight rope
Reading I Ching and levitating twenty steel tons
Another wild mad dash Furthur up highway 1
Burning benzedrine, LSD, and destiny
Bearing Dean Moriarty’s On The Road legacy
Scraping handlebar guardrails
Rambling through every rubber-burning turn
Bopping to the beat of a different apocalypse
Seven-pointed star with lightning lips
Careening through rag-tag jazz manuscripts
Reeling off an unseen screen
Switching scenes between half a dozen twisted flicks
Behind the wheel of the big reveal
At the helm of the bus that launched ten thousand trips
Well, Cowboy Neal was a curious cat
A cameo character with a craning neck
Jaunting through panoramic habitats
Hand dealt from the underside of the deck
Rolling out the film in reverse
Drunkard orphan hitching the skids
Toward the outskirts of the Universe
They say feline lives number nine
Cassady ran through them three at a time
The first third flying by at high velocity
The second third the reborn bon vivant of literary immortality
The third third cut short by the fall of a curtain call
Yeah, the third third of that cat’s tale
Well, that didn’t happen at all
Feline lives, they come in nines
But how many railroad ties
Is it to the end of the line?
It’s the question that killed Neal Cassady
What glitters in the corner of all I see?
Past yesterday’s unfettered artistry
Behind the rat-a-tat patter of the acid test barker
And wry grin of the irrepressible skylarker
Rapping off a scatter-shot branched narrative
Dripping with hedonism and vainglory
It’s the metastasized story of a reformatory refugee
Chasing an insatiable curiosity
Well, they say curiosity is what killed the cat
But, baby, satisfaction is what brought him back
Hey, get a load of this sensational sensation
Groove on that wonderstruck unstuck vibration
Hang up those hang-ups and grab the phone
There’s a call for you from the great unknown
Notions in motion on waves of maybe and let’s see
The core of Aporia, the glory of all that happens to be
Boundless novelty over yonder horizon
A maze of labyrinthine amazement
Accumulated cumulus clouds cushioning the seering Sun
Under myriad piercing gazes conjuring allegorical fantastic events
Crystallized visions dug up to resurrect
Sights and sounds and synesthetic scents
No mind left unblown
No line left unbent
Dig it, digits, with opposable thumbs
Jutting out to beckon whatever may come
Wrapped up in tarpaulin folds of undertow
And tidal flows of who knows where it’s gonna go
Packed in the back of Serendipity’s pick-up jalopy
Following the fortunes of random roadside processions
Cosmos shattered through dew-drop prismed progressions
Unlocking spectral rainbows trapped inside indifferent infinity
Sun-spun cycles of last chances and first impressions
Melodies plucked from moaning droned tonalities
Unfolding untold golden eternities
Electrified steel-wrought mechanical dreams
Stoked on the steam from locomotive combustion
Meeting each moment beneath a scalding stream
Of quantum kinetic connotative implications
Multi-faceted visceral crystal-shard rings
Trembling in orbit around Cassady’s question
Ripping the fabric of the grace-slime continuum
Sinless, schizo-maniacal saint of the strange
Marking space, time, and novel conundrums
Across whatever remains of the vanishing free range
Psychedelic skipper sailing through the Big Dipper
Seekin’ All Seeken All….
Was it ultimately the quest
Or just the ultimate question
That finally did unkneeling Cassady in?
Oh, the question that killed Neal Cassady
How far to that city he would never see?
They say feline lives number nine
Cassady ran through them three at a time
Chasing that terminal curiosity
Notions in motion on waves of “maybe” and “let’s see”
The core of Aporia, the glory of all that will ever be
Feline lives, they come in nines
But how many railroad ties is it is it is it
How many railroad ties is it to the end of the line?
Well, they say curiosity is what killed the cat
But, baby, satisfaction is what brought him back
And so the question came and went
No mind left unblown
No line left unbent
|
||||
10. |
Reset
04:53
|
|||
High mojo in the hole
Heavy spells getting sprung
From the bottom of my soul
To the tip of my tongue
It’s been quite a blast
Still ringing in my ears
One last call for the past
Coming through loud and clear
Well, who I’ve been
Is wearing thin
Serpent shedding another skin
Go ahead, hit the reset button
And start
And start
And start all over again
Farewell you forlorn fantasies
Dreams from disappearing years
Lose the you who used to be
Slip into a brand new gear
Shells of selves chipped away
Collapsing walls within
Clearing out all the yesterday
So tomorrow can start to begin
Cause who I’ve been
Is wearing thin
Serpent shedding another skin
Go ahead, hit the reset button
And start
And start
And start all over again
Start and start and start over again
Draw a deep breath and descend from ten
Ten powder-kegs of dynamite ignite
Nine novas erupt in the night
Eight awakenings crackle in dawn
Seven sibyls speak and then they are gone
Start and start and start over again
Trace time back through its origin
It began, it began, oh I lost count
But very long ago by all accounts
Everything happens but who knows when
So start and start and start over again
Start and start and start again
For we’re still in initiation
On the wings of incantations
For dreams in generation
Spring-loaded cobras ready to dance
With any who dare to take the chance
For who I’ve been is wearing thin
Serpent shedding another skin
Go ahead, hit the reset button
And start
And start
And start all over again
Yes who I’ve been is wearing thin
Serpent shedding another skin
Go ahead, hit the reset button
And start
And start
And start all over again
|
||||
11. |
Live Forever
01:55
|
|||
If you want to live forever, you gotta talk real slowwwww....
|
||||
12. |
||||
"Hey, let's get the band back together!"
"Great idea. Uh, which band?"
"The band from the future. You remember."
"Oh, yeah."
"The Mobius Band."
"The imaginary band."
"The band that hasn't been banned yet."
"The incredible delusion we're about to entertain."
"We'll get our imaginary friends to play in it!"
"I dunno. Most of my imaginary friends don't really believe in me."
|
Air Lift Underground California
This is not a test. This is an assonant incident with cognitive dissidents.
You are
Excited!
I'm the gasbag.
And I'm the basket case.
Rising to the moon on a hot air balloon-
Flying by at the speed of sound-
Over your head and beneath your contempt!
Wait, did you say "auditory hallucinations"?
... more
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