Black Crow Road

 

 

'Ever the consummate storyteller, James Griffin knows how to craft a setting and weave a tale. He draws upon life as he has experienced it, spices it with a sense of occasion, and then presents it wrapped within a unique brand of eloquent urban folk...'
Brett Leigh Dicks, Beat Magazine

 

After four years performing and recording with the Subterraneans, James put that band on hold and recorded Black Crow Road. The aim was to make an intimate, acoustic, almost ambient album woven around vivid lyrical pictures and stories, sung or spoken within simple, catchy and hypnotic musical settings. The music is created from an unusual synthesis of alt- rock, folk and minimalist avant-garde sounds and textures.

The album showcases acclaimed Australian musicians, James Black, Piano (RocKwiz Band, The Black Sorrows, Mondo Rock); Paul Gildea, guitars (Icehouse, James Reyne Band); Tony Floyd, drums (Vince Jones, Things of Stone and Wood, The Black Sorrows); John McAll, piano (David Chesworth Ensemble, The Black Sorrows, Vince Jones); and James on voices and various guitars.

Recorded by Paul Penton at ABC Studio and by Simon Polinski at his legendary Laundry Goat Studio. Mastered by Simon Polinski.

Black Crow Road is available on the James Griffin Store. The CD is also available at all James' performances or through MGM Distribution.

Moon Over Melbourne

There's a moon
High over Melbourne
I've got my ticket, got my suitcase and my keys
There's a telephone and a deep blue horizon
And the telephone rings unanswered through the trees

I said, Goodbye
Goodbye Mister Winter
Won't you take your frosty feet away from my door?'
There are diamonds, diamonds on my windscreen
They're just teardrops of the sky, nothing more

Well I've always
Been a dreamer
I can't help it, I'm just waiting on the mail
And all my friends, they gather round to remind me
How sometimes I meet my obligations and sometimes I fail
Sometimes I fail

So I'm looking to the sky
For some inspiration
For a signal, for a portent, for a clue
I'm not looking for forgiveness or absolution
I'm just holding out for one more dance with you

And there's a moon
Sailing over Melbourne
And it's slipping like a coin into the sea
And I'm wishing
I'm wishing on the ocean
When the moonlight is on the water, hold on to me
Hold on to me
Hold on to me

 

Voodoo Dreams

I travelled down weird streets of prayer
In an American car with wire wheels
And white walls
Nico was in the car with her long blonde hair
And her chandelier
And this leather clad kid
with a bag of weirdness and save our city
And don't you hold out on our love don't
you hold out on our love
don't you hold out.

I've got a voodoo dream

Down Weird Streets of prayer
On horseless wheels of blind Detroit
I ride the rattling bones of sudden death
Crows fly between my eyes
And hammer at my window in fractured codes of silence
And the Shadow Gangs
with their black sombreros
And their hexes and their pals
And their mouth organ tunes come drifting into town
on the lonesome junkyard train
lonesome junkyard train
lonesome junkyard
Voodoo dream

I was not holy
With my secret jazz
And my jukebox and my face
I was going down swinging
And train from town to town
on the saxophone steel moon
And pass by boarded up windows of sad tunes
blind and forgotten
like who's who?
where the rich kids play hobo
And always go home
And yes we jump the outward bound freight train
And ride the rattling bones
ride the rattling bones
ride the rattling
Voodoo dreams

Voodoo dreams and a rusting car
Voodoo dreams and a black guitar
Voodoo dreams, who do you love
Voodoo dream, weird streets of prayer

My eyes are a lost railroad
And my face is the wind and sandpaper schedule of trains
blown howling through skeleton weatherboard bones
And my sand blasted signal box scull stares out on broken rails
And my heart beats my sun bleached skin
drumming distant and spectral and holy
laughing in the early dawn
down weird streets of prayer

down weird streets of prayer
I've got a voodoo dream

 

A Picture Of Phar Lap

I was born in the small town of Corryong
It seems like a lifetime ago
My father he just loved me dearly
Gave up drinking when I was seven years old
And he used to like a bet on the horses
Just a dollar each way, win or lose
And he used to smoke too much tobacco
Well I guess it was his poison to choose

And I had a little cardboard Don Bradman
Scored runs off an old ping-pong ball
And I was brought up to remember the soldiers
From the First and the Second World War
And it's funny to think of a whole generation
Their savings in an old coffee tin
Sincerely believing that their circumstances could alter
If a racehorse came in

I've got a picture of Phar Lap
It hangs on my wall
And it keeps all my troubles away
It was cut from a magazine by my grandfather
And it keeps me from waking up shaken up
And slipping away

My father's name is Frank Griffin
He's gone twenty years now and he's buried in Carlton
I don't go up there as a rule
I prefer to remember him rolling a cigarette
And showing me how to cut wood
It's fair to say most people loved him that knew him
And he died much too young and it's sad
To think that he never saw Bob Menzies' funeral
Or Collingwood win the 1990 flag

Sometimes I take a train to Wodonga
Hear his voice in the wheels on the rail
Saying, 'Jamie, it's a hungry old country
Out here where the gold rushes failed
And sometimes of a Sunday me and Kate and the kids
Get a tram to the Melbourne museum
And we stand there and look at that great big red gelding
And we wonder at the spirit revealed

I've got a picture of Phar Lap
It hangs on my wall
And it keeps all my troubles away
It was cut from a magazine by my grandfather
And it keeps me from waking up shaken up
And slipping away

 

Sacred Things

I've been all the way up river
with a monkey on my back
A tin of coins and a twelve-string in my arms
And the things that seem most sacred
are the things that never last
And a broken heart is just a false alarm

Sacred things
Sacred things
Sacred things that you keep
Somewhere between your ribcage and your spine
Sacred things that whisper just before you sleep
And they carry you
as round this world you go

She put one hand on my shoulder
And the other hand to my cheek
Said, 'Of course there's something sacred in a kiss'
On the broken railway platform
At the end of the working week
Somebody's CD Walkman sings, 'You must remember this ..'

Sacred things
Sacred things
Sacred things that you keep
Somewhere between your ribcage and your spine
Sacred things that whisper just before you sleep
It's a wicked world
but on and on we go

From phone boxes on the highway
I could feel your heart in mine
As I called you up from all those little towns
Somewhere south of Sydney
Gone west of a previous life
But you're with me now
And arm in arm we go

Sacred things
Sacred things
Sacred things that you keep
Somewhere between your ribcage and your spine
Sacred things that whisper just before you sleep
It's a wicked world
but round and round we go
And you're with me now
as arm in arm we go

 

The Days Of Muhammad Ali

There's a devil in the graveyard
On the silent midnight wind
Tombstone angel riders ride the ruined road again
Banshee visions dog my days
They haunt me like a curse
And so it is that paradise goes from bad to worse

Flowers for the filthy rich
Sunglasses for the free
Nobody ever would have dreamed of this
In the days of Muhammad Ali

She had Karma Sutra poses
Tattooed up and down her spine
And a candle lit to a silver spoon since 1979
Her tombstone eyes
The cold wind cries
Around her hollow face
And so it is that paradise is robbed of her embrace

Flowers for the filthy rich
Sunglasses for the free
Nobody ever would have died like this
In the days of Muhammad Ali

I don 't want to believe
That the cocaine trail is where your money grows
And meanwhile, south of Panama, they 're getting beaten up with a rubber hose
Nobody ever would have fell for this
In the days of Muhammad Ali
And so it is that paradise make s me want to leave

I 'm giving you my haunted heart
As I descend the hill
These visions stood before me there
They stand before me still
Way out in the wilderness
The bells of freedom chime
And so it is in paradise you get so lost sometimes

Flowers for the filthy rich
Sunglasses for the free
Nobody ever would have told you this
In the days of Muhammad Ali

 

Black Crow Road

I don't know how it happened
I was travelling light
I was blinded on the freeway
Slipping in and out of the car headlights
The moon and the ocean
They were begging me to drown
I was thinking about perpetual motion
I was thinking about heading back to town

But I was already on the crow road
It's true to say I know that now
On the black crow road
Where the dead and the living still connect somehow

I don't know how to explain this now
It was just a little dancing sideways step
I opened my eyes to a hard blue sky
And my childhood self in the driver's seat
Familiar fingers on the steering wheel
Like weathered branches or my father's hands
Skeleton trees on a cold sky
And out across the paddocks there's a windmill going round and round and round

On the crow road

I dream myself hitch-hiking still On the black crow road
Driving in the shadow of the burial hill

And when I say I was travelling light
I mean I was a prisoner of my own flight
The muse and the beloved of my own song
The life's work of my imagination

But on the crow road
There is no time for self-regard
On the black crow road
Our little life is dust among the stars

It's easy to see where the metaphor lies
In a black clad bird's unblinking eye
Far too cunning for the trap or the gun
And they call them a murder when there's more than one

Some of us believe that the dead travel with us
Some of us do not believe
They give no warning, they do not tell us
Leave us wondering how to grieve

We can't understand when the living leave us
Those who cannot carry on
We offer the future but they don't believe us
And the past is a reminder that they've lived too long

On the crow road
Three undertakers on the telephone line
On the black crow road
The dirt road of silences and signs

What kind of Pilgrim's progress
Could leave man so low?
What kind of acquiescence
Sets us apart along this stony road?

Hand us down that slide guitar'
Sing the crows and the bones
'Who will tell the mysteries here
Who will sing the ashes home?'

There's a heart of stone in the history here
We do not care for the suffering soul
And what has become of the beautiful boy
The gifted boy from years ago?'
He left us here when he'd lived too long
And all I can offer is this inadequate song

On the crow road
I can hear the bottleneck slide
On the black crow road
Drifting down the darkening sky
Drifting down the sheltering sky

 

No Requiem For The Shadow Gang

There's sign on the door saying, 'stripper at four'
And the Shadow Gang ain't around no more
I can't drink here, I can't stand the pain

There's a cowboy junky and the sailors call
Dancing with a dolly where the shadows fall
Heaven is a one way ticket on a southbound train

And the girls are all blonde and they look like you
The girls are all blonde and they look like you
Talk about a man with a rose tattoo
You can kiss him in the corner
You can kill him too
But we're the Shadow Gang
And we don't die for you

There's a fist and a face and a bloodshot moon
And a honeymoon bottle and a two-bit tune
And the black out waits and the ships are all at sea

There's a moon in the gutter and a telephone dial
And the Shadow Gang, we go out in style
And the kerosene lantern burns on the Circular Quay

And the girls are all blonde and they look like you
The girls are all blonde and they look like you
Talk about a man with a rose tattoo
You can kiss him in the corner
You can kill him too
But we're the Shadow Gang
And we don't die for you

When I die my head will roll
Like a dollar in the gutter to save my soul
And the railroad pony is dancing in the skeleton rain

Thank you for the money and the vodka and the gin
Thank you for the bottle and the mandolin
Thank you for the pain of being born again
In the red light quarter of the vanishing overnight train

And the girls are all blonde and they look like you

 

She Believes In Elvis

He used to sing Love Me Tender
In the one-horse-town hotel
On Saturday nights when he wasn't driving interstate
Now he's ten years overdue
And the hotel is closing too
But she still thinks of him as just a little bit late

Way out yonder in the back of the dusty back roads
Where the rain never falls
And the children play in the wheel ruts and stones
And the lights coming over the hill
They're blinding him still
And the stars burn out and chill you to the bone

But what can I tell you except she believes in Elvis
And on the mantelpiece his photograph grows more like the King each day
She will comfort you
Like the saints in the prayer book used to do
She will pray for you and never fade away

The young men from the valleys
And the little towns and farms
Come calling and they're hoping
Of course

But what can she possibly say
To boys like this on their wedding day
Who've been nowhere and done nothing
More or less

And what can I tell you except she believes in Elvis
And on the mantelpiece his photograph grows more like the King each day
She will comfort you
Like the saints in the prayer book used to do
And pray for you and never fade away

She knows the shape and feel of loss
And the taste of a prayer to a difficult god
And the painful re-creation
Of the soul re-made in stone

Where smoke and lightning congregate
And the blackened skyline hollows you
She's the mistress of her own rebirth
And her breathing heart is in you

So she walks you to your vehicle
In the dry grass by the temporal gate
Should she be some shrine on the highway side
Or touch your face in the dashboard light and leave you
Mysteriously renewed.and leave you mysteriously renewed

 

Suburbs Of The Heart

Falling out of aircraft
On compulsory swimming pools
Geometric shopping centres
Mums and Dads and schools
This is where it happens
There is no second start
Existence from a distance
In the suburbs of the heartbr/> In the suburbs of the heart

Where re-runs follow re-runs
And relations reappear
Crawling from the wreckage
Of a thousand packaged tours
And dogs bite and neighbours fight
And rumours stop and start
And nature strips are poisoned
In the suburbs of the heart

Where supermarket complexes
Make interesting friends
And weddings follow funerals
Follow the long weekend
And taxis cruise the avenues
And parties never start
And private fears are souvenired
In the suburbs of the heart

Where the check out girls used to check you out
And leave you in the dark
In the back seat at the drive-in
Where the P-plate drivers used to park
Reconstructing love affairs
You wonder, 'is this art?'
And it's pornographic postcards
From the suburbs of the heart

Where no one is making money
Well at least no one I've met
I used to think it funny
When I was drinking to forget
And No-one gives a flying fuck
What time the future starts
In one armed bandit boulevards
In the suburbs of the heart

Where heroes never fail you
Where heroes don't exist
And days go by like husbands
with an absent minded kiss
And the hostess with the mostest
Who is too polite by far
Kills the conversation
In the suburbs of the heart

And the phantom FJ Holdens
Cruise the freeway and the dance
Like Elvis Presley monuments
To a Rock and Roll romance
And no one plays the jukebox
Records never chart
And the last twin-carbied Falcon
Drives away from the suburbs of the heart

Cradled in the loving grace
Of every known appliance
Permanent amnesia
Is a form of self-reliance
We wait for things to happen
Relations fall apart
Existence from a distance
In the suburbs of the heart

 

Weird Streets Of Prayer

The nightmare boys with the gasoline
The cigarette lighter and the smoke machine
Kings of metal and the kings of speed
Kings of the strychnine lsd
Running blind in the promised land
Hand in hand with the right hand man
Come on baby don't you be no square
Take a little walk down streets of prayer
Down weird streets of prayer

Living it down, living in sin
Drinking from a bottle of Bombay gin
Drowning in the fever, never get saved
Dancing on the table top, dancing on the grave
Breaking into hotels, breaking my voice
Going downtown to see the Dum Dum Boys
Come on baby don't you be no square
Take a little walk down streets of prayer
Down weird streets of prayer

Talking in your sleep walk, sleeping at the wheel
Walking on the water in your high high heels
Working on walking like a Cadillac car
Stepping like a razor in the waterfront bar
Call my number, call my name
Walk like a wedding but no one came
Come on baby don't you be no square
Take a little walk down streets of prayer
Down weird streets of prayer

Washed in the water-wheel, prayer-wheel face
In the gasoline alley in the paradise place
Walking in the body of the pouring rain
Smuggled into town on the junkyard train
Safe as houses, beware, beware
The kings of nothing are the kings down there
Come on baby don't you be no square
Take a little walk down streets of prayer
Down weird streets of prayer

Come on baby don't you be no square
Take a little walk
I said who knows where.