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To download from Bandcamp
Limited edition double pack released December 2007
Special limited edition double pack includes the 16 track compilation Black:CV (see here for more details) and a previously unreleased live recording from the 2007 tour entitled Road to Nowhere.
The live recording is now available as a name-your-price download on Bandcamp.
A note from Colin about Road to Nowhere:
Thought it was time to share this: the tour was done months ago and I’ve thought a lot about it since. Thousands of miles driven, many uneatable meals eaten, strangely improved designs of hitherto grim hotel chains but with a corresponding downward turn in quality of service (seemingly in inverse proportion to the design)! Standing ovations in crowded backwaters whilst sometimes half empty halls in city centres rang to the lonely applause of die hards only.
I’ve thought a lot about it all. I’d forgotten what it was like and it had been some time since I did a tour of this nature for so long. Sometimes it seemed like way too long; I didn’t HAVE a wife and kids to miss before! Time I could never get back.
I learned a lot.Best of all I relearned the most important thing of all: the playing of the music is the end in itself.
The road leads nowhere that you can’t predict.
But the faces of the people I met after shows told a different story. They reminded me of why I still go to concerts, the hope of once more exiting the venue feeling 10ft tall and full of life, vitality, inspired. More than I was as I entered. I guess were I to stop feeling that way I would stop playing.Welcome to the Road To Nowhere
CV
Album credits
With big thanks to fellow travellers for going as far as you did:
Calum MacColl for his fiery and eloquent guitar playing, and singing and for standing shoulder to shoulder with me all the way.
Pete ‘Pepe’ Dale for his rivers of bass and passionate harmonies.
Jay Irving for his rhythm and cracking us up the whole time (crash bang wallop what a drummer).
Rick Vearncombe for watching all of our backs, getting us where we were supposed to be (thanks also to Map Bitch) and generally being brother to us ALL. Love you kid.
Lyrics
Everything is Coming Up Roses
You don’t believe me, I can tell it by your eyes
There’s a kind of magic, to be had from your lies
I used to say that today
Is like tomorrow
Don’t sell it short for truth
I should have known should have known should have known how
I should have known I should have known by now
You don’t understand it, I can tell it by your smile
There’s a kind of freedom, to be had from your lies
I always said that today
Is like tomorrow
Don’t sell it short for truth
I should have known should have known should have known now
I should have known I should have known by now
But everything’s coming up roses, coming up roses, coming up roses
But now everything’s coming up roses, coming up roses
Baby Come out of the Rain
Angel with your head down in a storm
I know the lonely place you’re running from
So have I got to tell you
It’s alright to start again
Say when and baby come out of the rain
You’ve been inside your head for far too long
Come live inside your life before it’s gone
I know you want to tell me it comes on like a tidal wave
Hold tight and baby, come out of the rain
I’d pull down the sky for you
Try all that I cannot do
And I’d steal a line from “angel eyes” as we sit and watch the water rise
Counting as you break the ties hold angels to their wings
Angel with your heart turned inside out
There’s no silent running in reality
You’ve got to let your number count
And though it’s like to choke you
And comes on a like a hurricane
Walk straight and
Baby, come out of the rain
Quinn’s Old Flame
she met him nearing easter with the
flowers coming through and
the rains start to recede
the sky to turning blue
she met him as a lover
the finder to the spark
he met her as the latest
lonely question mark
and so he wonders how he get here
and he wonders what he’ll be
he calls it fate, he calls it destiny
take any road and it ends the same
not strong enough to choose her he is
quinn’s old flame
he loved her in the abstract
each of her body parts
he loves her still: at night
he draws a mental chart
(and) puts the parts together
and smiling to himself
he draws her to him, he draws her to him
he wished he was handsome
or at least well read
that his name was rock or rocky
t-bone or red
he calls it what he wants gives it a thousand names
a born again loser he’s quinn’s old flame
he entertains a dream
of putting down some roots
in every place of business that
he’s passing through
he can’t forget what they could have been
she liked him as he came
quinn’s old flame
Sweetest Smile
I think my heart must be made of clay
Cause everyone said it would be broken some day
And now I’ve come to that fateful day
So I sit on the floor with my head in my hands
And don’t tell me how to make it pay
I write a new song every day
I just wish I was made of wood
I might not feel pain even if I should
Even if I should
The sweetest smile that ever did
Melt the pats in the butter dish
And if you could have believed in me
I swear to God I’d have made damn sure
Our hearts were warm, and gald with wine
I’d keep the doors locked all the time
I just wish I was made of wood
You might not seem glad, even if you should
Even if you should, if you should
I think my heart must be made of clay
Cause everyone said it would be broken some day
Seems that I have come to that fateful day
So I sit on the floor with my head in my hands
With my head in my hands
Even if I should, if I should
Charlemagne
Blind barking Bobby he can rage
The red mist come down and take centre stage
And if he could see he’d knock you down
And he may yet if you stick around
The sunlight only happens when he dreams
The cold light of day is how it’s gonna stay
Some thing’s only happen ’cause it rains
It takes another kind for taking up the strain and
Be Charlemagne
He’s looking out not looking in
Don’t have to deal with where you’re looking
One more human face to fill your mind
And where the shadows fall…
You dare not find
Her Coat and No Knickers
You told a few lies and they came back on you
So you told a hundred more until she came back to you
But she only stayed a while
Just long enough to say the kind of things left to be said
In the cold light of day
And she smelled of Xmas trees, coffee and vanilla
Calcutta after snowfall, she’s no-one’s stand in mother
But I drifted into her like I could run myself aground
And keep her smiling at the sight of the blackness spilling out
And I don’t mind if you don’t care about it
I’ll get by without her arms around me
As long as I can sit on my own
In her coat and no knickers
I believe it doesn’t matter
So don’t look at me that way
Like I should notice how you look at me that way
That’s just the way you look when you look at me that way and I believe it
doesn’t matter
At least not much anyway
I never dreamed I could be lost in a place I know so well
But I was running on the spot in the darkness ’til I fell
And then pulling off my clothes I want to step out of my skin
And paint a tattoo on my heart that shows an arrow
Pointing in
Cold Chicken Skin
Shirt’s all torn and I’m lame
If I try to smile (it) hurts my face
All I hear is complaint but who left this mess on my plate?
Oh I will fade away on…watch my hair turn grey on cold chicken skin and
dog tail soup
Tell me is that all I’m worth to you?
Cold chicken skin and dog tail soup
Is that all that I bring you?
Inside out from cocaine
Got a bird on a rush in your brain
Wild eyed singing your song
Calling out my name like you’re pulling it along
Yo yo look on your face
What you got in that bag, hair and nails?
What’s that splashed on the walls?
The top half of a dog
And that’s all… !
Wonderful Life
Here I go out to sea again
The sunshine fills my hair
And dreams hang in the air
Gulls in the sky and in my blue eyes
You know it feels unfair
There’s magic everywhere
Look at me standing
Here on my own again
Up straight in the sunshine
No need to run and hide
It’s a wonderful, wonderful life
No need to laugh or cry
It’s a wonderful, wonderful life
The sun’s in your eyes
The heat is n your hair
They seem to hate you
Because you’re there
And I need a friend, oh I need a friend
To make me happy
Not stand there on my own
Look at me standing here on my own again
Up straight in the sunshine
No need to run and hide
It’s a wonderful, wonderful life
No need to laugh or cry
It’s a wonderful, wonderful life
I need a friend, oh I need a friend
To make me happy, not so alone
Look at me here, here on my own again
Up straight in the sunshine
No need to run and hide
It’s a wonderful, wonderful life
No need to laugh or cry
It’s a wonderful, wonderful life
Water on Snow
Did I sleep? Do I dream of cold, silent water
So deep and dark
And the wires are singing our song?
Our song
As we lay back and stared into cloudless skies
And the stars up there
The wires are singing our song
The wires are singing our song
Your face, now so plain, once was so lovely
A beautiful refrain, duet with stars
But your smile now in disguise became a flat line
And to never love again like you did before
Was all
Why go on with it, why go on with it?
Why, to let it flow, like water on snow?
I know what you want, what you are thinking
To drift beyond the pain and out of reach
To sit, be safe and warm inside your sorrow
And listen to the slow, slow morse tapping of the rain
But it says:
Why go on with it? Why go on with it?
Why to let it flow like water on snow?