To let you know that Andy has posted three songs from his 1992 album Out There on Youtube.
La Rue Beaurepaire is his love song for Paris, so after the events of last November 13 he wanted to pay tribute to that beautiful city and a moment in time he spent there.
Speechless was written after Andy’s 1990 North American tour with Hothouse Flowers, Part Two after the first Gulf War in 1991. Both of these events left him speechless – and still resonate today.
The Colour of Love was posted as a tribute to Mudd Wallace, who engineered and played electric guitar on four of Andy’s early albums. Sadly, Mudd passed away in December 2015.
Out There, which won Irish Times Album of the Year and Andy Hot Press Songwriter of the Year, is difficult to find – except in our website shop of course.
As a result of posting ‘Speechless’, we’ve been asked to include the lyrics. You can find them in Andy’s first book of poetry and lyrics The Music Of What Happens, or I’m attaching them below. There are too many to include in the info box on Youtube!
Have a good 2016 – from both Andy and myself,
SPEECHLESS
In Montréal
where Europe meets America
I saw Leonard Cohen’s house
and that was good
and since it was the festival
there were jazz bands playing on the street corners
like I knew they always would
and a surrogate sister
she took me in her arms and said
‘Hey Andy, welcome to the New World’
I was speechless
In Toronto
there’s the longest street in the world
and on it I found a place called
‘The Beat Bookshop’
I went in to buy a 25¢ trash novel
it was called ‘Stranger in our Midst’
and round the corner
in an electrical store
an old man looked me in the eye
said ‘Son, you look speechless’
In Boston
where everybody wears red socks
I met some lost and lonesome Irish boys
they thought if they left home
fast enough
they could find their own voice
but as the ship sailed out
into the harbour
Flower music playing
I saw their homeland in their eyes
and I was speechless
In Philadelphia and Washington D.C.
the driving seat of this whole big country
I saw the endless horizons
parcelled up real neat
and delivered as a skyscraper in a street
and the homeless queueing
outside the White House for food
and the black guy selling matchsticks
in the hotel lobby
left me speechless
New York heat hit me late one night
going down the convenience store
with Big Stevie for a beer
something about the subway steam
and the way cigarettes never taste
the way they do round here
and the guy playing a drum kit
in the back of a hip-hop bus
and the rappers down on
6th Avenue and 13th Street
left me speechless
Rain swept the orange boxes
on the Chicago street
a bright shiny city all covered in lights
and a clean girl from the Mid-West
told me it’s so good
they didn’t need to name it twice
and a second city wind
blew from across the lake
I had a bottle of wine for Bobby’s sake
and I was speechless
San Francisco
stretches itself out on the side of a hill
with white walled houses
and open top minds
that night we played a gig at Slim’s
there were crazy hitchhikers, a ballerina and wheelchair Jana
me and a bunch of Flowers
staying up late
not a mile from the Golden Gate
by the morning we were speechless
An old railroad diner
an Italian restaurant out in Santa Monica
driving a Pontiac Firebird right hand side
the gunshots the glitter
and the greasepaint
cruising Beverly Hills
and North Maple Leaf Drive
suddenly she showed up in her shoulders and that Elizabeth Taylor look
I thought I’d read the answers
now l’ve thrown away the book
I was speechless
The time we hit Texas
our Irish skin was nearly fried
and we saw the faceless place
where in 1963
they said America died
me and Liam in a diner
they thought our accents
were outrageous
even though we were speechless
Last stop was Atlanta
so so deep in the South
the sky was clouding over
and the music came tumbling out
the phone rang like something from a cable movie scene
calling me home
from that American dream
speechless
Speechless
in the airport lobby
speechless
my life on a trolley
speechless
a lump in my throat
speechless
like the letters I never wrote
The night came dark
the moon turned black
the rain fell up and the wind blew back
I was speechless
The night came dark
the moon turned black
the rain fell up and the wind blew back
I was speechless…
Just now I saw the bloated belly
of a starving child
matchstick arms and an old man’s eyes
he’d watched his family slowly die
sitting on a skull too weak to cry
in some forgotten corner of Africa
they said foreign aid was dropping because of the war
I was speechless
Watching TV till late tonight
since the bulbs were gone
it was by candlelight
the room was dark
the moon turned black
the rain fell up and the wind blew back
every ten minutes flashing on the screen
were the bloody banners of the American war machine
I was speechless
And the President pleading
support the war
won’t somebody tell me
what we were fighting it for
speechless
•
The horror
the horror still hasn’t got through
to command posts
where Generals suck pencils
and order steak
and where TV crews on leave play cards
The ship of hope is still moored
in its harbour
while we set sail as Willard’s crew
into darkness
headed for its terrible heart
and the horror
now so easily attainable
Did no one die on Flanders field,
or not enough at Agincourt?
Were there too many people
left alive in Dresden
for blessèd memory to forget?
Take us now
and take our young men
down into the deep
where young men before them
have suffered and died
dreaming of their mothers
and a better life back home
Take us now
for another late 20th century sacrifice
we’ve seen before,
those horrified faces
still stare out
of backwoods forests in the USA
lost forever in the horror
Maybe in years to come
Gulf survivors will stalk the deserts
seeing dead comrades’ ghosts
amidst the burning sands
So it’s all aboard Willard’s ship
all aboard
and no one’s screaming stop
and no one chooses to remember
the horror
For we are the hollow men
our heads stuffed with straw
The light fades
till we’re deep in the darkness
and we drop
The light fades
till we’re deep in the darkness
and we drop
Speechless
