Barry Andrews: Lyrics to "Haunted Box of Switches"

Haunted Box of Switches:
God's Gardenias / Faded Flowers / Licking Honey From A Razor / Awake Too Long / Contract Song / Incredulous / Queen's Beast / This Big Hush / Going Through The Old Diary / Down The Pyramids.

All songs published by Copyright Control except 'Faded Flowers' and 'This Big Hush' published by Point Music Ltd.

All songs written by Barry Andrews except 'Faded Flowers' and 'This Big Hush' written by Dave Allen, Barry Andrews, Martyn Barker and Carl Marsh.

Lyrics reproduced with permission (and help!) from Barry Andrews.

• God's Gardenias
  
  

  Please see lyrics to Having A Moment.

  The solo version has two tiny variations in the lyrics, i.e. 'walls like a tissue' and 'smiles on me and mine'.

• Faded Flowers
  
  

  Please see lyrics to Oil & Gold.

  The solo version has one tiny variation in the lyrics; it says 'we have to learn these things' instead of 'we have to do these things.

• Licking Honey From A Razor
  
  On the terminal drop with the wind in your face:
  Pleasure is something you shouldn't confuse with a time and a place
  On the 25th floor-shouldn't try to make sense
  Gravity's something with nothing to prove
  And the smells are intense
  
  In a blue moon
  On a high tide
  On a rough night
  There's a bright side
  Licking honey from a razor
  Licking honey from a razor
  
  Blend with the mob-with their furious eyes
  Walk in their sleep you can read 'em and weep
  You can fear their disguise
  Take it all to the crows at the end of the day
  But the angels are here and they're holding your hand every step of the way
  
  There's a loose latch
  On the fire door
  There's a night bus
  you can wait for
  Licking honey from a razor
  Licking honey from a razor
  
  Venus in Chains-I have watched her at night
  Holding it back with my head in a sack in the Palace of Light
  Ended in tears and indelible stains
  I know what you mean and I hear what you say but I'd do it again.
  
  On a short fuse
  In a tight spot
  It's a tuff call it's a long shot
  Licking honey from a razor
  Licking honey from a razor
  
  On the storm cloud there's a bright line
  In a stopped clock there's the right time
  Licking honey from a razor
  Licking honey from a razor
  Licking honey from a razor
  Licking honey from a razor
  
  
• Going Equipped
  
  

  Please see lyrics to Having A Moment.

• Into The Coal-hole
  
  (instrumental)
  
  
• Awake Too Long
  
  You know the Rats of Invention got my attention
  Rustling beneath the stairs.
  There is some big ugly bastard - screaming and plastered -
  Who has got me by the short and curly hairs.
  There are some bad sticky feelings - pinned to the ceiling
  Paralyse me all night long.
  I haven't looked at a pillow for a million years:
  I been awake too long.
  
  Living on carrots: nocturnal parrots
  Is what we have now become.
  My reason's gone for a burton,
  Chewing the curtains,
  Saying yes to everything that comes along.
  We discuss nuclear fission - make up some new religions.
  Put my mother's knickers on:
  I haven't bitten the duvet since I don't know when.
  I been awake too long.
  
  So very wasteful
  Massively distasteful
  Nothing stays where it belongs
  A lurid subjugation
  Too much information
  Got the big strip lights and they're all on
  We have some special devices-used by the army -
  Take 'em out and strap 'em on
  Morpheus has pissed off he don't come round here
  I been awake too...
  I been awake too...
  I been awake too long.
  
  
• Contract Song
  
  Now the towers have fallen, I will decide
  Whether my complicated lust outweighs my pride
  And in the meantime tell me (if you would be so kind)
  Whether all that stuff matters anyway to the broken and blind
  Another sticky little deal coming down the line
  And won't you tell me Where do I sign?
  
  Bring out your Pimms and beer, your Purple Haze
  Bring forth your bouncy castles and your canapes.
  An endless summer out on the lawn.
  Thank god we're white and middle-class in this new dawn
  All the legal-aid lawyers are friends of mine.
  If this is the only deal in town where do I sign?
  
  My crimes are many; my virtues few.
  I believe in so little and so do you.
  My pockets are empty, my cards are full
  Life is a psycho-matador and I'm the bull.
  It's terrifying but I feel fine.
  If this is the only deal in town where do I sign?
  
  After the watershed, after the Fall.
  Here at the end of everything I will recall
  How the minarets glittered in the morning sun
  And how the little children played: laughing as they run.
  I didn't even bother when she robbed me blind
  If this is the only deal in town where do I sign?
  
  Ah you know sometimes this is what we find
  It's the only deal in town
  It's the only deal in town
  Where do I sign?
  
  
• Incredulous
  
  They said that he was terrible, that he rode the bogus train
  That he fucked the monkeys like in the film though they changed all of their names
  And he had a sheep sewn into him for a bet in Singapore
  I don't believe that, I don't believe that, I don't believe that any more
  
  They said he feasts on sodium and that he has an iron brain
  And his book of head lice magnified did very well in Spain
  That the bull head god of boiling things he wrestled to the floor
  I don't believe that, I don't believe that, I don't believe that any more
  
  They say he was the slack guru and that he wore the poisoned vest
  And that he danced the brick balet in black Sophia's dress
  And that he crashed the bishop's bash dressed as a dinosaur
  I don't believe that, I don't believe that, I don't believe that any more
  
  They hold these truths self-evident, impossible to ignore
  I don't believe that, I don't believe that, I don't believe that any more
  Well apocryphal is not the word, it's bullshit to the core
  I don't believe that, I don't believe that, I don't believe that any more
  
  
• Queen's Beast
  
  I fought the beast in the bottle
  I lived the life of the mind
  I put my head in the oven
  I wondered what I would find
  I shook the claw of the devil
  I looked him right in the eye
  I been tumescent and flaccid
  Done Aspro and acid
  I climbed the old believer's mountain for a purer high
  
  I been society's mirror
  I walked the criminal line
  I had monocular vision
  In the Land of the Blind
  I been a walking museum
  I washed the feet of the poor
  I studied the classics back in the Jurassic
  I had a thousand nights of sodom with the babylon whores
  
  I am the Queen's Beast; I am a Tap Root
  I am a Bean Feast; I am the God's Truth
  
  I had a classical column with a Corinthian spin
  I sailed the waters of culture
  With two sheets in the wind
  I ate the Salmon of Knowledge (avec la Sauce Hollandaise)
  I milked the Holy Cow
  Don't even ask me how
  Sucked the bosom of Eve in a kind of mystical way
  
  I am the Queen's Beast; I am a Tap Root
  I am a Bean Feast; I am the God's Truth
  I am the Steel Claw; I am a Clean Break
  I am a Fire Door; I am a Big Cake
  
  
• This Big Hush
  
  

  Please see lyrics to Oil & Gold.

  The solo version has quite a few minor lyrical changes compared with the original. There are too many to detail them all here, but all should be fairly clear. Ask if you're stuck.

• Going Through The Old Diary
  
  (instrumental)
  
  
• Down The Pyramids
  
  (indecipherable)
  
  

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