Showtime

Showtime
Hang a guitar on my shoulder
Check the vacant drooling faces round the room
Another heartbreak battle
And I’m only getting older
Jesus help me when I say I’ll give it all up pretty soon
Daytime
Time to fight the morning’s headache
Gulp an aspirin bang together one more song
Inspiration cauterised
By years of useeless heartache
Every shallow nights reaction sounding twisted up and wrong

These last years
Years gone down to the showtime

Showtime
Try to catch the spark
That got me hooked so many years ago and died
Second-rate musicians
Feeding infantile illusions
Reading music magazines to keep the habit satisfied
Pitching
To some demographic average
What the hell he’s staying home for, I don’t see him heretonight
Thirteen years and over
Tuned to radio between the hours
Of six and seven-thirty, AM programmer’s delight

These last years
Years gone down to the showtime

I never knew it could be
So misleading
Waiting for the final song to end
In this dirty nightclub
All the souls are bleeding
Reaching for the big decision
Disco floor or television
Time and time again
You hear the so-called friends
The smug de-facto critics in their movie backdrop cities
Sneering sitdown and listen
Life’s a lonely escalator
It’s a fool who doesn’t know he has to leap off at the end
Well they were never at the guesthouse
With the ghost of Jimmy Rodgers
Watching Townsville sugar sunsets back in 1959
And they’ll all be gone when the end is come
And I’m kneeling in the backroom
Crying Lord I’m just a trouper, let me play it one more time