Intro G C D G C D
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There used to be a café a few blocks away,
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Open seven days, called “The Brilliant Mistake”
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Where a crow-haired girl with scarlet lips
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And slender hips served up coffee and cake
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On a crackling stereo the ghosts of Sun Ra,
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Charlie Parker, Miles and Coltrane blew
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I’d kick back in my chair, that sweet honey’d jazz in the air
D
The sun shining through
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It was the nearest thing to hip
Am
It was the nearest thing to hip
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In this shithole… and it’s gone
G
It was the nearest thing to hip
Am
It was the nearest thing to hip
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In this shithole… and it’s gone
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G
Everywhere that I go I see streets that are low
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On distinction and high on the banal and the bland
G
How did we get to this? We plumbed the abyss
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By the twisted grace of the law of supply and demand
Am
Well, there’s no use crying and no use sighing over
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Stone, wood, wire, glass and cement
G
But there’s a little record store with a wooden floor
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That ain’t there no more that I used to frequent
G
It was the nearest thing to hip
Am
It was the nearest thing to hip
C D G
In this shithole… and it’s gone
G
It was the nearest thing to hip
Am
It was the nearest thing to hip
C D G
In this shithole… and it’s gone
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Now I need to get out of this.. hullabaloo
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And I remember an old-fashioned bar that I once knew
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With an old-fashioned barman wearing old-fashioned clothes
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But when I get there.. it’s been bulldozed
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So I follow my nose down Comatose Lane
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Through the stripped back, ripped up wastes of Woebegone Square
G
Till I find myself on Deadbeat Street,
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My feet beginning to ache, despair in the air
Am
The only thing bright in this blighted town
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Are the billboard adverts everywhere displayed like mocking shades
G
And the musty, dusty second-hand bookstore
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Is now a scum-encrusted amusement arcade
G
It was the nearest thing to hip
Am
It was the nearest thing to hip
C D G
In this shithole… and it’s gone
G
It was the nearest thing to hip
Am
It was the nearest thing to hip
C D G
In this shithole… and it’s gone
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.. and it’s gone
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