The Most Important Thing - The Hold Steady

Yeah, and when the band played Sally Cinnamon

It felt like 1991 again

Didn’t get into them too early in

But I still got into them

Right now that seems like it’s the most important thing

That’s the thing about Gideon

And that’s just a little bit about so many things

He knows too much about certain things

He knows some guys who know some Latin Kings

Right now that seems like it’s pretty much the only thing

We’re baby birds with broken wings and we sing

Yeah, we sing unity songs but the scene’s still splintered

We’re stretched thin and we’re stressed at the seams

And we dream

Yeah we dream like screen, but we’re still out of focus

Sure, we know it’s just showbiz

It still seems to surprise us

When they hook us by the mouth and pull us up

And then they try to fry us

That’s the thing about Charlemagne

He got all washed up in the amber waves of grain

Roughed up in the bars and the bluffs

Tangled up in the double dutch

You know he drank too much, he never really ate enough

It was so, so sad, with Charly in a sick bed

He looked like hell and smelled like chemicals

Maxin' out on medicine and feelin' all invincible

ICU in Regions Hospital

It felt so cool with Holly at the bus stop

Yeah, we could feel it comin' through our arteries

We’re runnin' low on energy and nodding off in reverie

Faded blues in Memphis, Tennessee

The Mississippi River always holds it all together

Yeah, we sing unity songs but the scene’s still splintered

We’re stretched thin and we’re stressed at the seams and we dream

Yeah we dream like screen, but we’re still out of focus

Sure, we know it’s just showbiz

It still seems to surprise us

When they hook us by the mouth and pull us up

And then they try to fry us

Done a pretty good job of fryin' ourselves, I think

As she goes blastin' static — Music from the Big Pink

Stumbled into the foyer and pulled the bookshelf over

Yeah, we were drowning in the literature

Bram Stoker hit your head

Ginsburg hit your dick

A big black Bible hit your head

And that’s how we got born again