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Unreleased songs: G – L

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not yet annotated

Table of contents

Garbage Eaters

not yet transcribed

Get High and Listen to the Cure

not yet transcribed

Going through Pomona

not yet transcribed

Going to Brazil

not yet transcribed

Going to Bridlington 1 2 3

Stopped by for the coffee and cake that you promised
Saw your porch light on
Saw your wire-haired terrier 4
Lazing on the lawn
Came right in through the front door
Went right down the main hall
Turned right into the kitchen
There you were, all right

The moon was rising over Bridlington
And you had blood all over your hands
Someone was singing in the yard next door
And you had blood all over your hands

Sat down on the kitchen floor
Looked up at you
Saw you smoothing down your skirt around your thighs
Wondered what good that was supposed to do
And I saw you pull your hair back
Saw you messing with your earrings 5
Saw you trying to smile
Hey, you don't have to smile for me

The moon was rising over Bridlington
And you had blood all over your hands
Something was cracking in the rafters of our house 6
And you had blood all over your hands
The moon was rising over Bridlington
The moon was rising over Bridlington
The moon was rising

Going to Buffalo

not yet transcribed

Going to California

not yet transcribed

Going to Dade County

not yet transcribed

Going to France

not yet transcribed

Going to Malibu

not yet transcribed

Going to Palestine

not yet transcribed

Going to San Diego

not yet transcribed

Going to Some Damned English City

not yet transcribed

Going to Spirit Lake

not yet transcribed

Good Morning to All Vultures

not yet transcribed

Greasepaint Friday

not yet transcribed

Green Olives

not yet transcribed

Hail St. Sebastian

not yet transcribed

Heel Turn 1

not yet transcribed

Hello Sarah

not yet transcribed

High School Confidential

not yet transcribed

History of the Church (Part 1)

not yet transcribed

Hommel West

not yet transcribed

[Horse and Master]

not yet transcribed

I Meant Every Word I Said in New Delhi

not yet transcribed

[I Might Compare]

not yet transcribed

I've Got the Sex 7 8 9

Crushing strawberries one by one
Watching the juice drip down
Four and a half 10 months ahead of schedule
The leaves on the trees were turning brown
We got ready for winter as the sun rose up in the sky
There was something almost soothing in the hard to define
Note of terror in your eye

Watching the strawberries lose their shapes
As the wind blew through the elm tree
The wind was far too cold for the middle of April
And you reached out your hand to me
It was good to have your hand in mine
It was good to know you felt the chill too
I scooped up a palmful of strawberry pulp
And smeared it all over you

The wild strawberries drove me on
As I lapped them up off of your skin
And I could feel your basal body temperature rise as the cold came in
Hey hey

If England Were What England Seems, Then We Would Only Have Our Dreams 11

I told you I was never coming back
I was trying to breathe evenly
When the phone stopped ringing for the first time in a long time
And you flashed that smile at me
And then you opened up the window
I felt the air roll in
In the place where the world stops forever
In the place where your body begins

You were staring down at the street below
There was nobody there
They'd built a fire down there in the alley
I saw the fires rising everywhere
And then you opened up the window
The north wind began to blow
We were just a few short hours from something really special
And I heard you singing soft and low

Hey

In the Cane Fields

not yet transcribed

John 4:35

not yet transcribed

Kittens in Mittens

not yet transcribed

[Let Me Go]

not yet transcribed

Let the Dogs Come Out

not yet transcribed

Letter from a Motel

not yet transcribed

Like a Bullet

not yet transcribed

Love Superhighway

not yet transcribed

Credits

Thank you tremendously to Austin Campbell, who transcribed and annotated I've Got the Sex, as well as transcribing If England Were What England Seemed, Then We Would Only Have Our Dreams. Similarly, thank you to Sam Duncan for transcribing and annotating Going to Bridlington.

As always, thanks to the superlative Caliclimber, whose Flickr pages provided essential information and release details.

Footnotes

  1. John has said multiple times that he doesn't like this song:

    "I have no love for this song because I think it blows esp. the lyrics are plenty lame but am happy if people are getting pleasure from it."

    Mountain Goats forums, Going to Bridlington, September 22, 2008, retrieved June 17, 2015.

    "Now, you know, I'll tell you the truth, it's that I don't like that song, but I'll play it, if you want to hear it. ... I mean, I'm gonna play this song, that I don't like, but — I get into it anyway. <plays song>

    "I mean, let me tell you why I don't like it. It's like, it seems like a decent enough idea, but when I hear the chorus, it just sounds like the laziest little placeholder of all time. It just sounds like, 'Yeah, I know, John had an idea, but he was so anxious to get the second verse of it — yeah, we'll put some blood on the hands in the chorus and we'll come back and fix it later'. But then, I was on a radio show that day, and so I went and played it. Well, then, once you play it on a radio show, then it's set in stone and you must play it the same forever, otherwise you suffer in Hell for eternity, and — this is an obscure provision of the Bible that you guys don't know about, but I'm here to tell you about it — radio shows and playing songs the same way. So yeah, so that's what happened with that one. One of these days I'll fix it, maybe, after I retire. It'll be my hobby — you know, some people woodwork? I'll iron out the choruses of songs that were denied the good choruses they deserved." — Attucks Theatre, Norfolk, March 20, 2009 ↩

  2. Going to Bridlington is part of the Going to ... series. ↩

  3. Bridlington is a town in Yorkshire, England. ↩

  4. Likely referring to a wire fox terrier. ↩

  5. Also sung, "Saw you look toward me", and "Saw you tie it together". Olde Club, Swarthmore, April 21, 2001; Attucks Theatre, Norfolk, March 20, 2009. ↩

  6. Also sung, "Someone was kicking at the floorboards underneath". Attucks Theatre, Norfolk, March 20, 2009 ↩

  7. "It's about that moment at which you pass from thinking that maybe it's all right to trust somebody that you were pretty sure was gonna do wrong by you, but you think you've gotten past all that... to knowing that they'll to kill you for sure. And getting excited about that. You know, feeling the love in that. — CBGBs, New York, New York, July 23, 1999

    "So there you are, in your room, and you're not by yourself though you feel as though you are. And the same thing is going on in your intended's mind, but nobody's saying anything about it, because a lot of people, including the people in this song, think, you know, 'If I just don't say anything, then magic will happen and everything will change.' Nothing will change. The only thing that's gonna happen is that they're going to fall back into a old behavior pattern. And for somewhere between 20 minutes and 3 hours, depending on how much they've had to drink, it's going to feel really, really intense. But then afterwards it's a bad situation. — Will's Pub, Orlando, Florida, April 9, 2003

    "This is a song about a moment that all of you are gonna come to sooner or later and I want you to think of me and curse my name when you do." — University of Wisconsin–Madison, June 12, 1997 ↩

  8. "This was supposed to be the first song on Sweden, but when I got to the John Golden mastering place it turned out that the song — the tape that this song was on — I had left it at home. So you might say, 'Oh, we'll add that in later'. That was not the Mountain Goats style in 1995. Our style was, you show up and you use the tools you brought with you. So we made the second song [The Recognition Scene] the first song, and this one was sent down to perdition and the ignominy of just being played live." — Swedish-American Music Hall, San Francisco, February 28, 2016 ↩

  9. I've Got the Sex is part of the informal series of outtakes. ↩

  10. Also sung "two and half". See for example University of Wisconsin–Madison, June 12, 1997. ↩

  11. "This is part of a new series of songs — tonight is its world debut! They are songs that Graeme Jefferies and I are working on. This one's just by me, though. I expect at some later date Graeme will do something with it." — WNUR session, January 18, 1996

    "It's part of an eight-song cycle that never made it past the planning stages." — WNUR session, March 8, 2002

    I'm not aware of other songs written collaboratively with Graeme, but if you are, please reach out!

    Graeme Jefferies is a Kiwi musician who toured with John in the early days of the Mountain Goats. He played in The Cakekitchen, Nocturnal Projections, and This Kind of Punishment. ↩