The Jason Philip Fiefdom EP Lyric Sheet

1. The Priest He Ain't

Les visiteurs du soir (Marcel Carné, 1942)

It couldn’t have been all that great had you been his mate to watch Chet Baker disintegrate, the scintillating sounds impounded and all world renown downtown with the last of the petty cash walking toward the blackjack table with a cyanide capsule under its tongue and no sign of the chosen one or his cummerbund—the t-shirt that says: “I Went Flaccid at Lake Placid." Winter is even more cold when you are even more old. Tempting though temptation may be, don’t throw that bucket of crude oil at me. Compulsive though the impulses may me, shut your mouth at once and don’t you dare scream. We’re on the same team. Don’t make me mean. You make me mean when you make me mean, and now my own tautology has tipped me over into a blind rage. When I told you I feel more like a lesbian than a heterosexual man that’s mostly because of the magic I can do with my hands. In the Jason Philip Fiefdom we don’t ask to see your documents or papers, we just memorize your face and liquidate you later. Should I be relayed for rest and relaxation that don’t means I get no satisfaction. The whole point of being potentate is to have a great big motherfucking goose on your plate and whatever all else one might require to satisfy the palate entire. We’re building a moat and drawbridge to keep out the human foam. Home is where the human jetsam is kept at bay. Home is electricity.

2. Grunt Work

Underground (Emir Kusturica, 1995)

Well, by God, there it was, the voice of Randy Bachman, reflecting on the legacy of Ronnie Hawkins whilst absentmindedly strumming his acoustic guitar while I’m being waterboarded in an empty warehouse in Qatar. The last I recall I saw Lauren Bacall heading with rue into the Petroleum Highway ball with identical twins, one on each arm. It does not seem to me like I remember much, you see, but Jerry Lee Lewis was there with his little cousin and far be it from me to serve in the function of Morality Police, but if your grandmother’s church group catches wind of this scandal you’ll quickly see you’ve chewed off more than you can handle. I’m going to tear off your tiny t-rex arms and put them on my mantle. I don’t have anything against torture, per se, but I’d like to get up and leave if you’d just kindly look away. Ever since I saw the movie Psycho I can’t get in the shower without sucking on a lightbulb and get alarmingly into the jets whenever I’m alone in the hot tub. War, graffiti, mischief, and trauma, and that’s all the fuck I’ve got to say about that, your honour. Nobody likes a rat. Think of me as like Eazy-E with his baseball bat. If at first it does not go your way collectivize the factory and increase the pay. When nobody remembers your birthday just remember that you are nobody too anyway, with symptoms akin to the flue and the eyes of someone who’s just eaten a whole tube of glue while riding the Merry-Go-Round at the Sarajevo zoo where who’s who depends on your allegiances and the colour of pin you wear on your rugby jerseys. I’ve got twice the wisdom at a third the cost, and there ain’t no use bragging ‘cause I sleep on a blood-stained cot. On Bingo night I wake up a hundredfold. I’ve got all the old ladies’ names writ down in my portfolio. 

3. The Baroness is Not a Piece in Chess

La vie est un roman (Alain Resnais, 1983)

Why all the opprobrium, everyone, over a harmless little opium emporium? The zoning regulations would appear to permit it and my harmless son Jeffery is the sole legal tenant, a talented lad but I’m afraid permanently unrepentant, got him a malevolent penchant, done beat work so long with the P.D. that he’s got his dukes up seeing every single street corner in 4-D, wearing kevlar to the neighbourhood bar, loose 40-caliber shells rolling around in the trunk of his car. What’s he riding? He’ll be riding your aluminum siding, running for election in your riding. Roxanne, goddamn, put on your red light already, the seas of decadence shan’t sail themselves like several thousand translucent elves, clanging Scandinavian bells, survivors of a sea disaster gather marooned around a Fender Stratocaster. Lord, when I said “get me out of here,” you know perfectly well that this isn’t what I meant. This is she and he and me, the baroness and Jeffery and me and whenever Jefferey’s hungry he abruptly punches somebody, so I take a good long look at all and sundry, bow to the baroness in due deference and commence to waltz across the room into the cool stone tomb of yesterday afternoon, hung drawn and quartered, the quarterly lampoon flung open by the spittoon. Chloe in the afternoon? I wouldn’t count on it anytime soon. 1001 Dalmatians playing Halo on they PlayStations. In heaven lovers play leapfrog by a placid pond with a wise old frog who blows bubbles with his ornate pipe. In heaven everyone is animated in the patented Walt Disney style!

4. Terror Terrier 

Nightmare Detective (Shinya Tsukamoto, 2006)

If you were the reigning sovereign of this or that dominion, like Winnipeg, Saskatchewan, or the Compound of the Branch Davidians, Mount Carmel Center, Waco, Texas. Sorry, is it okay to talk about this over breakfast? I remember how bad you got the shits over Bexit, all the taps running from both exists. I write you a sonnet least when you doggone expect it and make the freeway with a hop, skip, and invective, bilocated to Shinjuku as a nightmare detective. I see the bartender has a skull tattoo. I bet we’d hit it off if she’s had a few. Nothing new. If I have to drive this far up Crowchild to meet them, these girl aren’t gonna be my girlfriends. It’s the living end. Am I John Barrymore on a train or is this a plasticine pretend? Amen. Swive them from areshole to maidenhead for all I care. The terror of the terrier loose in your area. Look, little missus, my snout ain’t about bein’ in your business no matter how loud you shout. The secret to the mystery of man is that his soul is in a tin can in an abandoned weather station in Thailand. Something glandular this way cometh. I’ve got a hard-on and a bible and over five hundred unread comments. I’m not the arbiter of laws at all. Not even in the Jason Philip Feifdom. It’s not that kind of racket, son, does not require jacket or tie. Laws are treason.

XOXOXO