THE GHOST OF ROCK & ROLL and DAWN'S EARLY APOCALYPSE

MATTHEW GRIMM & THE RED SMEAR: The Ghost of Rock & Roll

NEW CD!!! THE GHOST OF ROCK & ROLL

Produced by Matthew Grimm and Jason T. Lewis and recorded at Sad Iron Studio, Iowa City, IA, by Jason T. Lewis, except "One Big Union," produced by Matthew Grim & recorded by John Svec at Minstrel Recording Studios, Iowa City. The Red Smear were: Matthew Grimm - rhythm guitars, vocals, back vocals; Jason Berge - lead and rhythm guitars; Randall Davis - bass, rhythm guitar, mandolin, steel; Bill Neff - drums; Jason T. Lewis - percussion, synth, back vocals; Nathan Basinger - B3; the sublime Sarah Cram - back vocals.

My Girlfriend's Way Too Hot For Me (words and music by Matthew Grimm)

you might have all the moves, you might be in the flower of youth
you might have girls for every day of every week
but for all the seeds you sow, there’s one thing you don’t know
my girlfriend’s way too hot for me

your stock portfolio might buy an S-type 3.0
to drive you home up to your castle by the sea
but for all the things you own, there’s one thing that you won’t
my girlfriend’s way to hot for me

don’t ask me to explain why she’s not in some club waiting
for some template dick like you to sweep her off her feet
if you saw us together you’d have to wonder whether
a god existed who could so bless a dick like me

I don’t know why she likes me, can’t be my charm it can’t be
My looks, my beergut or my judgment or my gall
Maybe it’s my socio-economic insight
That, come the revolution, sees you up against the wall

You might have all the goods the magazines tell you you should
To fill the gaping chasm where your soul should be
Not like I’m so hot, but one thing that I’ve got
My girlfriend’s way too hot for me

My girlfriend’s way too hot
(His girlfriend’s way too hot)
My girlfriend’s way too hot for me

Wrath of God (words by Matthew Grimm; music by Matthew Grimm and Jason Berge)

God’s love lives in the flowers and the trees and the rain and the storms that drown whole cities
In the toxified corpse-strewn wards where angels fear to delve
Gods love lives in the birds and the planes that soar over the forsaken of a modern day gamorrah
Looking in vain to leaders who say God says to help themselves

God is merciful and mild except all the times he’s something else
But is the fault the stars’ or the lesser angels of ourselves?

Come the wrath of God you can hide like thief
You can bray Revelation as the floodwalls breach
You can judge your neighbors as the ice caps melt and the waters rise
You can pray for the sinners who deserve their fate
While you’re living in a house made of clear-plate hate
Rubbing your crosses and waiting for the Rapture to be televised
Or you can pick up a shovel and get on the line

God’s love shortchanges schools and levees to bankroll holy wars
God made the market as his loving unseen hand
To bless the blessed and give just deserts unto the poor
In spite all these social heresies of man

God is loving, god is kind, except when he’s venal and austere
Except when that’s just the dicks who claim to have his ear

Come the wrath of God you can hide like thief
You can bray Revelation as the floodwalls breach
Blame the liberals and the queers when the food runs out and the waters rise
You can pray for the sinners who deserve their fate
While you cower in a house made of clear-plate hate
Awash in your vanities and hoping Armageddon will be televised
Or you pick up a shovel and get on the line

Cry (words and music by Matthew Grimm)

The bourbon doesn’t help, but doesn’t hurt
Not nearly like the things he told her
No words and no convenient shoulder
Can make her less alone
She thinks that love has fled, and left her wondering
If or when or how again it finds her
Not understanding that what glows inside her
Burns all on it’s own

Cry for children dying young and lying down at day’s end hungry
Cry for all those sacrificed at despots' heartless whim
Cry for lovers of young men who won’t see them again
But if he don't understand
What he let through his hands
Don’t cry another goddamn tear for him

She sways a little in the jukebox light
As the voices tell her love is all she needs
Who is she to not pay heed to
Truth so undistilled
The stuff of poets, stuff of dreams and songs unending
All sadly grandly misconstrued
Ain’t no goal, no grail, s’just the stuff we do
And what we always will

Cry for those who need your tears, who huddle nights in abject fear
For millions slaving, starving at the rich men’s heartless whim
Cry for mothers of young men who won’t see them again
But once you come know
What was never his to own
You won’t cry another tear for him

Don’t cry another goddamn tear for him

Ghost of the Rock & Roll (words and music by Matthew Grimm)

She checks her makeup in the rearview
Wonders how much time she’s got left
Her mama had such plans for that face and that man
Who’d get em in with the Gold Coast set
So she weaved and bobbed from town to job
None of em paid like workin the pole
Now she waits for the next show, sittin in the glow
Of the ghost of Rock & Roll

He drives dark roads through Lake Effect snow
Branch office to the next sales lead
Got the career and the wife, the template life
That everybody told him he’d need
Now’s he’s mortgaged to bone, home number’s on the phone
But their words have lately grown cold
So he lets it ring, cranks some punk kid singing
Through the Ghost Rock & Roll

chorus From the heart of the night, where a lightning strike can
Split the night like a sheet
Come the strains of the rage and the pain forsaken
By the lordly powers that be
All the guitars and beats of forgotten streets
She sends em out to all the lost souls
Draws her line in the sand of the vast wasteland
She’s the Ghost of Rock & Roll

80 watts of militant resistance unabated after 50 years
She says there’s realms, there’s dreams you’ve never seen because you’ve never opened your ears

She checks mail today again in vain
While she waits for the sitter to show
Gets jacked at the pump just to make it to hump some
Job barely pays what they owe
They sent him back to jihad to appease their God
To make money for some rich asshole
Now she takes the long way home, scans the radio
For the Ghost of Rock & Roll

Chorus

Hang Up & Drive (words and music by Matthew Grimm)

Get outta my way, take a train, take a plane,
you’re going sixty in the passing lane
Weaving round like a monkey on crank,
be dead right now if this car was an Abrams tank
You must be far too cool
To think society applies to you
Pull that schmuckmobile aside
And hang up and drive

chorus
Hang up and drive
You narcissistic ass, don’t need three tons of steel and glass
To call your wife
Take your own life
Just don’t do it on my time
You’ll be back to work by nine
So hang up and drive

For god’s sake would you just pick a lane
Every thought in your Crate & Barrel brain
Ain’t worth articulating
Odds are they’re pointless and inane
There’s nothing you can say
Can’t wait ten minutes or a day
Get a job or get a life
Or hang up and drive

chorus

Ayn Rand Sucks (words and music by Matthew Grimm)

She pulled herself up by her bootstraps, from the magnate schools and sandtraps of the
Gritty streets of the northshore burbs
With but her wits and her trustfund, she set herself off from the poor and dumb
Whom she would gladly kick back to the curb

See all her piercings and tattoos belie her straight conformo views as spewed by
Think tanks, Wall Street, all the rightwing thugs
She’s kinda smart but not enough, cause her facebook page lists all the stuff
she likes, foremost them Atlas Shrugged

(But) Ayn Rand sucks
She wrote really badly workmanlike and dogmatically
Ayn Rand sucks like any other high-priced whore
Ayn Rand sucks
Overwrought and deified harlequin romance scribe
She sucks so hard her jaw must still be sore

The Unseen Hand might lift all yachts
But the rest it seems to punch right in the dick
“Enlightened self-interest” is a goddamn oxymoron
Used by lazy-thinking douchebags to be narcissistic pricks

She says Ron Paul is cool, though he’d defund her hipster school
Mainlines Friedman’s fascist crap like bathtub crank
Says the cream will always rise by DNA and enterprise
But denies she’s just another Nazi skank

(But) Ayn Rand sucks
She wrote really badly workmanlike and dogmatically
Ayn Rand sucks like any other high-priced whore
Ayn Rand sucks
Overwrought and deified harlequin romance scribe
She sucks so hard her jaw must still be sore

Ayn Rand sucks
She wrote really badly, hamfistedly, dogmatically
Ayn Rand sucks beyond all circumstance and pomp
Ayn Rand sucks
If rich folks’re all so keen, what’s with the meltdowns and subpoenas
Mein Kampf by other names is still Mein Kampf

Cinderella (words and music by Matthew Grimm)

So he didn’t call so he didn’t write so he didn’t email you last night
Is he out somewhere having fun, does he know he might be the
One who saves you from being alone
With the grinding fears of a life of your own

Does he not bring you flowers for every hour absent
Does he just not get the gravitas of real commitment
To the fairy tale that every life can be
Just like you saw on The OC

Cinderella dressed in yella
Went upstairs to cry herself to sleep
Didn’t anyone tell ya Prince Charming’s boffing Buffy Michelle Gellar
And ever after’s hardly ever happily

If you ever parsed things for yourself
Maybe you would figure out that
Oprah, Cosmo, Dr. Phil,
And all the easy-answer shills they
Don’t know what the hell they’re talking bout

Dream of rosewood, potpourri, McMansions far as eyes can see
A faithful boy who lives to serve up everything that you deserve
Odds are you'll be divorced by 28
Or slogging through some loveless charade

Cinderella dressed in yella
Went upstairs to cry herself to sleep
Didn’t anyone tell ya Prince Charming’s boffing Buffy Michelle Gellar
And ever after’s hardly ever happily

Cinderella in bridesmaid yella
Went upstairs to eat ice cream and watch a DVD
Didn’t anyone tell ya Desdemona winds up murdered by Othella
So you might as well schtup me

White (words and music by Matthew Grimm)

who goes to all the adam sandler movies? who thinks Fox News is news?
who thinks lies and hate and greed are Christian values?
who joins sigma chi, bear stearns and skull & bones and the klan?
who still thinks styx, the dead and skynyrd are fuckin awesome bands?

I don’t wanna be white anymore
Turning in my NASCAR cap, my golf clubs and my gun
Does a mind dry up like a Caucasian in the sun
Or does it fester like a sore and then run
Till it runs dry

who thinks Sarah Palin's smart? who still watches MTV?
who thinks sitcoms are funny and reality shows are reality?
who deducts hookers, cooks the books and burns the paper trail?
grifted away your 401K, won't ever spend a fuckin day in jail?

I don’t wanna be white anymore
Turning in my Amstel Light, my golf clubs and my gun
Does a mind dry up like a Caucasian in the sun
Or does it fester like a sore and then run
Till it runs dry?

little bo beep has lost her flock
they’re at the mall, they're at the club sucking corporate cock
sheep in the meadow seig-heiling new tribalism
sheep in the barn watchin Idol
who buys Christian rock? who buys big-ass boats?
who shoves their motherfuckin god down everybody’s throat?
color ain’t shit, it’s just a trick of light
white people ain’t the real problem
just people acting white

I don’t wanna be white anymore
Don’t give a shit where my forebears of yours came from
Does a mind dry up like a Caucasian in the sun?
Or does it fester like a sore and then run
Till it runs dry?

One Twenty Oh-Nine (words and music by Matthew Grimm)

We need not pretend we could ever be friends
But I don’t think it’s too much to ask
That after eight years of rows and untold broken vows
You give every day of it back

You may’ve done what you thought best, but it’s conspicuous
How the inverse transpired
So with a world now in flames, I won't bother to deign to
Piss on your head if your hair catches fire
I’m normally not a mean-spirited guy
But if you got cancer I’d laugh till I cried

One twenty oh-nine the day of our new jubilee five-point-
nine billion voices and glasses upraised in the joy of your egress to ignominy
The skies will open in cool cleansing rain of ambrosia that all may partake
And next day we’ll start digging out of the wrack and the ruin you leave in your wake

I know you
won’t soon be troubled with staid self-reflection
Still a cloistered and dull trustfund kid
You’ll never be hungry, foreclosed on or held to the
Laws that hang others who did what you did

But maybe one shiny day
We’ll all see each other again in The Hague

One twenty oh-nine the day of our new jubilee five-point-
nine billion voices and glasses upraised to the end of our national ignominy
The skies will open in cool cleansing rain of ambrosia that all may partake
And next day we’ll start digging out of the sad, bloody nightmare you leave in your wake

And the next guy might well be a trainwreck but he won’t be you and that’s saying a lot
And if the myths you damned thousands by prove to be true, pray you outlive the devil and god

One Big Union (words and music by Matthew Grimm)

When the paycheck just ain’t stretchin like it might’ve once before
Cause the good jobs all are gone and left you in some bigbox store
Between food and rent and medicine, the suits just rate a whole lot more

When the bosses cut that last corner and you walk out those doors
When the truckers hauling sweatshop stuff don’t stop there anymore
When folks won’t cross your pickets cause their boat’s the same as yours
That is one big union

When the nickled and the dimed have had enough of being screwed
When they walk out of the sweatshops and the cops refuse to shoot
When the puppet regimes fall, when the World Bank gets the boot
That is one big union

They call it a labor surplus
Market-value poverty
But what if that which ye do to the least of my brethren
So you do unto me

We built the tanks and ships that
Saved a world in darkest throes
Back when young men fought for the rights of mankind
Not just some fuckin CEOs

When a simple, decent living is a right that we all share
When the suits see us as people not just assets to be pared
When they can’t just ship your job off cause it’s happening everywhere
That is one big union
When the volume of this chorus grows till they can’t help but hear
When our leaders serve the people, not just banks and profiteers
When the food and labor of the earth feed everyone here
That is one big union

That will be one big union
Come join our one big union

DAWN'S EARLY APOCALYPSE

Produced by gazillion-platinum producer Pete Anderson and Grimm’s ostensible, pro bono manager Peter Lubin — a major label A&R veteran who worked with Anderson on such past records as Michelle Shocked's Short, Sharp, Shocked — Dawn’s Early Apocalypse lays down a gauntlet of raging guitars and monster beats as a bed for Grimm’s unabashedly pointed songs. Kicking off with the hardcore rager “Kill the Poor,” penned by Grimm and Hangdogs founding drummer Kevin Baier, the album spices the meat of those guitars with blasts of flavor, from the Phil Spectoresque wall of sound of “Slut” to the jangly Sixties pop of “Hey, Hitler!” capped with Grimm’s pop-punk tour-de-force set-closer “Fuck Fuck Fuck.”

Recorded over two relentless weeks at Anderson’s Dog Bone Studio in Burbank, Calif., the record features an all-star array of musicians taking up the mantle of the in-studio Red Smear — including Anderson and Charlton Pettus on guitars, Rob Douglas on bass, Josh Day on drums, Mike Murphy on keyboards, Boo Bernstein on steel and studio stalwarts Doug Pettibone and Dusty Wakeman performing the disarming featured vocals on “Hey, Hitler!”

Christian
the young evangelist knocked on the woman's door
stirring her up from her household labors
politely he inquired if she were a Christian
politely she replied, "You'd have to ask my neighbors."

Kill the Poor
so you wear the vestments of ill-gotten legacy
bankrolled by CEOs, endowed by Christian destiny
give us empty words and flags to rally round
but the rest of it don’t seem to trickle down to

streets of hopeless faces, mortgaged and foreclosed
downsized to part-time jobs, foresaken by the HMOs
sucking up the welfare when there’s war to subsidize
and they won’t just go away if you ask nice

chorus
kill the poor, kill the poor, put a cap right in their brain
ain’t no room in Utopia for evidence it ain’t
arm the VPs, arm the soccer moms, declare your holy war
before the meek claim our inheritance you better kill the poor

ship our jobs to lands of despots and despair
repurpose livelihoods for merest pennies on the share
they ask for more, refer em to the green berets
there’s always more room in the mass graves

repave our cities as consumerist plantations
turn the cops into a martial force of occupation
mall of america, pristine and sterilized
And woe to those who can’t afford the price

chorus

Slut
They say you went with him out to the dirt road past the tracks
They say you gave to him something you could not get back
They say your reputation won’t soon regenerate
The cool kids are all talking shit, but who gives Shit One what they say

They say it ain’t the first time you broke that sacred rule
And word on the street is, that’s where you're headed after school
And, girl, how dare you live your life while they cluck and stare
Lord knows it’s everybody’s business what you feel down there

Ch
You’re a slut, so what of it
School days end and none of them mean shit
Take what joy there is while you still can
If god is love, love has no end
So how could heaven e’er forfend
A gift of water to a thirsty man
A gift of water to a thirsty man

The world don’t end at the county line and somewhere out there they ain’t so unkind
To begrudge both you and me and little heaven where we find it

Chorus

Nothing to Say
You know all those pretty words you waited for some boy to tell you
You damn sure won’t hear them from me
I’m insensitive and surly, full of liquor, wings and rage
Farthest thing from some prince charming down on bended knee

I don’t believe in marriage—and I hate kids, Sex in the City
and every movie that meg ryan ever did
What I lack in graces I make up in porn and lechery
And all the stuff a "decent human being" won’t admit

And If I was a better man I’d take the time to try to see
What it is that makes me worthy of what you see in me

Ch
Stephanie, I’m outta poetry and love songs
pissed away on futile wars and endless beers
I can’t promise you the moon or stars or hollywood endings
But I can give you now and here

I’m still tilting windmills and presidents and corporate goons
As if I had a chance but I don’t
Wish I could find the words put it all in context of world in which
Our love could conquer all, but it won’t

And if I was a saner man I’d drop my hand and fold
Sober up and act my age, problem there’s I’m getting old

Ch
Ch (sub-chorus)
I’ve got nothing to say
If I did I’d screw up at any rate
Words don’t mean anything anyway

One to Grow On
You are special, TV shows say
You are the dawn of brighter new day
But you’ll discover far too late
That everything you know is wrong

Brand names do not make you cool
Cool kids are twits and tools
Fitting in’s the worst thing you can do
Cause everything they know is wrong

Hard work does not bring success
In spite of what rich folks profess
Truth is they were born thus blessed
And everything they know is wrong

br
They lie — a web of fairy tales to kid themselves they understand
this plane of senseless horror past all rationale of god or man

The president lies through his ass
History is delusion en masse
We’re living through the Looking Glass
Cause everything we know is wrong

Your folks might try but are mostly wrong
Make stuff up as they go along
You shouldn’t even trust this song
Cause everything I know is wrong

Everything you know is wrong

Honea Path
we were the first to secede and the first to fight, shelled Sumter until it ran red
this foremost among the tales our grandaddies told
no rifles in hand, the war we fight now’s just to keep our kids clothed and fed
and them we fight grandsons of generals still live up the hill in the house with the white portico

there’s a mill by the tracks we walked into each day and worked our hands bloody and raw
now there’s barbed wire around it and men with shotguns inside
they’re brothers and cousins and uncles and neighbors and claim that they’re rebels all
and that the old men just holding their own ‘gainst the union, the one Mr. Roosevelt says is our right

ch
way down here in the land of cotton
we once dared to dream of fair work for fair pay
but the company men shot us and folks here forgot us
look away, Dixieland, Dixieland, look away

all this talk about new deals up north i can’t claim to understand
all i know is the second-hand scent of magnolia don’t feed a hungry man

they call us the pawns of the reds and the yankees, but weren’t them raised the quotas four score
now the tempers flash white and the bullets rain down from the mill
in the din and dust swirling we pull out our dying, the blood of our own civil war
rebel on rebel, one dead and one holding the dark smoking gun of the man on the hill

chorus
ch2
Way down here in the land of cotton
we once dared to dream of fair work for fair pay
But our brothers they shot us, and history forgot us Look away, Dixieland, Dixieland, look away

Saint Booze
They say these streets were paved with gold in mythic days of yore
Now the only thing that glitters here is shards
The only doors still open pawn shops and dollar stores
And random neon flicker of these churches we call bars

Times are getting better, the talking heads advise
I guess it just ain’t trickled down this far
The preachers say our true rewards await in paradise
So we find sanctuary elsewhere where communion goes down hard

Ch
Saint Booze, we come unto thy altar humble
Bearing sorrow, sin and nothing left to lose
Bless this water into beer, wash away our pain and fear
Deliver us from here, Saint Booze

Suits come out here every two years, pledge a living wage for all
But right-to-work just never made it so
We organized the factory two year ago last fall
So they packed it up and chained the doors and moved to Mexico

Ch

Armies of the Lost
Hey, Mr. Cop in your black armor
Am I such an awful guy?
Eye me up and down, finger your nightstick
Like it’s Christmas in July

Hell, I don’t know when our paths so diverged
When all the words stopped making sense
But there’s something here dividing us that’s bigger than your riot fence

Ch1
Don’t you think I got dreams like you?
Bills and a job and an asshole for a boss
Don’t you think that I want everything to work out for you and me and maybe
That’s why I’m here among these armies of the lost

Hey, Ms. Network News with the air of self-reverence, Boiling us all down to a blur
Would it be so unpatriotic just to listen to the voices yet unheard
How many died today, what wealthy men got wealthier?
Who got the latest buck passed?
How many orders go unquestioned for each question you don’t ask?

Ch2
Don’t you think that it’s my country too, and that of all these wretched refuse and tempest-tossed?
Don’t you think if you just sought the truth I wouldn’t have to come out here demanding it
With the voices of these armies of the lost

Hey, Mom and Dad America, look for us on the news tonight
The darkest of your family’s sheep
Are we any less your sons and daughters
For the lies you still believe

Ch3
Don’t you think we’re scared like you
Don’t you think at last we know what freedom costs
Out here armed with just our voices facing down the guns and pepper spray
Don’t you think we’d rather be anything but armies of the lost

Hey,Hitler!
Hey, Hitler I see your face in the eyes of every starving child
Hey, Hitler I hear your voice in every Yalie blue-blood anglophile
You may have lost the Big One, but your thinly veiled disciples run
The world in such a way I think you’d smile

Hey, Hitler you’re there in every death-squad my taxes underwrite
Hey, Hitler in every demonstration cops and armies pacify
You’re history’s greatest jerk, but the talking heads still do your work
Making Gods of blond-haired, blue-eyed girls and guys

And if there’s a Hell you’re burning, in anguish for eternity
But your spirit lives in every chanting, trust-fund baby, Brown-Shirt-esque fraternity
Hey, Hitler
Hey Hitler

And if there’s a Hell you’re burning like a million white-hot suns
But take some balm in PR people, country clubs and patriots with guns
Guns
Guns

Hey, Hitler you dreamed a global order ruled by clean-cut white men
Hey, Hitler your dream came true in Wall Street spires, if not Berlin
Making economic war on Earth’s unruly, beaten poor
A legacy of you we’re living in

Fuck Fuck Fuck
I don’t wanna know your name, your dreams or aspirations
Don’t wanna take you out on the town
This planet’s circling the cosmic toilet
So let’s fuck like screaming banshees in a plane going down

Ch1
Romance is for movies, let’s throw out all the scripts
And we'll fuck fuck fuck till the dawn’s early apocalypse

Great Western Armies occupy the cradle of civilization
Righteous Christian warriors wage a new Crusade
War and subjugation in the name of peace and freedom
Guess it makes sense when you’re old and dumb, so fuck it, let’s get laid

Ch2
We’ll rent some porn, I’ll bring the beer and you can bring the chips
And we’ll fuck fuck fuck till the dawn’s early apocalypse

I’m not as cute as the other guys
But I know my way around your thighs
And given our imminent demise
What the fuck we got to lose?

Hairspray and SUVs and lassaiz faire-loosed industries
Have toxified the planet past the point of no return
So let’s buy a gross of condoms and we'll fuck into the sunset
Ain’t no use spitting mutants out just to watch Rome burn

Ch3
I’ll get some lube and tear one off or two or three or six
And we’ll fuck fuck fuck till the dawn’s early apocalypse

Ch4
Let’s get drunk, I’ll whisper sweet nothings in your lips
And we’ll fuck fuck fuck till the dawn’s early apocalypse

Thanks
Don’t get me wrong, I know you done your time
From Inchon to Khe Sanh to the Quaker Oats line
And yes, sir, you got me by more’n a few years, might learn
Something if I shut up and open my ears

And I know that my less-than-great generation ain’t savvy and worldly like you
So with this beer hoisted, allow me to offer some gratitude long overdue

Ch1
Thanks for the culture of thought sanitized
By Christians and bigots and Reaganites
Thanks for your silence as witch hunts and red squads
Dragged down your neighbors like dogs
Thanks for the Cold War and COINTELPRO
For Vietnam, nukes and for talk radio,
And your wide-eyed credulity stretched beyond reason
Towards con men and quislings and cheap demagogues

Ch2
Thanks for your idle consensus as pitchmen
Sold assholes as presidents, lapdogs to rich men
For letting the joyless and spiteful decide right and wrong
For everyone else
Thanks for abandoning all that you taught
About fair play and freedom of speech and of thought
For this world of shit we inherit from stewards
Who couldn’t be bothered to think for themselves