Get all 29 Walter Ehresman releases available on Bandcamp and save 35%.
Includes unlimited streaming via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality downloads of That's How A Fable Starts (single), Cassandra, Cursed, My Back Pages, Revisited (With No Blonde), Songs From the Crux, Global Search Party, South of the Wall, The Best of.....Songs of Possibilities, The Best of..........the Weird Ones, and 21 more.
1. |
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Intro: the Hunt begins....... (© 1998 Walter Ehresman)
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2. |
Greed is the Disease
03:01
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Greed is the Disease
(© 1998 Walter Ehresman)
You got it all, but you just want more;
You can't remember what you wanted it for;
You got a 100 like it out in the shed, but
you'll pull it to you with your last dying breath.
It ain't a thing you gotta think much about;
The reinforcement is within and without;
You're just embracing what you see every day--
You got excuses how you wound up this way.
Your thoughts ain't plural each time push comes to shove,
Greed is the disease I'm speaking of.
Been generations since you even looked back--
It can't occur to you you're on the wrong track;
You're like that monkey with the button and the jones--
You've got this feelin' runnin' straight through your bones.
There ain't a thing that modern medicine can do,
to rid the world of all the bastards like you.
You've got a special brand of Christianity--
accumulation as the "Great Mystery."
You're foolin' no one once the hawk eats the dove--
Greed is the disease I'm speaking of.
[break]
How come the poison always rises to the top?
Guess self-awareness is just too much to ask;
You can't imagine why you'd wanna do that--
the mirror only serves to show what you got,
your proper place between the haves and have-nots.
If you could see the damage, what would you do--
an ugly moment of what's right and what's true?
Full speed ahead and never slip through the cracks;
The social contract is just something you lack.
I've seen the future, and it looks kinda tough;
Greed is the disease I'm speaking of.
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3. |
You Are No Man
04:02
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You Are No Man
(© 1996 Walter Ehresman)
An animal in styling gel, a creature in a suit;
All actions are instinctual, no relevance to truth;
Self-service in the hind-brain; amoral, here to tell;
Your higher functions limited to doing this so well.
[chorus]
You are no man;
I'd heard of political animals but I didn't know the culture'd
grown so virulent so fast.
You are no man;
A purer strain, a goddamn shame, extinction doesn't seem so bad
with an animal like this.
I've seen you stalk the cubicles, I've seen you slam the door;
A constant flow of stimuli, reactive predator;
bad men at least have values, though they're ones we view as wrong;
But this creature does not cognate, and the danger's much too strong.
[break]
Need for power as an instinct, this is not the missing link, and even Leakey wouldn't drink with this thing.
Carnage in your government, so this is how your money's spent, predation in the political ring.
We'd like to call you evil, and we'd like to call you mean,
but these labels are not relevant to this new kind of beast.
"Monster" is most accurate, if we must name you at all--
You're a cancer in the system, and you're speeding up the fall.
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4. |
E.S.O.M to Austin
03:10
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E.S.O.M. to Austin
(© 1998 Walter Ehresman)
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5. |
Rwandan Blues
06:53
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Rwandan Blues
(© 1997 lyrics--W. Ehresman; music--Scott Brannock/W. Ehresman)
Pass me the palm wine, the pombe, I need to get stoned;
The soldiers are coming to drive me away from my home.
The crops in the field aren't as high as they once were before;
But having a little is better than having none at all.
My friend left last week, I don't think that I'll see him again--
your cameras can't be everywhere in this country I live in.
When they take me off the path through the jungle where no one will see,
where we do to each other what once only you did to me.
[chorus]
Tagati, I see your television;
Tagati, I see your special shoes;
Tagati, you've moved on to the next country;
Left me here singing my Rwandan blues.
I die where I fall in that clearing so far from my home;
My neighbors die with me, but can't help from feeling alone;
There's rumors of conspiracy while animals pick at our bones;
But even with a close-up, would you feel it was one of your own?
* "tagati" is Swahili for "black magic"
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6. |
Samba Snipie'ro
01:28
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Samba Snipie'ro
(© 1999 Pat Devaney)
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7. |
Desperate Stupidity
04:49
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Desperate Stupidity
(© 1997 Walter Ehresman)
Dog's fire, troops roll in, flames burn high in a midnight well;
String the wire, spread the lime, you don't blink as they fall in;
The witnesses are all let go--doesn't matter if they tell
a world that's waiting for the game, for the show, and for the skin.
Close the schools, turn out the lights, to the teeth and to the bone;
Machete dead-eyed anarchy; you will sink before you swim.
The transformation is complete--a self-destructive chromosome;
You cannot sit this one out, the demon calls you from within.
[chorus]
Your gears were stripped to neutral, babe, by your infancy;
It happened to your parents, too, so this was meant to be.
Pavlov's dogs can all go home--it's in the family tree.
The arrow has now left the bow in desperate, oh desperate stupidity.
At 2 a.m. we stormed the gate of the mansion on the hill
(They let us keep machine guns, with a license to conceal);
The Senator can't understand where we ever found the will;
We found him in the closet, using his children as a shield.
(he said) "We gave you Friday night TV, we gave you groups to blame--
all aimed at the lowest ones of you, so you wouldn't have to use your brain;
It's supposed to make you happy, it's supposed to keep you tame!"
Now the animal's slipped its leash--idiots rule today!
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8. |
I Ain't Such a Bad Guy
04:20
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I Ain't Such a Bad Guy
(© 1992 Walter Ehresman)
Well, I didn't sink Amelia Earhart, momma,
and I didn't put the smog in the sky;
Never cast a vote for George Bush, baby,
so why don't you give me a try?
There ain't no heavy starch within a mile of me, darlin' and
I'm hopin' that it's easy to see
I ain't such a bad guy.
Well, I never co-wrote a Stallone movie, and
I never went out with Cher;
and don't say a word about the Persian Gulf, because
I swear I wasn't even there.
I ain't selling crack, I ain't a quarterback
posing in his underwear;
I don't use my guitar as an extension of my penis and
I never put mousse in my hair.
Ain't a Polo shirt within a mile of me, darlin' and
I'm sitting here telling you why
I ain't such a bad guy.
Well, I never did hire a billboard, baby,
never flushed a fish down the commode;
If I done all the things that your look suggests
I don't think that I could carry the load.
Now I understand that livin' in this land might
generate suspicious minds, but
if every man is hatched out evil then
a good one must be sure hard to find.
There ain't a Gucci belt within a mile of me, baby
and I'm beggin' you to give me a try;
I ain't such a bad guy.
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9. |
Stealth Rebound
03:20
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Stealth Rebound
(© 1998 Walter Ehresman)
Congratulations--you thought your winning days were through;
Congratulations--you thought all influence had passed from you.
But then you came around here, thought I knew just what to say;
All the visions that you flung at me could never let me stay
with the life that I'd been livin', must've climbed a bit too high;
But you knocked me past my starting place, and never told me why.
Congratulations--you did everything you set out to do;
Congratulations--you flushed my self-esteem right down the loo.
I thought you looked so vulnerable, that I could step right in;
I didn't have a bad heart, but I was more than just a friend;
I counted on your rebound, but I didn't count on this--
You jumped back on the horse and now I'm trampled in the ditch.
Congratulations.
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10. |
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Her Dorian Gray Don’t Work
(© 1997 Walter Ehresman)
She thought she’d found a better way of livin’,
where she could do exactly as she pleased;
A bargain with a buyer from the Southland
gets a century of people on their knees.
But the portrait in the attic isn’t changing,
and her looks are getting funkier by day;
If she keeps on actin’ shitty to the people in this town,
Well, I do believe she’s gonna blow her self away.
[chorus]
Her Dorian Gray don’t work
She’s hoping that this constitutes a brief SNAFU,
and the mirror will be kinder than today;
‘Cause you can’t increase your powerbase when chunks are falling off your face and even politicians look away.
And the staff ain’t subjugated when they’re snickering,
and terror’s getting harder to create;
Required genuflection has become a little lax, and
her wide-load is beginning to gyrate.....
I think this mess is causin’ her confusion;
I think she thought it wouldn’t be this way;
She planned 500 years of lookin’ good and bein’ bad,
‘stead of drowning in her poison and decay.
Saw her ooze around the corner just the other day;
In her mumu--didn’t really look that hot.....
Haulin’ ‘round that tonnage got to be a load to bear,
but at least she gets the primo parking spot.
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11. |
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Snipe Hunt Sonata No. 43 in E flat
(© 1999 Walter Ehresman)
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12. |
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Get That Thing Outta My Face (a Freudian treatise....)
(© 1985 Walter Ehresman)
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13. |
My Digital Love
05:15
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My Digital Love
(© 1996 Walter Ehresman)
[chorus]
My digital love--ain't got no analog.
No matter how much we do it each day,
My baby knows my signal doesn't degrade.
She can't leave me for the tapehead addicted--
'cause my love is copy-protected.
My baby ain't no technophile, but
this hard-drive upgrade makes her smile, smile, smile;
I don't miss the drop-outs or the loss of the highs,
but I kinda miss the hiss...
you know I kinda miss the hiss...
you know I miss it when she hiss at me.
[break]
Take her to the studio, see which way the wind blows,
impress her with my fidelity;
She's feeling kinda kinky, wants to MIDI with the kitty and
run it 'til Take 53.
Tonight we booked more studio time--
that slap-back echo really makes me unwind.
My new equipment is a sight to see--
god, I love this technology.
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14. |
Sunday Disease
07:23
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Sunday Disease
(© 1996 Walter Ehresman)
I get so weary on a Sunday; looking forward 'well as feeling back;
Five more days of degradation makes the seventh seem oh so black.
Suffer fools, suffer fools; I ain't no Christian, you got to know;
What's a young man got to do these days to try and keep a little bit
of soul? (But you know....)
[chorus]
Everybody's needs a little extra protection--
but the cost is much too high; and
if you buy into heavenly glory
then you might as well just lay down and die;
and if you become a political man
(or latch onto one as close as you can),
can you still look in the mirror every night,
as a cog in that kind of clan?
Spending all my time with bad men, without a scrap of morality.
Trying to do the right thing while the wrong guys try to find some
other place for me to be.
It can make a man so tired, it can make a man get mean;
But I can't let this Sunday disease make me one of the unclean.
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15. |
One Shove
09:13
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One Shove
(© 1998 Walter Ehresman)
One shove......is better.....
better than the fall;
Returning--does it feel so strange
to be so tall?
Where did you go?, who did you know?, what price....
what price the show?
We'd gone to ground to bring you down, to bring you
back to the fold.
You'd wandered....strayed so far from yourself;
The vampires....try to grind your weary soul,
leave a shell.
It's hard to do, it's true, but me and you
must rise above;
A higher ground, I've found, begins
with just one shove.
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16. |
Outro: the Hunt revealed
00:46
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Outro: the Hunt revealed
(© 1999 Walter Ehresman/Scott Brannock)
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Walter Ehresman San Miguel De Allende, Mexico
Called "the quintessential Austin DIY artist" by famed local disc jockey Charlie Martin , Walter Ehresman was an eccentric presence in the Austin music scene from the '80s until his 2015 move to Mexico. A prolific songwriter, multi-instrumentalist and recording artist...and a restless musical spirit, always looking for something new, expressed with fearlessly honest, socially-conscious lyrics. ... more
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