Visions Of Johanna Lyrics - Fallout From The Phil Zone (live) - Grateful Dead

Ain't it just like the night to play tricks 

When you're tryin' to be so quiet? 

We sit here stranded 

Though we're all doin' our best to deny it 

And Louise holds a handful of rain 

Tempting you to defy it 

Lights flicker from the opposite loft 

In this room the heat pipes just cough 

The country music station plays soft 

But there's nothing, really nothing to turn off 

Just Louise and her lover 

So entwined 

And these visions of Johanna 

That conquer my mind 

In the empty lot where the ladies play 

Blindman's bluff with the keychain 

And the all night girls they whisper of 

Escapades out on the "D" train 

We can hear the night watchman 

Click his flashlight 

Ask himself if it's him or them 

It's insane 

Louise, she's all right, she's just near 

She's delicate and seems like the mirror 

But she just makes it all too concise and too clear 

That Johanna's not here 

The ghost of electricity 

Howls in the bones of her face 

Where these visions of Johanna 

Have now taken my place 

Now, little boy lost 

He takes himself so seriously 

He brags of his misery 

He likes to live dangerously 

And when bringing her name up 

He speaks of a farewell kiss to me 

He's sure got a lotta gall 

To be so useless and all 

Muttering small talk at the wall 

While I'm in the hall 

Oh, how can I explain? 

It's so hard to get on 

And these visions of Johanna 

They kept me up past the dawn 

Inside the museums 

Infinity goes up on trial 

Voices echo, 'This is what 

Salvation must be like after a while' 

But Mona Lisa musta had the highway blues 

You can tell by the way she smiles 

See the primitive wallflower freeze 

When the jelly faced women all sneeze 

Hear the one with the mustache say 

"Jeeze, I can't find my knees" 

Oh, jewels and binoculars 

Hang from the head of the mule 

But these visions of Johanna 

They make it all seem so cruel 

The peddler now speaks to the countess 

Who's pretending to care for him 

Sayin', "Name me someone that's not a parasite 

And I'll go out and say a prayer for him" 

But like Louise always says 

"You can't look at much, can you man?" 

As she, herself, prepares for him 

And Madonna, she still has not showed 

We see this empty cage now corrode 

Where her cape of the stage once had flowed 

The fiddler, he now steps to the road 

He writes every thing's been returned which was owed 

On the back of the fish truck that loads 

While my conscience explodes 

The harmonicas play 

The skeleton keys and the rain 

And these visions of Johanna 

Are now all that remain