Talkin' Wall Of Voodoo Blues Pt.1 Lyrics - Stan Ridgway

Didn't want no MTV, 

Didn't want no VH-1 

Was a time so long ago 

Yeah, we had some punk-rock fun 

Made a great big noise 

For all the girls and boys 

It was 1977 

Now two are gone to heaven 

Yeah, I was in an office space 

There across the street 

Down an alley, dirty stairs, 

And a basement underneath 

Brendan ran The Masque 

He played drums, we drank a lot 

We started playing underground 

People started comin' round 

Comin' round. 

Mark Moreland played his guitar 

And I clawed there at the keys 

Little brother Bruce showed up one day 

And now we're three 

I had this rhythm box 

That I got from Yogi Bear 

And Joe and Chas jumped on to play 

And we practiced music night and day 

Night and day. 

Hey, the scene was growin' out 

People everwhere 

Old hippies, beatniks, glam-rock kids 

Goin' punk rockcut their hair 

One night we played The Whiskey 

With Miss Ivy and Mister Lux 

Backstage the record man approached 

Yeah, we thought we had hit the bucks 

Big bucks. 

So we put out a record EP 

Jim Hill was our engineer 

And when it got played on the radio 

We could not believe our ears 

There it was. 

So we went out on the road 

Started playin' near and far 

Drivin' in that beat-up van 

Or two or three old cars 

Drivin' everywhere. 

Then the sharks showed up and circled 

A big manager for Sting 

Said sign here, boys, you'll all be stars 

We'll go for that brass ring 

The contract was like a book 

Two hundred pages long 

We signed there on that dotted line 

Just a dollar for each song 

Just a dollar. 

Things started gettin' wild 

With the band and me and Marc 

We did that methedrine a lot 

And drank that Cutty Sark 

Richard Mazda came from the UK 

Helped us to record in a brand new way 

One weekend, Marc's song fell out 

The single they still talk about 

We made a video 

With Frank Delia behind the lens 

Labor Day in Mexico, 

Lots of beans 'n drugs 'n friends 

But all was gonna bust 

Hey, how are chumps like us to know 

We took off on that tour so long 

And played and sang our radio song. 

Oh-woah. 

Now, it seemed like that old voodoo dog we had 

Was payin' for its fees 

We lost control of our own band 

To the record company 

Yeah, I guess we blew it big time 

Business got us bent 

We played a show for fourty grand 

And the manager took every cent 

Every goddamn cent. 

Yeah, things got worse, and pretty soon 

It was time for me to go 

I did my best to patch it up 

But we were all just big assholes 

So, if you wanna make a band, 

Get ready for a good ride 

Don't let weasels, sharks, and fiends, and creeps 

Force you to comprimise 

Uh-huh. 

Didn't want no MTV, 

Didn't want no VH-1 

Was a time so long ago 

Yeah, we had some punk-rock fun 

Made a great big noise 

For all the girls and boys 

It was 1977 

Now two are gone to heaven