Nearest Thing To Hip Lyrics - Modern Blues - Waterboys

There used to be a café a few blocks away, 

open seven days, called The Brilliant Mistake 

where a crow-haired girl with scarlet lips 

and slender hips served up coffee and cake 

on a crackling stereo the ghosts of Sun Ra, 

Charlie Parker, Miles and Coltrane blew 

I'd kick back in my chair, that sweet honey'd jazz 

in the air, the sun shining through 

it was the nearest thing to hip 

it was the nearest thing to hip 

in this shithole and it's gone 

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Everywhere that I go I see streets that are low 

on distinction and high on the banal and the bland 

How did we get to this? We plumbed the abyss 

by the twisted grace of the law of supply and demand 

Well, there's no use crying and no use sighing over 

stone, wood, wire, glass and cement 

but there's a little record store with a wooden floor 

that ain't there no more that I used to frequent 

it was the nearest thing to hip 

in was the nearest thing to hip 

in this shithole and it's gone 

Now I need to get out of this hullabaloo 

and I remember an old-fashioned bar that I once knew 

with an old-fashioned barman wearing old-fashioned clothes 

but when I get there it's been bulldozed 

Photos 

so I follow my nose down Comatose Lane 

through the stripped back, ripped up wastes 

of Woebegone Square 

till I find myself on Deadbeat Street, 

feet beginning to ache, despair in the air 

the only thing bright in this blighted town 

are the billboard adverts everywhere displayed 

like mocking shades 

And the musty, dusty second-hand book shop 

is now a scum-encrusted amusement arcade 

it was the nearest thing to hip 

it was the nearest thing to hip 

in this shithole and it's gone