Tower of Song

The Unspin Room: The ‘Tower of Song’

By Dalton Delan

We used to say, “there’d come the day, we’d all be making songs.”

Try to remember the kind of September.

“Come in,” she said, “I’ll give you shelter from the storm.”

Mama’s in the basement mixing up the medicine, I’m on the pavement thinking ‘bout the government.

You say you want a revolution.

I’m leaving on a jet plane.

Sky pilot, how high can you fly.

We’re back, back in the USSR.

Nobody told me there’d be days like these.

Here comes the story of the Hurricane.

Stand by your man.

Blue moon, you saw me standing alone.

Do away with people blowing my mind.

The answer, my friend, is blowin’ in the wind.

The wind cries Mary.

So long, Marianne.

Time is on my side.

Get off my cloud.

Here comes your 19th nervous breakdown.

Help me, I think I’m falling.

I’m your puppet.

Stopped into a church I passed along the way.

Be sure to wear some flowers in your hair.

Gimme a head with hair.

Even the president of the United States sometimes must have to stand naked.

The fool on the hill sees the sun going down.

It’s twilight on the Union and what’s made in the USA.

You’ve got a lot of nerve to say you are my friend.

Steal a little and they throw you in jail, steal a lot and they make you king.

King of the road.

Gonna leave the city, got to get away.

He don’t want to go to school and learn to read and write.

And what costume shall the poor girl wear to all tomorrow’s parties?

They’re selling postcards of the hanging, they’re painting the passports brown.

We gotta get out of this place.

There is a house in New Orleans.

I’m walkin’ to New Orleans.

Louisiana rain is falling just like tears running down my face, washing out the years.

I’m singin’ in the rain.

Rainy days and Mondays always get me down.

Monday, Monday how could you leave and not take me?

Workin’ in a coal mine, goin’ down, down, down.

Looks like everybody in this whole round world they’re down on me.

Old man lying by the side of the road with the daylight in his eyes, don’t let it bring you down.

Tin soldiers and Nixon coming.

`Cause I’m sittin’ on top of the world.

The world is turnin’, I hope it don’t turn away.

To everything, turn turn turn.

Won’t come back from Dead Man’s Curve.

Gonna recommend you to the spirit in the sky.

You’re my blue sky, you’re my sunny day.

Sunny, yesterday my life was filled with rain.

You and me and rain on the roof.

On the roof, the only place I know.

Goin’ uptown to Harlem.

It’s another hungry mouth to feed in the ghetto.

Don’t punish me with brutality.

Don’t touch my bags if you please, mister customs man.

I’m a man, I spell M-A-N.

Who am I to stand and wonder, to wait while the wheels of fate slowly grind my life away?

I and I in creation, where one’s nature neither honors nor forgives.

All come to look for America.

America, where are you now? Do you care about your sons and daughters?

Where are you tonight?

Help me, I think I’m falling.

We’d go down to the river and into the river we’d dive.

Oh I wish I had a river I could skate away on.

Got the radio on, I’m like the roadrunner.

Two, four, six, eight, never too late, me and my radio trucking on through the night.

Paradise by the dashboard light.

Because the night belongs to lovers.

Love me do.

Love is strange.

Strangers in the night.

They say the neon lights are bright on Broadway.

Callin’ out all around the world there’s dancing in the streets.

Tonight we’ll go out on the ropes to leave it all behind.

Bits and pieces.

Tears of a clown.

When I think about the good love you gave me, I cry like a baby.

Baby, I need your lovin’.

You’ve lost that lovin’ feeling.

My baby, she wrote me a letter.

It’s all over now, baby blue.

Bye-bye, Miss American Pie.

Yesterday all my troubles seemed so far away.

I feel free.

Find the cost of freedom buried in the ground.

When we meet beneath the green, green grass of home.

Homeward bound.

Now he’s bound for a glory all his own.

Abraham, Martin and John.

Blackbird singing in the dead of night.

He is trampling out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored.

Spill the wine.

Too long in the wasteland.

Doctor my eyes.

You can close your eyes.

Morning Morgantown.

Wake up little Susie.

Rise up.

We are volunteers of America.

Get together.

Will the circle be unbroken?

We shall overcome.

Dalton Delan can be followed on Twitter @UnspinRoom.