Get all 6 Pete Jon releases available on Bandcamp and save 35%.
Includes unlimited streaming via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality downloads of Total Connection, deplacer, joyride // deathdrive, Some Tender F*cking Success, no hard rain, and Necrobisect.
1. |
joyride deathdrive
02:48
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you want to go for a joyride?
you want to go for a death drive?
nothing on my mind--
put on the radio
playing the songs we know
and homilies of homicide
and in the looking glass
you can see the past
through a fractal window
it's been a long year
it's been a long while since I've seen you smile
you want to go for a death drive?
you want to go for a joyride?
you've got a heavy load
you push it up a mile
and it rolls back down the road
french resistance-style
said you're feeling an urgency?
it's been a long while
since we crossed that line
put on the radio--
it'll play that song I know
put down the window--
feel in the free air
a plastic empire that won't decompose
there's things too fucking vile
to write into a slant rhyme
unfolding all the time
don't get me wrong--
I got a slice of the pie
but I want the bakery, collectivized
I want america ossified
you can quote me to the jury
I got nothing to hide
I'm on a death drive
it's a joyride
(hell, we're all going to die)
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2. |
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we rode out to desolation
thought about making a home
but you could feel the radiation
leeching out from empty stone
and in my lungs I feel the notion
that your lungs are vital here
in the deep breath of revolution
the gathering before the storm
and for the dead, and for their memory
I keep the fire of my love
stoked with rage and abandon
there are some mysteries that they can never own
you can write me off, an aberration
but I am neither first nor last
I float in the space of a constellation
and this may be the only life I have
we stayed up, a cool November
trying to get some peace of mind
listening to uncatena
we felt the yearning in the polyrhythms
I used to speak an incantation
praying for peace in a troubled time
but now the city peaks with a violent derision
and I pry at the schism
here and it's coming
here and it's coming
here and it's coming
immanent
here and it's coming
here and it's coming
here and it's coming
crisis
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3. |
american made
04:08
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all my demons are for hire
how does it feel?
american made
laying in wait for a life never came
laying on pressure, laid off by the same
play and get played in the short and the long game
black motorcade
barbara bush and thomas kincaid
driving to hell on the road that they paved
light falls beautiful on the shitshow
that pocked us in utero
my mother was grieving
tell me, where all that grief go?
my father was working in Elkhart at Jayco
building temples on wheels
to freedom and lemonade
in the peak of the prison boom's sickly accelerate
I said how does it feel to be a pock in a hellscape?
I said how does it feel to be alive in america?
why so many so lonely
why so many sedated
why so many held in homes, hospitals, wards, and cages
so many born into the belly of a beast we create
where on state stationary
administrative segregation
you're penning the bars on which freedom is predicated
all my demons are for hire
burn it all down
we don't need this kitsch
we don't need this clown
we don't need this pig patrolling our hometown
fuck all with the gaslit glow
searchlight on a late night road
fuck all with the uniformed jesus
preaching,
"you need us, you need us
now give us our due and we'll be less abusive to you."
fuck all now they're down at the school
meet 'n' greetin the youth
multifoliate hydra imbued in blue
ensconced in white
drenched in red
I said burn it all down
burn it all dead
we don't need this sword hanging over our head
and I don't need the law to tell me what's good
I feel a fire within you
fuck all if they quench what's been given you
hell with the devil dressed up in the do-gooder's two shoes
I hear a flicker of feeling
a tremor of breathing
wake up little child
you are the vector of healing
and all my demons are for hire
tell me what's more lyrical than when I play the liar?
until my dying day I will fight holy with stolen fire
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4. |
loving isn't easy
03:08
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loving isn't easy with a body like these
bundled up as they be with the past
forged in the market of an anatomy
brokered in the ruptures of history
if we could be all-magical, omnipotent, untenable
and arrive at the liminal predicament of america
where all I see is blood
loving is a highwire, fckin bird of a beast
I don't know if I can fly there, fly free
I don't know the geography where you border my sleep
brokered in the ruptures of memory
where we seem all-magical, omnipotent, untenable
and arrive at the Nothing at the limit of america
where all I see is a mark on your brow
and I long for all the glory and the aching of impossibilities
or the quietude at the limit of america
where all I see is blood
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5. |
devil's intestine
02:34
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they came for you
like vultures do
they feast on death in a prison ward
I hear your voice
in all the noise
and now I know that we are at war
and I did my best to call you out
of the mouth of the beast
did what I could to claw you out
from the jaw, from the teeth
but there is no going back
you're in the digestive tract
convalescing in the devil's intestine
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6. |
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sickly demon, what you want?
tentacled and grotesque
we thought it was an animal
but it was a virus, or rhizomatous
thought it had a human face
thought it was a tyrant--
we cut the head off but we didn't pull the roots out
it reformed, it reformed!
read some books and learned to speak
the language of humanity
progress and the carrot and the stick
posed in different faces
whispered secret nothings to me
I cut the head off but I didn't pull the roots out
the song is coming on again
but I don't know the meaning
watch all I love go to shit
been going there for a minute
and you feel the dread come leeching in
cut and run for cover--
you cut the head off as a token for your lover
cut the head off but it's going to grow another
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7. |
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a revolution is close at hand
the sounds of violence, the turning sand
the world is older, the world is bitter
wasted on trauma, sick on ambien
I make my money and I go home
meanwhile, your demon is going at it pro bono
meanwhile, your demon is in your brain
feasting on trauma and quaffing shame
I would not sanitize this shit
I would not put some product on it:
there is a war, it's burrowed into our bodies
blossomed on our family tree
hacked into our memory
I fill my heart with satanic rage
I would not bow to no kingly image
I feast on rebellion, I stoke the flame
with all the dying I will take to my grave
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8. |
over the canopy
04:06
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over the canopy
worlds out beyond our reach
out beyond the borderline
out beyond the hierarchy
you catch a glimmer, there--
through the tears in a fabric wall
you can feel a trembling
in your heart of hearts you see it
you see it
you see it
it cleaves
and you see it
you see it
in this hegemony
there is neither peace nor war
only complicity
only a violent metaphor
say who you are to me!
tell me what you're after!
I can tell an enemy
they don't know what they're fighting for
because it's o'er the canopy
and it's under our skin
it is among us and within
over the canopy
worlds out beyond our reach
out beyond the borderline
out beyond the hierarchy
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9. |
krell
01:19
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10. |
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you were born with a plastic brain
got caught up in some passing parade
took your lonely ass down to the river
read from the scripture and drank of the water
you were born with an ivy soul
hungry for anywhere a root could take hold
down in the street where a struggle unfurls
you fell in love with a different world
cawing and cawing, a crow in a cage
how much cawing will awaken some rage?
you begin to feel the limits of your longing
here, with everything to steal
and nothing worth saving
you know there's work to be done
but you're still looking for that buzz
that will make it all okay
or make it go away
but when the booze leaves the body
and the body's still there
and the mind grows clear
and the first light breaks in anger and fear
and the distant horizon
draws impossibly near
and tickles your ear
gather your dignity and mourn every moment
of death and drudgery--
you were not made for it:
you were not made for anything!
least of all, this violent machine!
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Pete Jon Michigan
Pete Jon is a singer-songwriter and collaborative producer in the DIY tradition.
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