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Tokyo Storm Warning Lyrics
The sky fell over cheap Korean monster-movie scenery
And spilled into the reservoir of the crushed capsule hotel
Between the Disney abattoir and the chemical refinery
And I knew I was in trouble but I thought I was in hell
So you look around the tiny room and you wonder where the hell you are
While the K.K.K. convention are all stranded in the bar
They wear hoods and carry shotguns in the main streets of Montgomery
But they're helpless here as babies 'cause they're only here on holiday
Chorus: What do we care if the world is a joke
(Tokyo Storm Warning)
We'll give it a big kiss
We'll give it a poke
(Tokyo Storm Warning)
Death wears a big hat 'cause he's a big bloke
(Tokyo Storm Warning)
We're only living this instant
The black sand stuck beneath her feet in a warm Sorrento sunrise
A barefoot girl from Naples or was it a Barcelona hi-rise
Whistles out the tuneless theme song on a hundred cheap suggestions
And a million false seductions and all those eternal questions
Chorus
So they flew the Super-Constellation all the way from Rimini
And feasted them on fish and chips from a newspaper facsimile
Now dead Italian tourists bodies litter up the Broadway
Some people can't be told you know they have to learn the hard way
Holidays are dirt-cheap in the Costa del Malvinas
In the Hotel Argentina they can hardly tell between us
For Teresa is a waitress though she's now known as Juanita
In a tango bar in Stanley or in Puerto Margarita
She's the sweetest and the sauciest
The loveliest and the naughtiest
She's Miss Buenos Aires in a world of lacy lingerie
Chorus
Japanese God-Jesus robots telling teenage fortunes
For all we know and all we care they might as well be Martians
They say gold paint on the palace gates comes from the teeth of pensioners
They're so tired of shooting protest singers
That they hardly mention us
While fountains fill with second-hand perfume
And sodden trading stamps
They'll hang the bullies and the louts that dampen down the day
Chorus
We braved the cold November air and the undertaker's curses
Saying "Take me to the Folies Bergere and please don't spare the hearses"
For he always had a dream of that revolver in your purse
How you loved him 'til you hated him and made him cry for mercy
He said "Don't ever mention my name there or talk of all the nights you cried
We've always been like worlds apart now you're seeing two nightmares collide"
Chorus
From Elvis's liner notes in the 1995 reissue of Blood & Chocolate: "Tokyo Storm Warning is a thug's nightmare travelogue from Narita to Heysel, from Pompeii to Port Stanley, Paris and London. It was cut on 'take one.' I then added the backing vocals, distorted guitar figure and backwards solo. In case you were wondering, a 'Japanese God-Jesus Robot' is a little electric fortune-telling toy that waves a cross to indicate whether your girlfriend or boyfriend loves you."
I also think this song and Radiohead's "Electioneering" sound very similar.
Such a perfect document of the time.
Blood and Chocolate is an album by Elvis Costello and the Attractions. The album reunited Costello, the Attractions and producer Nick Lowe, but it was the last recorded by the group before a breakup that would last for eight years. The album was, unusually for its time as a studio album, recorded in a single large room at high volume, with the band listening to each other on monitor speakers rather than headphones. Costello describes it as "a record of people beating and twanging things with a fair amount of yelling". Costello's singing and playing is credited on the album under the pseudonym "Napoleon Dynamite," while his songwriting is credited to him under his actual surname, "MacManus" (with the exception of "I Hope You're Happy Now", which is credited to "Costello"). The album uses Esperanto to list musician credits and LP sides.
I think of this song as an audio version of Death's holiday brochure.
References to trouble and strife are rich within the song, some include:
"Holidays are dirt-cheap in the Costa del Malvinas " - refers to the Argentinian invasion of the Falklands
"Now dead Italian tourists bodies litter up the Broadway" - either the Achille Lauro Hijacking, October 7, 1985 or Airport Attacks in Rome and Vienna, December 27, 1985
"They wear hoods and carry shotguns in the main streets of Montgomery" - referring to the Rosa Parks incident.
love the line "While fountains fill with second-hand perfume", the water washing it from the bodies of victims
Ha!
It is indeed true about Electioneering!
I adore this song and feel like it's under appreciated. I listened to it quite a bit last spring during one of the worst classes I've ever taken and then constantly this summer because even though it shouldn't have fit an absurd class where they could read a book on Ella Baker and practically never discuss gender or race and instead talk about "spaciality", "What do we care if the world is a joke... We'll give it a big kiss. We'll give it a poke" seemed very appropriate because their research didn't seem to care about inequality or anything really. All the while they, particularly one or two individuals, would decry my department for its "disciplinary" ways and "proving points with numbers." (For the record, I'm a sociologist, not exactly controversial.)
Then over the summer I just listened, fantasizing about how I would dismantle that department, and as an early birthday gift, the dean closed it, "Now dead Italian tourists bodies [they even made a little headstone for their department] litter up the Broadway. Some people can't be told, you know they have to learn the hard way." And they're protesting now. I felt like I willed it into being through listening to this song hundreds of times. I just wish I could take the credit for the closing, could have felt like I had real role in making my university a better place.
There should be a last line about Christmas coming early.