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