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Rock 'n' Roll Always Forgets

by Goner

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1.
So the hours have been defiled and the weeds have grown out wild. You’ve been limping those last miles, a bitter defender. Sweatshirt stained and torn, how long were you planning to mourn foggay days of roses you can barely remember? But you draw up a map. You gather your staff. It’s gonna come at you fast. You don’t have to collapse. Don’t collapse. All the damage to survey, all the crews to clear it away. All the juries deliberate and then fade into vapor. So you thought you could swallow the moon, like it was glowing only for you, like you could fill up on all that silver, all that blue. You trouble your staff. You can run all the reds. You can shake ‘em in your bed. You can slam ‘em ‘til you double your sight, but you won’t be dying young tonight. Every questionable kiss, drunken, cinematic bliss--it melts when held up to the light. No, you won’t be dying young tonight. So hold on tight. There’s a voice out on the wire. A familiar shade of tired, in the market for an ear for hire, and you know you got two. It’s a wild and winking moon. There’s a couple of rays just for you. Don’t it look even better than silver, better than blue?
2.
Hella Jean 02:53
Indestructible smoker’s delight, fist full of rayon on your body tonight. Faces are only sad when you don’t raise a glass. So set ‘em up. Pass ‘em out. Knock ‘em back fast. Hella Jean, laying to waste every “Class of ‘77” dream. Hella Jean, I’ve tripped the same wires and seen the same bruises you’ve seen. We catalogued our sins, chips cashed in, kissed off another nerve-wracking year. Now, which train is gonna carry us out of here? Eyeballing the scuff marks, your boots on my floor, your fingers laced around the back of my neck. What’d you bring me here for? Eitzel on the stereo, like a sandpaper ghost. Close your eyes. Imagine the one you miss most. Hella Jean, the iron-on boys adore your Nightingale routine. Hella Jean, How long can we lean on this ever-shifting scene? Sweet sandpaper ghost, you’re the one I miss most.
3.
Suddenly it’s spring again. Shoot it with a dolly/crane, suitably insane. Let’s tear that sunset down. Strawberry lips stained with pollen and butane, dying from restraint. Come on, tonight. Come on. The barflies sing, “Let freedom ring.” There’s so much here to un-learn. Did you forget through winter’s wet? You always could return. Suddenly it’s summertime. Pulling off a yank crime, visibly post-prime. Blueberry lips smile, digging on my old style. Drink your sweet denial. The hands, once stamped, all knots and cramps. The portfolios stacked, the early rise, the twitching eyes. Baby, you cannot come back. Autumn closes in again. It’s noting you can prevent. Sign off, dear friends. That sunset’s good and down. Blackberry lips kiss. It’s always just a near miss. Never crystallizes. It’s gone tonight. It’s gone.
4.
Romantic epics and teenage head trips. The highway fables are age-disabled. The fog’s lifted. The night’s not magical. Crush on clerks and pierced soda jerks, the suicide girl sirens and victims. You’re so distracted. Snap out of it. Digital pleasures give to desperate measures. That sordid three-way, it won’t save you. Head about you, it’s your fight now. Worry gathers and grows like a cancer. Immobilization--wrong answer. Hair’s been thinning. You’re way past beginning. This isn’t college. You know the difference from truly evil, from truly righteous. They worship money. We got different altars, but there’s plenty of us, plenty and counting. It’s our fight now. It’s our fight.
5.
6.
The new year smells suspiciously like the old. We need new counters tonight. Ears all but dead to confessions re-read--the prayers, the players, the plight. In the heart of winter we carpet the walls. Shut down the blinds, but the calls beam down from the scattershot stars, as lonely as satellites are. It’s Dayquil and Nyquil and vitamin C. This fever refuses to break. The mercury’s red. Let’s cut off the meds. Look lively. We’re testing the brakes. In the heart of winter The Pageant’s on tour, without a day off and unsure, in the cold of their stuttering cars. The tender old pirates we are. In the green of the gas station light, monoxide pours out in the night. Breadcrumbs lost in the snow, oh my God, here we go. Lost in the shivering pines, Midwest to Caroline. The beer and the sweat start to freeze. There’s no draw, no guarantee. Kids, you can take it from me. Half a tank, half a pack, it’s good to be back in the town that you curse half the time. It’s no sellout to smile and stay for a while in the arms of a misguided rhyme. In the heart of winter the café lights shine and the tales of the travels rewind. And we laugh off our battleground scars, as lucky as satellites are.
7.
8.
Sleep aches for me. Deep in my bones, it whispers and burns. But one greasepaint wink, one wine-swept touch, and, lo, he returns. Here come the crisis lights, flashing blue and white. In the trees over the interchange, the kids sway tonight. How to put it down without picking it up? Well, I’m shaking grey. I might I may be off that stuff. But where’s the late night, warm gin and candlelight? And those trouble girls that sway, black skies that never break into day? Story Road looked so different pressed against my face. Blood on my teeth, lawn on my tongue, so ripe to forsake. A boy’s cigarette, he’s not used to yet. It takes time for all of that clean air to forget. Well I’m waxy-eyed and terrified, but I’m off that stuff. Someone tuck me in, kiss my head and then sing a song of summers slow. Goddamn young, goddamn long ago. The angels on the promenade are catching fire, and the streets are sugar-coated just to keep me wired. And I know it’s a long-dead luxury, cause I shot through all my revelry, but I wanna fill my arteries with artificial victory. I wasted all my revelry. Why can’t I fill my arteries with artificial victory?
9.
One + Done 03:42
10.
Jersey Roy 03:14
30 miles out from the tunnel, a final resting place with orange grease and cream-colored tile and foil-covered, lamp heated succor, where Jersey Roy can huddle for a while. Annie’d left six months before, straight out of storage, U-Hauling up 95. He’d kept his secret, fractured heart grounded down, but it was boiling him alive on such a long drive. He had visions in black and white, with Gershwin rising, cocktails and shrugged-off infidelities, and a barren loft with twinkling lights and sirens. Warm kisses high above the swollen streets. But that fear comes on, cause she’s thrived this long. Maybe she’s harder, like a painted granite flower. Will her smile pull back with hesitance? A rescue mission gone derailed and sour, in the age’s most uncertain hour.
11.
Tunnel-jade lights, peeling black rails. Tiles hold echoes, waiting for the biggest hum. Questions suspended like bridges over oceans of six-strings and drums. The secret cheap eats you’d bought us. I’d waited for 25 years to swallow the guts of this city and to shout crowded words in your ear. White light, glass blocks, and your chin shaking, your stare an island’s worth of avenues long. Answers rose up through the grating and then quick as monoxide they were gone.
12.

about

Somewhere amongst the witty, drunken, pop swagger of Guided By Voices, the quirky synth spazms of Devo and the buzzing rock of the Ramones lies Goner's 3rd full length offering. Rock 'N' Roll Always Forgets reads like a diary/billboard for veteran, college town rockers: aging, the bar scene, binge drinking, hollow hookups, life postponement, and prolonged adolescence vs. adulthood. After over 8 years of working and playing together, one might conclude that Goner should not be making rock music at all. They are not young, or even care-free. They have no use for trends, no interest in fashion. They are three people who work long hours in schools and offices. They have scarcely one expendable minute or one disposable dollar between them. They have long ago outgrown rock as a so-called lifestyle, taking on rents and mortgages, marriages, divorces and children. For years they have confronted love and money and fear and faith and labor on a daily basis. Carving hours upon hours of precious time out of such lives just to contribute to what is widely recognized as a dying artform, toiling in a consistently money-losing obscurity...at their age any reasonable person would deem it foolish, frivolous, masochistic and pointless. But Goner is not a reasonable band and Rock 'N' Roll Always Forgets is not a reasonable album. It's an overwhelmingly passionate, hook filled, explosive album that the "kids" will still be listening to when they're as "over it" at Goner is.

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released June 24, 2008

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Goner Raleigh, North Carolina

Goner crafts great songs, combining a poetic eye for detail, a cinematic sense of place and character, and an encyclopedic love of rocks both classic and indie.

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