Dan Bern - Thanksgiving Day Parade lyrics

Everybody was ecstatic 'Bout the light show on the farm And everyone got crazy And nobody got harmed And the five televisions Huge upon the stage Had come to pay their union dues And make a living wage And the bathroom was the clubhouse Where the colors all got made And plans were cast in feathers For the Thanksgiving Day Parade And the DJ spins his records From here out to the sun And he flings them through a big hole In the ozone one by one And somewhere beyond Mercury The wax begins to melt And we touched a perfect stranger And we loved the way it felt And we all hung together In our crew cuts and our braids Floating down Broadway Above the Thanksgiving Day Parade And you and I were discussing Natalie As you poised to thrust above her And I told you how I admire her And will always need to love her And I told you how I lost My best friend Mr. Neill And we slowly started dancing And began slowly to heal And then we all held hands And no one was afraid On our way to sell our sculptures At the Thanksgiving Day Parade And Michelangelo finally came down After 4 years on the ceiling He said he'd lost his funding And the paint had started peeling And he told us that his patron His Holiness, the Pope Was demanding productivity With which our friend just couldn't cope And he rode off on his skateboard With his brushes and his blade Muttering something 'bout some food And the Thanksgiving Day Parade And we were born in one millennium And will die in the next Are slightly underappreciated And slightly overs**ed And as the seconds and the minutes Start to vanish one by one I'm watching more cartoons As I get my toenails done And we went downtown to deliver Turkeys to people with AIDS And then we headed uptown To the Thanksgiving Day Parade And the music keeps on grinding And the electrophonic crunch And my father's hair is thinning And my mom ate some for lunch And you, you were my babysitter And you let me break my tooth And we sit here tied together In a bar in the back booth And the band is in an uproar Only the drum machine's been paid And we'll have to bring our own tunes To the Thanksgiving Day Parade Australians are the coolest People in the world Let's all go down under With strings of colored pearls And lay them at the feet Of the heirs of English crime And listen to old Men At Work And have a real good time And we dug until we hit the rocks Then we threw away the spade And built a platform to get a better view Of the Thanksgiving Day Parade And I love whoever's next to me I love them so, so much They let me lean against them Like a beautiful crutch And everyone should come up On the stage and grab the mic And tell us one by one Who they are and what they like And the babies are the only ones To have lately gotten laid And I'm feeling young and eager For the Thanksgiving Day Parade And you explained to me that without your fans You'd be back out on the street With nothing but chitlins on your plate And splinters in your feet And if you die, you're gone you said And your friends are left behind And you'll be a statistic And we'll be deaf and blind And darkness is a virtue And mola**es is not afraid To slow down the countdown To the Thanksgiving Day Parade And somewhere in the distance An orchestra shows its face With Natalie on the oboe Ty on double ba** John plays the viola Slik, the tenor sax James he blows harmonica In vanilla skintight slacks Hugo oozes alto sax Ivory, the trombone Masuda squawks the trumpet Andre, xylophone Ron, he shreds the violin In a green Italian suit Mike talks on the telephone On a tape with an endless loop Geoff he blows the clarinet With an old-time rockin' feel Charlie dings the triangle Dave, the glockenspiel Chris puffs on the tuba H, a big ba** drum Alfonso throbs the cello Like he would a woman, with his thumb And high up on the podium In tails with his baton poised Banksy leads the orchestra In a glorious, awful noise And on a float of dripping oil paint The orchestra, it played Kissing the whole universe In the Thanksgiving Day Parade And life is like a fairy tale Every step feels like a dream That keeps on getting nearer And more and more extreme And we just got switched with Venus And we're closer to the sun And I got no problem with it Nor should anyone And the cops just blew on in here And we're in some kind of raid I just hope they will release us For the Thanksgiving Day Parade