The Waterboys – Nearest Thing To Hip (Guitar)

G
There used to be a café a few blocks away,

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Open seven days, called “The Brilliant Mistake”

G
Where a crow-haired girl with scarlet lips 

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And slender hips served up coffee and cake

     Am                             
On a crackling stereo the ghosts of Sun Ra,

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Charlie Parker, Miles and Coltrane blew

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I’d kick back in my chair, that sweet honey’d jazz in the air

D                      
The sun shining through

G
It was the nearest thing to hip

Am
It was the nearest thing to hip

         C        D         G 
In this shithole… and it’s gone

G
It was the nearest thing to hip

Am
It was the nearest thing to hip

         C        D         G 
In this shithole… and it’s gone

G
Everywhere that I go I see streets that are low

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On distinction and high on the banal and the bland

G
How did we get to this? We plumbed the abyss

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By the twisted grace of the law of supply and demand

              Am
Well, there’s no use crying and no use sighing over

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Stone, wood, wire, glass and cement

G                                                  
But there’s a little record store with a wooden floor

            C                    D
That ain’t there no more that I used to frequent

G
It was the nearest thing to hip

Am
It was the nearest thing to hip

         C        D         G 
In this shithole… and it’s gone

G
It was the nearest thing to hip

Am
It was the nearest thing to hip

         C        D         G 
In this shithole… and it’s gone

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Now I need to get out of this.. hullabaloo

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And I remember an old-fashioned bar that I once knew

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With an old-fashioned barman wearing old-fashioned clothes

Am                      D 
But when I get there.. it’s been bulldozed

G
So I follow my nose down Comatose Lane

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Through the stripped back, ripped up wastes of Woebegone Square

G
Till I find myself on Deadbeat Street,

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My feet beginning to ache, despair in the air

Am
The only thing bright in this blighted town

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Are the billboard adverts everywhere displayed like mocking shades

G
And the musty, dusty second-hand bookstore

         C                 D
Is now a scum-encrusted amusement arcade

G
It was the nearest thing to hip

Am
It was the nearest thing to hip

         C        D         G 
In this shithole… and it’s gone

G
It was the nearest thing to hip

Am
It was the nearest thing to hip

         C        D         G 
In this shithole… and it’s gone

G    C  D   G
         .. and it’s gone