Key: Ab major
Verse 1
C
Am
to find myself one of the actors.
to his house for dinner.
Around eight, Rogers.
Gm
Am
There's keef, of course, if you want it.
G
Gm
I mix myself a short drink
and decline the keef.
It gives me a headache.
with his Arab contacts,
Gm
G
but that didn't give
me a license to smoke.
Gm
G
Be sides, it does give me a headache.
The chief's cover story
C
G
is an eccentric old French count
G
into Provençal.
Gm
F
An d sometimes
Provençal and Arabic.
Bb
F
G
The chief wasn't pulling cover tonight.
F
D
So I think you're the man
and I may add highly dangerous,
G
F
"'Well, sir, he is impressive,'
said the chief.
G
F#
keep -bite with one hand.
G
B
E#
He smoked and blew the ash out,
G
F#
absently caressing a gazelle
I endeavor to look noncommittal.
E#
G
D
Have you any idea
C
G
what we're doing here, Rogers?
F#
G
Well, no, sir. I thought not.
I'm going to show you
B
G
a documentary film.
Well, I happened onto this good
thing
through a Mexican shoeshine boy.
You, Kiki, come out here
and show Mr. Rogers how
Kiki stands in the doorway smiling.
isn't he?
C
C
He's one of the best deep trance me
diums I have ever handled.
C
A#
was able to teleport myself to a Mayan set
and bring back the pictures.
Dm
A#
I cooled it all the way up in my reports.
G
C
All I said was,
Now he's hopping up now.
C
G
The old priest rocks back and forth.
G
E#
G
and a dry insect music buzzes out.
It's known as singing the pictures.
The principle is alternating
current.
Now that old fuck can alternate
pain and pleasure
perhaps even a molecular level,
G
D
Goating the natives around
on stock probes
G
B
into the prearranged molds
G
Now, few singers can deliver a direct current,
and they are only called in an emergency.
The control system you have
G
C
This happened quite suddenly.
G
C
Am
A whole generation was born
D
A#
that felt neither pain nor pleasure.
G
C
since soldiers would have endangered
Em
G
They relied entirely on local criminals
for the pain and pleasure pictures.
E#
G
As a last resort,
yellow serpent.
blue snake eyes,
G
C#
B
two long serpent fangs
As the current pulses through him,
Abm
G
he begins to rock back and forth.
He shifts from A .C. to D .C.
C
B
A thin siren wail breaks from his lips
Am
G
now open to the yellow fangs.
Death, death, death,
a thin siren wail rises
B
Bm
G
and falls over empty cities.
This secret of the ancient Mayans,
which few are competent to practice.
Now, the technical department
think we are all as crazy
Am
C
reprehensible.
D
C
Bring us the ones that work, they say,
C
G
facts, figures, personnel.
Put that joker Death on the line.
Bb
C
gang of cutthroats.
G
Bb
I was privileged to as sist,
in a manner of speaking,
G
D
G
at the Yellow Serpent's last broadcast in
F
F#
G
Washington, D .C. Room in the Pentagon.
G
B
Bb
fidget about with that top -secret,
hottest -thing -ever look,
Am
G
strategic in NATO, standing by.
D
G
The old yellow serpent
He's just warming up,
The old serpent shifts to D .C.,
Death, death, death.
The pictures lash and
Death, death, death.
Death, death, death.
And now the serpent
swings his whip in the sky.
Here live stupid,
vulgar sons of bitches
who thought they could hire death
as a company cop.
Empty streets,
old newspapers in the wind,
a rustle of darkness and wires.
Applause
How did you like the song?
TunerE A D G B E
ChordsGm C Am Bb G...
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