Showtime

Hang a guitar on my shoulder

Check the vacant drooling faces round the room

Another heartbreak battle

And I'm only getting older

Jesus help me when I say I'll give it all up pretty soon

Daytime

Time to fight the morning's headache

Gulp an aspirin bang together one more song

Inspiration cauterised

By years of useeless heartache

Every shallow nights reaction sounding twisted up and wrong



These last years

Years gone down to the showtime



Showtime

Try to catch the spark

That got me hooked so many years ago and died

Second-rate musicians

Feeding infantile illusions

Reading music magazines to keep the habit satisfied

Pitching

To some demographic average

What the hell he's staying home for, I don't see him here tonight

Thirteen years and over

Tuned to radio between the hours

Of six and seven-thirty, AM programmer's delight



These last years

Years gone down to the showtime



I never knew it could be

So misleading

Waiting for the final song to end

In this dirty nightclub

All the souls are bleeding

Reaching for the big decision

Disco floor or television

Time and time again

You hear the so-called friends

The smug de-facto critics in their movie backdrop cities

Sneering sitdown and listen

Life's a lonely escalator

It's a fool who doesn't know he has to leap off at the end

Well they were never at the guesthouse

With the ghost of Jimmy Rodgers

Watching Townsville sugar sunsets back in 1959

And they'll all be gone when the end is come

And I'm kneeling in the backroom

Crying Lord I'm just a trouper, let me play it one more time