Intro - voice samples
Did the stuff come?
Yeah come in
You ever see a preamplifier like this?
Got a magnetic phono tape here, distortion 2%, harmonic unmeasurable
You know I can't afford it
How about this new Fountek speaker?
You fiend, you. you know I'm still paying for those stereo adapters
You dirty rat, you got me started on this stuff
Take it easy Charlie, you came to me don't forget
If you can't handle it...
Charlie, Charlie stay away from those knobs!
Charlie don't touch that big knob!
Some sellers can get a guy like Charlie hooked pretty easy
I better check this mess before I get some goddamn'??
I have a?? coming from my backup 3000 Watt power amplifier
Stay clean Chuck, pipe dreams keep a fiend stuck
Obsessing over every new toy and beat machine touched
From clean-cut kid, to crass sewer rat
Diggin' through the trash and dollar bins
Slippin' through the cracks amassed
Wax piled to the ceiling beams
Countless holy grails
Thai 45's psych from the Philipines, name it
An unknown with dreams of being famous
And an arsenal of analog gadgets to ease the pain with
The smug self-important record store clerk's the plug
That keeps him coming back for high-fidelity drugs
Chuck snapped like a celery stick, with his first fix
Strippin' chords for copper wire to fry his nerves with
The curse won't be lifted 'till you crash find the bottom
And shake the primate attached to your spinal column
I tried to help but there's some things you gotta face alone
And figure out yourself, you better watch your speed Casey Jones
Voice samples
Yo Chuck man, where you been?!
I've been makin' tapes to watch
Makin' tapes thinkin' about makin' tapes
?? use the cabinet
You're trying to collect every record in the world?
That's right!
??
I would say that collecting probably
Was a symptom of their mental problems
Put those records down bro, put 'em down
In the city
Last time we spoke Chuck said he kicked
Then I spot him at the record shop tryna' scratch his itch
Hands shakin', sweatin' bullets, wild-eyed and distant
Choppin' up gator tails of crate dust and sniffin'
A man possessed by ASR-10's and Technics
808's, Akais, preamplifiers and SP's
With quarter-inch cables plugged in either ear
One of many struck by this affliction in recent years
But these days everybody's somethin'
Writers, rappers, buyers, trappers
Audiophiles slidin' backwards
A gospel records preparation for the final rapture
His pleasure center fires off a million firecrackers
And flesh merges with a fully loaded sound system
In the confines of Charlie's underground prison
A ghost in the machine steered wrong
Outro - voice samples
Put this wire in there, by the second molar there, switch his ear on
I just saw a whole bunch of kids doing it and I didn't
Wanna be uncool, I really didn't, I wanted to be accepted
I wanna be with the in-crowd
The Donner party
With the in-crowd
The Donner party
To go to bed I have to spend about
Five or ten minutes moving records around
You know, so that I can get to the
Bathroom say in the middle of the night
Without, you know, tripping over a pile of them or something
And it is getting to me
And I think it does have a psychological effect
There is a high, the addict admits this
But after a while, that high is harder to get
Eventually, nothing else matters
Your habit is so instilled you lose your mental and physical control
Ain't that record a riot?
Ah it's alright, but that loudspeaker sounds tinny