Strange Tourist
By Gareth Liddiard
From Strange Tourists (2010)
Tabbed by Juck
Chords:
BmAdd6 F/C Asus4 Asus2b6 Fm# Dsus2
|-0------x----0-----1-------2---0----|
|-3------1----3-----0-------2---3----|
|-4------2----2-----2-------2---2----|
|-4------3----2-----2-------4---0----|
|-2------3----0-----0-------4--------|
|--------x------------------2--------|
Intro
Em Am BmAdd6 Am
Em Am G G
Em Am BmAdd6 Am
Em Am G G G
Verse
Em Am
It was all falling down and a long way from cheap
Em Am
So tell me why did we live where we lived?
Em Am
Above the old fish shop where they served up slop
G
And all the alley cats talked in their sleep
Em Am
I spent a year there with B after I quit the Mitsubishi,
Em Am
Dragged my mattress up some stairs by the sea
Em Am
Then watched the old van rust in the gusts of the coast
G
Ending its knightly expeditions for beer
Em Am
B went psychotic in the navy and he wouldn't mend
Em Am
Something about a sunk junk and speed
Em Am
Well he couldn't shake the illness or endure the cure
G
And there was no point switching treatments in the Timor Sea
Em Am
I have never known someone who needed to talk so much
Em Am
Or even fool himself disguising a guess
Em Am
Well I just steered his bullshit through its next diversion
G
Never bothering with reality checks
Chorus
Em Am
I'm saying Bowerbird, you'd turn a birdbath black
Em Am
What the hell could be the matter with you?
Em Am
Where did you come from and why'd you go collecting
G F/C
Anything that turns the colour blue?
Link
Am Asus4 G Asus2b6 Asus2b6
Fm# Em Am Dsus2 Asus2b6 Asus2b6 Asus4
Em Am BmAdd6 Am
Em Am G G
Verse
Em Am
He took his refuge in the open where it stings
Em Am
You think you'd seen him but he's gone in a blink
Em Am
Once those Stilnox hit their target don't trust nothing,
G
No one and don't go believing anything that you think
Em Am
He'd say, "I'm half way through but I don't know what I'm doing
Em Am
I ain't feeling much of nothing at all
Em Am
But it's my first time too, if that's a valid excuse
G
I'm going to wait here for the engines to stall
Em Am
I've seen the tracks of some giant, the smoke of some fire
Em Am
Fuse like hot sands in a bottleneck
Em Am
Does all of beauty lie in being dead and gone
G
Or is all history made of chickens and their unhatched eggs
Em Am
I've seen the spectre of a frigate on a dry rock face
Em Am
A stone axe held together with an old bootlace
Em Am
Anything betraying the drift of dead headway
G
You can shake it but it won't let go
Em Am
All that so men can live like girls to keep their might pert
Em Am
Digging music made by millionaires for car adverts
Em Am
Save the whales, invade Iraq and have a hamburger
G
I can't distinguish between the nightmare and the joke
Em Am
I was in Tokyo once without any cash
Em Am
And Koda Kumi sang a coda pink as sarin gas
Em Am
I took a trip to Nagasaki in a rented Mitsubishi
G
Then went camping in the Jukai under Mount Fuji"
Chorus
Em Am
I'm saying Bowerbird, you'd turn a birdbath black
Em Am
What the hell could be the matter with you?
Em Am
Where did you come from and why'd you go collecting
G F/C
Anything that turns the colour blue?
Link
Am Asus4 G Asus2b6 Asus2b6
Fm# Em Am Dsus2 Asus2b6 Asus2b6 Asus4
Em Am BmAdd6 Am
Em Am G G
Verse
Em Am
But when his pension got suspended, well that spelled the end
Em Am
And I joined his life of leisure in flight
Em Am
It's too hard to row a boat using a periscope
G
Sometimes you gotta do wrong to do right
Em Am
He got in trouble years back, I haven't seen him since
Em Am
In a men's room in a night club in Madrid
Em Am
He sold some dexedrine or something to a plain clothes D
G
Then raised a stink so bad they ended up deporting him
Em Am
Then last I heard he was as free as a bird
Em Am
And into Scientology
Em Am
Or into Heaven's Gate or Sharon Tate or in the Legionnaires
G
Or gone to Georgia with the Mujahideen
Em Am
And someone else was walking eggshells in his birdcage
Em Am
Someone else shared his unending lease on hamstrung rage
Em Am
He was someone else's problem, and that made me glad
G
They can indulge him 'till he's ironclad
Chorus
Em Am
I'm saying Bowerbird, you'd turn a birdbath black
Em Am
What the hell could be the matter with you?
Em Am
Where did you come from and why'd you go collecting
G F/C
Anything that turns the colour blue?
Link
Am Asus4 G Asus2b6 Asus2b6
Fm# Em Am Dsus2 Asus2b6 Asus2b6 Asus4
Em Am BmAdd6 Am
Em Am G G
Verse
Em Am
Well I wound up working in a hospital
Em Am
Renting TV's to the bored and the blind
Em Am
Seems the DSS got sick of my BS
G
And had my unemployment privatised
Em Am
They made a date with me, some agency
Em Am
And I went down there like a fool in love
Em Am
They made a few phone calls, found a real cure-all
G
Like I wasn't miserable enough
Em Am
I was working night shift when he got there
Em Am
The first time I'd seen a coma on the ward
Em Am
The sister said he won't be needing TV now
G
Probably won't be needing nothing at all
Em Am
He was in Tokyo for a while until he stabilised
Em Am
They flew him back here and the story unfolded
Em Am
They found him frozen in a hollow in Aokigahara forest
G
Where those harakiri weirdoes go
Em Am
He died a little later, and was wheeled away
Em Am
I'd blame his morbid fascination for it all
Em Am
And his doubtless, groundless faith in his outdoorsmanship
G
He didn't kill himself, he didn't have the balls
Em Am
Yeah but hope dies last in a hospital
Em Am
But has a habit of doing it next to you
Em Am
While you shit kick around with your eyes to the ground
G
Like a bowerbird appropriating anything
Am
The colour blue
Asus4 G
Asus2b6 (plays to fade)
End
