Palmcorder Yajna

Lyrics

Holt Boulevard
Between Garey and White
[I] Hooked up with some friends at the Travelodge
[We] Set ourselves up for the night

Carpenter ants in the dresser
Flies in the screen
It will** be too late by the time we learn
What these cryptic symbols mean

And I dreamt of a house
Haunted by all you tweakers with your hands out
And the headstones climbed up the hills
And the headstones climbed up the hills

Send somebody out for soda¹
Comb through the carpet for clues
Reflective tape on our sweatpants
Big holes in our shoes[2]
Every couple minutes someone says he can't stand it any more
Laugh lines on our faces
Scale maps of the ocean floor

And I dreamt of a camera
Pointing out from inside the television
And the aperture yawning and blinking
And the headstones climbed up the hills

If anybody comes to see me
Tell 'em they just missed me by a minute
If anybody comes in to our room while we're asleep
I hope they incinerate everybody in it

And I dreamt of a factory
Where they manufactured what I needed
***Using shiny new machines
And the headstones climbed up the hills

Banter

• It's about these junkies that I'm writing about right now. They hole up in Pomona, which is just south of where I'm from, it's a really bad scene, these people. I don't really know what good can come of what they're up to. So far, the evidence is not good, as to what's gonna happen. It's called Palmcorder Yajna- Yajna, which I'm doubtless mispronouncing, means- it's a ritual sacrifice in Hindi thought, so there you go. (2002-11-01)
• Those of you who have had the same love/hate/but mostly love relationship with methamphetamine, God love ya. (2003-06-06)
• This is a song about how, when sometimes, sometimes you find it necessary to rob the safe in the restaurant where you work. And they, and it's funny, because your friends who, like, have good jobs, say: 'What good can come of that?' And here I quote your friends: 'They only have about two thousand dollars in there." If you were honest with your friends, you'd say "Look, two thousand dollars will buy me a quarter pound of peanut butter crank, and I'll be going for a good ten days off that, unless I meet up with some friends.' Then you may stop to think to yourself, that you're likely to meet up with some friends. New friends! People you didn't really know, until word began to spread in the neighbourhood. 'John robbed the safe! And he took all 2k, and he bought a quarter pound! He's in room ten, 253 North Broadway, you can't miss it. Faces Broadway at an angle across from the coliseum.' And so there you are with your new friends, listening to King Diamond as you do, high for three days and beginning to talk nonsense, and you may think to yourself 'I wish I had a song to sing.' You may only hold this thought for a second or so, but I heard you, when you thought that, and that's why I wrote you this song. (2008-03-01)
• JD:The inspiration for this song is based on something our dealer told us when I was sixteen. When I say our, I don't mean to implicate any of my friends here on stage, who are good Christian men.
  Peter: It sounded like there's like a family dealer.
  JD: Well... [laughs] You take such family as you can find. (2009-11-28)
• This is a song about the inside of a motel. In particular, it's both a single motel that I could point out to you where the building stood before God in his infinite mercy wiped it from the face of the earth, replacing it with, I would guess a CVS, just you know, just playing the odds there, rolling seven, it was probably a CVS. But before the CVS that we all know today, there were beds that smelled funky and stale in a particular type of stale that's yet ever new, and cigarette burns that miraculously reappear if you replace the sheets with fresh ones and yet the burn returns, because the burn is a metaphor and you can't, you can't just change a metaphor out. You replace the sheet and the metaphor persists. That's in the nature of these guys, right. I went to this motel in Los Angeles and I went to it in Pomona and I went to it in Portland and it wasn't a chain. They were all independently owned. And yet miraculously, they were all the same motel. Not hotel. That's for the people with money. (2015-04-11 - City Winery, New York City)
• This is a song about six people picked to live in a motel room. [In the background, Peter again teaches Erin how to play the song on the fly so she can, again, play a really sick guitar solo, presumably she is grateful it only has like, two main chords. This has happened several times this tour and she rocks every time.] It is based on a motel room that was next to my apartment in Portland, but I moved it to Pomona, as I am wont to do. It's from We Shall All Be Healed, one of whose working titles was 'Prominent Metaphysicians of South Pomona'. I have the notebook with all the other titles, it is pretty funny. I'd like to dedicate this song to those prominent metaphysicians south of Pipeline. (2021-08-19 Gothic Theatre)

Live Performances

• 2004-10-15 The Social (with John Vanderslice band - recording)
• 2015-04-11 - City Winery, New York City (recording)
• 2021-08-19 Gothic Theatre
• 2023-10-06 August Hall (encore)
• 2023-10-27 Cactus Theater
• 2024-04-12 The Palace

Footnotes