Attention All Pickpockets
Lyrics
In comes you, not the same person I knew
Looking roughly the same but something hungry getting restless in your brain
Hey hey hey hey hey
So there I go, not the same person that you used to know
Peeking through the fish-eye lens at you
And the cornet blows
Where the oleander grows
And us two, not the same people that our old friends knew
And so down the street, you head, in the high summer heat
White long sleeved Oxford pushed up to just before your elbows
Black pumps and a medium length black skirt
Eating a path through the dark damp Earth
I hope they've got plenty of money where you're going
And the cornet blows
Where the oleander grows
And us two, not the same people that our old friends knew
Banter
- The lyric turns out, actually, to be a study for the song Dilaudid. Same people. (2007-06-17 Zoop)
- This is a song about young heroin addicts in love. (2018-04-12 The Woodward Theater)
- The person who played the melodica on the original of this isn't here but I'd like to think of her while I play it. I was in Paris, France, in 2003, I think, and well, I think it's time for a long story. If you gotta plug the parking meter or something, I won't be offended. I know, like all men in my family, once I start talking you never know how long it's going to last. But, Paris, in 2003, and they were having a heat wave. I wanna say a tropical heat wave but that's not true. Just a heat wave. And they weren't used to that over there. They probably are now, because the planet's warming and we're eventually all gonna boil. [approximately three people woo] Three guys cheer. I'm sorry, it's going badly for you fellas, I'll be thinking a good thought for you not wanting to be boiled in your own skin. So I go to Paris and there'd been a thing that seemed very sort of European, said this'll be a week long thing, and you'll be at this place called Mont Doux (??) which has since actually burned to the ground, I"m sorry to hear about that. It was a pretty special week when they said, come on over, and you'll recird some stuff, and there'll also be opportunity for collaboration. Now I'm more agreeable than I was when I was younger, but I"m still a pretty cantankerous guy. And I think, I'm not looking to make any new friends, thanks. But they like this, in Europe, they like the idea of throwing a couple of musicians in a room and seeing what happens. This is sort of the opposite of what I have done most of my career. I meet one person and I make music with them. And then ten years later, we add a drummer. But, they were bent on it. You're gonna work with other musicians. And I dunno, I don't know any of these people, and I met Kimye Dawson there. [woo!!] and Kimya remembers, and I don't want to believe her, but I'm sure she's telling the truth, that the first thing I said to her was "I don't work well with others". [laughing from JD and crowd] So she's a really open person who registers what you say when you say it to her, so she goes 'well, good to meet you," and then we went in to record, in this complex, with a bunch of recording studios. I went in to do my thing, write some songs, one of the things, you put me in a room with a notebook and you get a song in about an hour. I sat down to work on a song and Kimya sort of weaseled in, and stood up against the wall with a melodica and this was the song I wrote there, I wrote based on a sign that I saw on the Paris subway, and what it said was - I can't pronounce French at all - Attention Aux Pickpockets, which means beware of pickpockets, but I called the song 'Attention All Pickpockets'. (2023-10-02 Belly Up Tavern)
Live Performances
Footnotes