International Small Arms Traffic Blues

Lyrics

My love is like a powder keg
My love is like a powder keg in the corner of an empty warehouse
Somewhere just outside of town
About to burn down

My love is like a Cuban plane
My love is like a Cuban plane flying from Havana
Up the Florida coast to the 'Glades
Soviet made

Our love is like the border between Greece and Albania
Our love is like the border between Greece and Albania
Trucks* loaded down with weapons**
Crossing over every night
Moon yellow and bright
There is a shortage in the blood supply
But there is no shortage of blood
The way I feel about you baby can't explain it
You got the best of my love

Banter

• Mountain Goats songs don't get used in a lot of TV shows. I was ecstatic when Weeds said, oh, we'll take this song, and we'll have three different couples having sex to it.(2023-10-02 Belly Up Tavern)
• [audience yells for a song from Poker Face] The guy who got me in that is really famous [ed: Rian Johnson, known equally for making the Mountain Goats album movie Life of the World To Come and also Star Wars], and I'm against name dropping, but a certain guy who produces that song texted me today and said "you should play Staple Head". But I didn't write the music to Staple Head. Jamey Jasta from Hate Breed wrote the music. I wrote the lyrics and vocal melodies. I hope it is not the final Mountain Goats-Hate Breed collaboration, but it's hard to get the unit together. Whaddaya do when you drop the Mountain Goats and Hate Breed? [ska-esque] Pick it up! Pick it up! [groans/laughing] Let's play International Small Arms Traffic Blues. (2023-10-03 The Belasco)

Live Performances

• 2004-10-15 The Social
• 2009-02-25 Swedish American Hall
• 2023-10-02 Belly Up Tavern (encore)
• 2023-10-03 The Belasco
• 2023-10-05 August Hall
• 2024-04-12 The Palace

Footnotes

• *Variant: "big trucks" instead of just "trucks"(2023-10-02, 2023-10-03, 2023-10-05)
• **Variant: "nice weapons!" appended (2023-10-05)