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Daily Lyric: JUGHANDLELAND v.2

Updated: Apr 2

Well, it’s past midnight in Boston and time just creeps

Something like one-thirty in the morning

Heat’s on, wife’s gone, can’t get no sleep

And the weather outside is thunderstorming

I was gonna hit the road at the crack of dawn

But there’s no sense in laying here and waiting

So I shake a leg and shake off a yawn

Jump into the car and start the engine cannonading

Well she ain’t no fifty-nine Cadillac, Jack

She ain’t no classic-ass fifty seven Chevy

They say she burns rice, I think “they”’re full of shice

‘Cause she takes me to places unreached by those heavies

And this morning she’ll take me far away from this place

Where the only direction is backed into a corner

No more wild race, no more disgrace

And four more hours before I slip across the border

Full tank of gas and the oil changed

Fistful of quarters for the toll change

Got the stereo cranked and blasting through the roof

With my favorite rock’n’roll bands

Lightning and thunder surround me

Like hell breaking loose all around me

Well it don’t matter ‘cause my old world shatters

and my enemies scatter as I’m headed

down to Jughandleland.

Well, I ain’t ever worked no magic and I ain’t no rat

But I slipped the state line just the same

I may be the new guy here but I know where it’s at

And I’m ready to play this game

No sleek machines with today’s gasoline

All the new boxes look alike

With all the old cruisers on the golden oldies scene

I’m prob’ly better off with a new bike

Yeah, a true nature’s child, born to be wild

Rendezvous with the midnight gang

Yeah, for awhile I can make this my style

In two-bit dives and underground hangs

This is the life I’ve been aching and hurting for

Twelve years of exile on my sleeve

Rock’n’roll street life on the Jersey Shore

Though it’s all changed, I still believe

The circuit’s dead and the kids don’t care

About their old man’s pickup scenes

The music’s changed and so’s the hair

Everything’s gone mean and extreme

The poets and visionaries

Have buried their heads in the sand

Their voice are mute and their sound is muffled

Down in Jughandleland.

Twenty-four years since I started this voyage

And I’m still counting the white lines

Through blocks and freeze-outs I finally got the courage

To look for Destination 99

Though the freedom of speed gets snarled and snagged

In a million mundane commutes

I won’t be broken or bagged or bound and gagged

By the cynics who would silence my truths

And what was true then is still true now

Though stomped into the ground by the punks

I’ll find it and speak it anyway, anyhow

Even if I have to sift through the rubble and the junk

And so tonight in my beat-up old box

I’m headed to I don’t know where

To hear some band out of time whose music still “rocks”

That I know I’ll find out there

And from the parkway to the Turnpike to the steel graveyard

From the bombed-out back roads to the boulevards

From those in cars to make a living to those living in their cars

And from those never-grown-ups still flashing their guitars

The desperate and pathetic

Still try to make their stand

Wounded, killed, and resurrected

Forever and ever in Jughandleland.

©2023 The Hesh Inc.

"Jersey Jughandle no. 2" - AI art by The Hesh Inc.
The Jersey Jughandle as abstract concept.

The story of this song is essentially the same as yesterday's, only that this version is even more blatant in its Bossiness (albeit one verse shorter) than the first version. The first verse is the same as the other version, but then it takes a left turn (via jughandle, of course) deep into Bruce territory. Although the sentiment expressed in it is just as true, I left it out of the Soul In Exile canon because I prefer to speak in my own voice. (I had been considering a full album consisting of my explicit Springsteenisms for sometime in the future, but given my shift in attitude toward the man in recent years, that is not likely to happen.)

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