Parakeet Prison (feat. Kevin Corrigan)

Fell asleep with a headache, just woke up and I'm feeling better now
I fell asleep watching The Seventies on Netflix
Jim Jones, John Gacy, Son of Sam, the Manson Trial
There's more but I fell asleep, but I was a kid then
So I remember a lot of it anyhow, just like you did
I was in kindergarten in 1972 when Duran fought Kenny Buchanan at MSG in New York
The results flash across the TV, and in 1974 I was 7
And Richard Nixon resigned, and I was 8, and Vietnam ended in 1975

I thought about you growing up in the Bronx, did you fear Son of Sam?
What was your first concert? Mine was a Doobie Brothers
My mom took me and some others and that part was nice
And I walked around for a while by myself and I saw a shocking amount of sex
Going on back in the trees, girls down on their knees
Guys with their backs against the trees

Whoa oh, oh, listen to the music
Whoa oh, oh, listen to the music
Whoa oh, oh, listen to the music
Whoa oh, oh, listen to the music

Lots of music centered my first live concert experience
My first attempt at a sexual experience was when two older girls
Took me and a friend across Millers Road in Massillon, Ohio
It was a field back then, and there was a small hill
And beyond the hill, we were smoking and the girls asked us
Do you guys have hard-ons?
We never heard the term, didn't know what it meant
We asked them: What are hard-ons?
And they smirked and after a while, one girl shrugged her shoulders to the other
And very slowly, the four of stood up and left
The girls were walking ahead of us, as if we didn't exist
Down the street, they crossed
They looked so tall as we trailed behind them
What's a hard-on? What's a hard-on? They were asking each other
At seven years old, we smoked cigarettes
But we didn't know what the term hard-on meant

So yeah, I remember these things when I was 4, 5, 6, and 7
What do you recall of those years, Kevin?

I remember Frazier, Frazier, Frazier from the kid across the street
Whose smoke and joke beat Ali
In 1972 on TV, Frazier was saying that Ali was taunting him in the rain
Frazier said: Ali was saying to me
Don't you know that I'm God? Don't you know that I'm God?
Frazier had a witty reply, but I don't remember what it was, do you?

As a kid, did you ever go to the zoo?
I have no memories of ever going to a zoo with you
But we went to an enormous barn where my dad bought us parakeets so many times
So many times because they always died
They'd never last a week, those parakeets, from what we called Parakeet Prison
I hated the guy who owned it, but looking back on it now
He was just a parakeet supplier in Ohio, trying to make a living
But yeah at the time, I hated that guy
He and my dad would talk for what seemed like hours and hours
In that big smelly barn that smelled like a pigsty
An eternity of metal cages coated with bird shit
Thousands of iridescent birds fluttering and fluttering
Feathers floating through the air, like a bomb went off
The crud got into our lungs and we choked on parakeet feathers

While my dad and him kept talking and talking, big smiles on their faces
The guy always had these gross green clothes covered in bird shit
He looked like a walking Picasso, I mean Jackson Pollock
But Picasso rhymes better with clothes
And Picasso rhymes better with coming home
Taking turns vomiting privately, never letting dad know
Dad was obsessed with us having parakeets that would live
He kept trying and trying, but they kept dying
Don't know if it was the temperature at home or the Ohio climate
But eventually we were so tormented by those trips to buy those dying birds
We'd be awake all night, dreading going back to Parakeet Prison

One morning, our dad woke us up, so pumped up to go get more parakeets
We were scared to tell him we didn't want to go back there anymore
I was a brother, so I did all the talking
If my dad was triggered, I wanted to be the one to take the beating
I said: Dad, the parakeets keep dying, we don't want to go back there anymore

Dad went easy on us, I could see his heart in his eyes
The parakeets dying was breaking our hearts
But he wanted us to have something colorful and vibrant
To think of him fondly while he was out of town
That amounted to us flushing dead parakeets down the toilet
In addition to our dad being gone

My first movie was went my mom's friend somehow snuck us into to Jaws
I just remembered that it had to be kept secret
She said she was taking us to some mall in some far away suburb to shop
Her husband was strict, and her fear of her getting caught and her nervousness
Eclipses my memory of the movie
So Kevin, what do you remember of your life between the ages of 4 and 7?

I don't know how Frazier replied to Ali during that fight at MSG
But I lived on a steep hill called Loring Place
One day, water came rushing down the gutter on my side of the street
Flowing beneath the Pintos and the Cutlass Supremes
And charging down Loring Place to the main avenue, Fordham Road
Someone had opened a hydrant up the hill
But to me, the North Pole had melted
The Watergate had broke, the one I'd been hearing about
The water from Watergate coming from the top down
How could such a thing happen? Was safety an illusion?
How long before the flood waters rose
And before it reached the 6th floor of the building where I lived?

I'm pretty sure the first movie I saw was in a movie theater, on Valentine
It was The Towering Inferno
I remember the fire blazing out of control from the middle of the building
Working its way up, people trapped on the top floor above the fire
They were sitting ducks, their only chance of survival
Was to blow up the tanks on the roof that held the building's water supply
And hope it was enough to stop the fire and not drown themselves in the process
Tying themselves down to keep from getting washed away

Oh, and far as zoos
I remember this guy made the front page of the Post and the Daily News
For climbing in the tiger exhibit at the Bronx Zoo
His photo was taken with a long lens but there he was, across the fence
Just like you or me, seated in a Buddhist-like position with a tiger right next to him
Its head tilted in fear or confusion, its right paw in mid-swipe
The guy was wearing a satin baseball jacket or windbreaker
Holding out his hand like he wanted to pet the tiger
He got roughed up, the zookeepers were able to distract the animal
Got the guy outta there and sent him to Jacobi Hospital
Staff gave his ripped up jacket to his mother
I knew the zoo, I knew where the incident occurred
The paper said the guy had a history of mental illness
How long did he have this idea, I wondered
How long had he thought about doing this?
Or was it a spur of the moment thing?
I'd like to get close up to those tigers, close enough to touch them
What did crossing that line finally involve?
What was the difference between doing it and just walking away?
Was it insanity? Was it bravery?
I asked this friend I was hanging out with that summer, Arthur Macguffin
Who said: No question, the guy was nuts but even if he was
It still takes guts to get in a cage with a tiger

Oh, the Son of Sam, that's a vivid memory
I remember a lot of people seemed crazy back then
It seemed like a thing that was going around, like a spirit
David Berkowitz used to work at the post office up the block from my uncle Sam
It was strange, to have a cousin Sam that was the son of my uncle Sam
I remember the blackout of '77
I remember the Yankees winning the World Series that year and the following year
I remember seeing the Sex Pistols on a late night show, Night Bird or Midnight Special
And feeling like they weren't that different from the Son of Sam
I remember a Canadian TV show that aired on Saturday morning
Hilarious House of Frankenstein, hosted by Vincent Price

You lived on a hill, too? So did I
And a Cutlass Supreme, my dad had one of those, a company car
I believe that you had a fear of a flood coming and being washed away
My friend's fear that disaster was on its way was when we flew to LA
To see my grandmother and my grandfather, I'd never been on a plane
Who knows what was going on? Maybe the hostage situation, maybe
I don't know, but it was my first flight and I thought
Maybe it might go down in flames

It was a summer between the second and first grade and my ears were popping
And it was such a piercing, excruciating pain, I'll never forget that pain
I was probably crying and the pain was so bad I don't even remember crying
All I remember is that my dad didn't go
Early sign of my mom and dad's divorce but I was too young to see it coming
You know, I've never seen Asians until we got to Los Angeles
Next door to where my grandparents lived
Their neighbors, their names were the Hongs
A song about that trip to see a hummingbird, seeing Benji in the theater
Hearing Bowie's Young Americans for the first time
But a memory that stands out that I've never sang or written about
Was how the houses all looked the same in that neighborhood
And there was a park across the street where we would play
My sister was over there and she ran across the street to my grandparent's house
But accidentally ran into the Hongs' house
It was her first time at that place, we never met them yet
She found herself in the living room of a Chinese family
And she started screaming, like you hear in horror films
When someone's being stabbed to death and they're bleeding to death
And in fear, the Hongs walked her back to her grandmother's
We were on our way over there to see what was the matter
She was sobbing all day, my sister is so delicate
I mean, how would anybody expect her to act?
We grew up on Wonder bread and Velveeta cheese and everybody we knew
Except my dad's friend Moses and my friend Lamont, were white

We went to the Queen Mary on that trip to LA, the world opened up to me
And I knew that on the west coast, I would live one day
And here I am at 51 in San Francisco, laying next to my Vietnamese girlfriend
My doctor is Chinese, my landlord is Chinese
My dentist is Korean, my guitarist is Filipino
California's my first taste of diversity, I must have loved the taste
Because it's where I ended up 3000 miles away from where I grew up
Because I was too much of an outcast to stay
I'm from the biggest high school football town in the USA
That's no bullshit, Massillon, Ohio, Go Tigers!
There's a documentary, rent it today

Chris Spielman's from my hometown
His widow Stephanie Belcher, she was the most popular girl in high school
He married her and she was diagnosed with cancer, she ended up dying
He ended his football career to help her
I never thought I'd feel anything for anybody who played football
But I felt for Chris Spielman
I just realized from the years from 4 to 7 were the years where the seeds were planted
The seeds that sprouted and blossomed into who I am
I watched two kids boxing at the boxing gym today
And of all things, they were siblings, 4 and 7, I asked my boxing teacher
What do you think makes these kids end up boxing at this age?
He said: Circumstance, there's always something, you never know
At the ages between 4 and 7, my destiny was set in motion
Between those ages, I fell in love with
Music, culture, crime, California, the fight game, and girls
And no, to this day, I've never owned any pet birds
And I still hate flying, and I still hate football
But I still have a cigarette every now and then after a show
And I found what a hard-on was, oh man did I ever
And here I am, about to fall asleep, in my apartment
On top of Nob Hill, in San Francisco