The Waterfront Tape Cassette

by Oyster Boy

The Waterfront Tape Cassette cover art
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1.
02:07
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2.
01:48
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3.
03:04
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4.
02:16
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5.
03:12
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6.
04:49
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7.
02:34
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8.
01:52
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9.
03:52
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10.
01:52
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11.
02:58
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credits

released 25 August 2009
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Cover photo by Keegan Dauber. Ian from Ventilation-Based White Noise helps out with clapping on track 7. All songs performed, recorded, mixed, and produced by Zach L P © 2009 Oyster Boy / Edna St. Vincent Millay Day Parade Music.

tags

tags: home recording lo-fi pop devotional New York

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Track Name: No Escape
You asked me lately how have I been. "I'm visiting the graves of better days," I said. The dreams that wake me up in my bed drenched in sweat are truth and now my whole world is dead. I'm done with school and dried my jobs up. I tried to be cool, but I gave up. Expressing myself was a chore. I didn't want to do it anymore, but I was down on my luck, so I said What the fuck... But they told me You will never mean anything, you will never mean anything, you will never mean anything at all. You will never mean anything! You will never mean anything! But God, I just wish I meant something at all. It seems that they were right about me...
Track Name: Things Are Stale
I don't follow stocks; I know it's useless, and politics got me nothing done. I can't stand to have a job, I always lose it, and praying to God was never enough fun. But don't you gaze at me. I don't want anyone to see what's happening to me. It's too embarrassing. I never took on life with too much fervor. I don't know the rules, don't have the answers. I just spend my days accomplishing nothing, just wishing I could ever mean something. But we're all too small for that; just clouds of buzzing gnats in the epic mystery. It's so embarrassing.
Track Name: Years Of Wasted Sound
While I’m in no way influential, you’re the bottom of the barrel since your friends are all fifteen year olds who you sell marijuana. And I know you won’t admit this, but the only time a good riff found its way into your music was because I fucking wrote it for you... And if you’re just gonna use up all your musical equipment to make shitty songs, I’ll take it; my recordings sound like bullshit. But it’s funny that despite this you, can’t get any one to listen. You know I’d just call it quits if I were you in your position. No, I haven’t lost my mind, I’m just having a good time for the first time in a while. Now could you get over it? You’re the one who’s lost his shit. It’s your fault, not mine. You never listened to good music unless I introduced you to it, so don’t say I’m not much better; I’ve got seven fans to prove it, which is seven more than you so I’m the talent in this duo. You can get all technical but I’m the one who hits the blue notes, not you. See, this town’s not big enough for you and me so save the uproar. Pack your bags, go back to Maryland, to your no-name college’s dorms. And the kids who you sold stems to will forget they ever met you. I’m your way in, man, I made you; I can make them all forget you. No, I haven’t lost my mind, I’m just having a good time for the first time in a while. Now could you get over it? You’re the one who’s lost his shit. It’s your fault, not mine.
Track Name: The Waterfront
Washington to Wilmington, east coast cities got nothing on no one. Here come the knees fit with open wounds asking to be put in their place like New York slaves. I smell the ocean overflowing. Lost highways – where am I going? Rocks in their pockets, zippers on their tongues, everybody one day comes to the waterfront. 
Track Name: Thanks For Ruining My Day With Information
And right now there’s nothing that I want to know. All this information is a horror show. And I’ve got my reasons for taking it slow. It keeps me far from what I don’t want to know. When nothing is a mystery, I get anxious as hell. So please don’t tell me any more today. All these putrid vision assaulting my brain! They just make me angry or fill me with doubt. I want to get in my bed and never come out. Thanks for burdening my head with what everyone has said. When you go home, you pick up the phone and talk shit about kids in your room alone. I can’t take it, can’t watch you fake it. What’s worse, I know that everybody wants to be your friend because you know all the shit, but it doesn’t make your own shit smell good. So what else do you do except sit around and talk about people who can’t hear the sound of your tongues sharp lashes? Are they still your friends? Will you make nice to them when you seem them next? And I know when I leave, you’ll be moaning about me. When you go home, you pick up the phone and talk shit about kids in your room alone. But I don’t need this. You’re not worth it. You’re all bad news. I’m gone. Fuck you.
Track Name: Nothing Is On TV Again
Yesterday's parties have left me drained. I skip work so I can sleep all day. I'm half-awake and developing the shakes... Nothing is on TV again. There's no one talking on my telephone. It's silent here because nobody is home. My friends are at their places all alone. I'm staring at the ceiling again. I've got nowhere to be, there' no one I have to meet, can't concentrate long enough to read... But if I get back in bed, that will be the end. I know I'll be sick for days. It cannot be dismissed, and once it truly hits, I won't want to be sick or saved. Everyone else goes on with their lives when the fun is over, when the party dies. They've all got their remedies for rest: a bottle or a second cigarette. And when the day is killed, when they've had their fill, there's always girlfriends, wine, and sleeping pills... But everything is shit and I can't deal with it. My histrionic noise is part of it. But if you know the game, then you know the shame of not being able to say "I'm over it."
Track Name: All Flowers And Trees
Everybody hopes they'll live forever; young on beaches, young in dorms together. I've got a girlfriend now. She thinks I'm all right, so I'll let it go when she gets high without me tonight. And when she bleats about being young, I'll think of an old man saying "Live while you have it, son." I don't have time for your negativity. I'm killing myself with women in New York City. If you want to waste your youth in medical school, I wouldn't do it to myself, but yeah, that's cool. Your boy, does he always smile so wide? Is it hate for me that keeps you up awake at night? Good! That's what I planned! You're not special and you're not beyond reprimand. When it's time for you to die, will you cry? Will call out my name when you're ill? I think you will.
Track Name: Gray-Blue And Green
I've been assigned to suffer on the pages of a ruined manuscript, a tortured tome soaked once in the sea of serotonin tears. And I will never mean anything, but my God, I just wish I meant something. I wanted to be important, but the years will pass no matter how I fight. I want to live to 25 with nothing but the ocean in my eyes. I will never mean anything, but my God, I wish I meant something.
Track Name: Re-Watching The Warriors In NoLita
Othello stood by the pawn shop. “Can you spare a dime or two?” I said “Othello, aren’t you famous?” He said, “It doesn’t make me better than you.” The last time that I saw Othello, it was his picture on the news. He had smothered his Desdemona and put a knife in his own neck too. And now there’s nothing left, nothing left at all. We’ve got nothing after all. Mercy followed the boys back out of the darkness of the Bronx. The blood ran thick on the sidewalks and in a hundred subway stops. And when they got back to Coney Island without the traitors or the cops, they asked themselves if it was worth it, and had to wonder if it really was not. And now there’s nothing left, nothing left at all. We’ve got nothing after all. But I don’t know what keeps me up at night, what keeps me sick awake all night. There is nothing wrong with things despite that nothing's left, nothing's left at all. I’m just waiting for the fall.
Track Name: Ritual
I spent the day trying to fix myself; I should have spent it doing something else. I should have put my Titus record on. I should have maybe tried to write a song. And in an hour I’ll be dead asleep, but I’m afraid of what’s been in my dreams; the kind of dirty stories you could sell to magazines that comment on your health. It makes me wonder if I might need help. So you thought that you were special? Me too. So you thought that you were something? Me too. So you thought that you were free? Me too. Bob Dylan smashed his autoharp. Scott Fitzgerald’s crying out in the dark. In a decade it will all be gone. In a minute you’ll forget this song. And that twinkle in Jeff Mangum’s eye will one day curl up in a ball and die. It gets me thinking Is it just too late? But I’m too stubborn to accept my fate; I’ll go down looking it right in the face! So you thought that you were special? Me too. So you thought that you were something? Me too. So you thought that you were free?

Me too.