We’ve updated our Terms of Use to reflect our new entity name and address. You can review the changes here.
We’ve updated our Terms of Use. You can review the changes here.

Land of Nod

from Berliners by Surprise Flapjacks

/

  • Compact Disc (CD) + Digital Album

    An actual CD! Digital download included.

    Includes unlimited streaming of Berliners via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.
    ships out within 5 days
    Purchasable with gift card

      $7 USD

     

lyrics

Duncan Alva Edison crash-landed in this place.
He would require no salves or medicines; he landed on third base.
His eyes were liquid mercury; his skin was made of brass.
He could walk into an airport and go anywhere first-class.

Dunc, well, he got word-drunk like a skunk in a cartoon.
Common syntax fled before him like a black cat from Le Pew.
He read Proust and Raymond Carver, got his ducks all in a row;
wore a zoot suit, went to Harvard with his Pulitzer in tow.
He shouted from the courtyards as his hair began to glow:

"I wanna learn to speak the language!
I wanna learn to crack the code!
Cause I ain't walking out of Cambridge
Without a certain mother lode.
Yes sir, it's gonna flow, note to node,
In Basque or in binary.
Come on, give me your casks, your wineries!
Come on, give me your wax refineries!
Give me your Stax, your Motown sleeves --
I want the real thing."

He tried his hand at basketball, was drafted first that year.
I've never seen so many grown men weep in ecstasy or fear.
And, no exaggeration, then he slept with all our wives
He just cantered through the ZIP codes and he slept with them all twice.
He must have had some principles, cause once would have sufficed.

"Won't you take me to your leader?
Won't you take me to the chief?
I ain't no dirty bottom feeder.
I can expound, I can be brief.
But it's given me no end of grief --
These people, they come so cheap.
Honey, do you know what I mean?
If you got something, then show it to me.
I think that you know what I mean --
I want the real thing."

It's been ten trying winters since Dunc landed in this place.
I heard he owns the internet and most of outer space.
There were three years he told only truths; for seven he told lies.
They say he only sleeps on Leap Day and he never blinks his eyes.
If you asked me how it feels to breathe the same air as a god
I'd say it feels like being a Cainite exiled in the land of Nod.

He can't get no satisfaction, Duncan Alva Edison.
Every object, its attraction spent, is promptly jettisoned
And in the contrails of his aircraft, makes its way back down to earth,
To this carnival of wanting we've been throwing since our birth.
We ain't gonna want it less now just because we do it worse.

Oh, won't you help me do some damage?
Won't you help me overload?
I been told that we were banished --
From the garden, I suppose.

But I've hauled ass all over this globe
To eat from the knowledge tree.
And if it didn't grow no light in me
Then I propose a change of scene.
I think that you know what I mean --
I want the real thing.

credits

from Berliners, released September 29, 2011

license

all rights reserved

tags

about

Surprise Flapjacks Durham, North Carolina

Surprise Flapjacks makes music about communists, existential crises, zombies, and lovesickness (and, of course, zombie lovesickness). The Carrboro and Durham-based five-piece creates melodic, energetic pop awash in sugary hooks and group harmonies, shot through with nervous surrealism, and tempered with submerged melancholy. ... more

contact / help

Contact Surprise Flapjacks

Streaming and
Download help

Shipping and returns

Redeem code

Report this track or account

If you like Surprise Flapjacks, you may also like:

Bandcamp Daily  your guide to the world of Bandcamp

On Bandcamp Radio

Fabiana Palladino stops by to talk about her mesmeric debut LP.
listen now