Lyrics The Most Important Thing - The Hold Steady

The Most Important Thing

Yeah, and when the band played Sally Cinnamon
It felt like 1991 again
Didn’t get into them too early in
But I still got into them
Right now that seems like it’s the most important thing
That’s the thing about Gideon
And that’s just a little bit about so many things
He knows too much about certain things
He knows some guys who know some Latin Kings
Right now that seems like it’s pretty much the only thing
We’re baby birds with broken wings and we sing
Yeah, we sing unity songs but the scene’s still splintered
We’re stretched thin and we’re stressed at the seams
And we dream
Yeah we dream like screen, but we’re still out of focus
Sure, we know it’s just showbiz
It still seems to surprise us
When they hook us by the mouth and pull us up
And then they try to fry us
That’s the thing about Charlemagne
He got all washed up in the amber waves of grain
Roughed up in the bars and the bluffs
Tangled up in the double dutch
You know he drank too much, he never really ate enough
It was so, so sad, with Charly in a sick bed
He looked like hell and smelled like chemicals
Maxin' out on medicine and feelin' all invincible
ICU in Regions Hospital
It felt so cool with Holly at the bus stop
Yeah, we could feel it comin' through our arteries
We’re runnin' low on energy and nodding off in reverie
Faded blues in Memphis, Tennessee
The Mississippi River always holds it all together
Yeah, we sing unity songs but the scene’s still splintered
We’re stretched thin and we’re stressed at the seams and we dream
Yeah we dream like screen, but we’re still out of focus
Sure, we know it’s just showbiz
It still seems to surprise us
When they hook us by the mouth and pull us up
And then they try to fry us
Done a pretty good job of fryin' ourselves, I think
As she goes blastin' static — Music from the Big Pink
Stumbled into the foyer and pulled the bookshelf over
Yeah, we were drowning in the literature
Bram Stoker hit your head
Ginsburg hit your dick
A big black Bible hit your head
And that’s how we got born again