Coal Train Robberies

Lyrics

Yesterday's coal train came to rest in the bitter cutting

And while the signals took an age to change, it was easy pickings

So you go to the movies where they smash it up

You want to feel your heart pumping, it makes you feel good

All through the karaoke, girls were squealing the hits

While another Mercedes-Benz gets blown to bits

While all the time in the camptown theatres of Piccadilly

They're going to throw a black-face minstrel show

For the barefoot children that they're always selling

They'll say "It's quaint" as the guilty ones faint

And claim they ain't underneath this paint

We interrupt these liberal saints with their whips and watermelon

Reports are coming in of a coal-train robbery

It's like another world, or it had better be

So we return to whitewashed pout of his committed lips

Since he was declared the long lost fountain of youth that drips and drips and drips

They'll be sending him round from door to door to sell you back what's already yours

"So many good deeds, so little time," say the advertising agency swine

When man has destroyed what he thinks he owns

I hope no living thing cries over his bones

If you don't believe that I'm going for good

You can count the days I'm gone and chop up the chairs for firewood

Reports are coming in of a coal-train robbery

It's like another world, or it had better be

Reports are coming in of a coal-train robbery

It's like another world, or it had better be

Reports, reports, reports, reports...

Alternate Lyrics

From the demo version on Spike (Deluxe Edition):

Yesterday's coal train came to rest in the bitter cutting

And while the signals took an age to change, it was easy pickings

So you go to the movies where they smash it up

You want to feel your heart pumping, it makes me feel good

All through the karaoke, they were screaming the hits

While another Mercedes-Benz gets blown to bits

Outside a khaki-covered river oozes by

And still they say that there’s a big important world out there to try

"What’s yours is yours, what’s yours is mine," so say those City of London swine

"So let’s steal something that’s really worth it"

Reports are coming in of a coal train robbery

It’s like another world, or it had better be

Come down the banks where you used to court, your heart pumping

You know where she kissed you as the sweating trains pulled in

A scrap of grime for a glimmer of heat beneath the rails between your feet

You used to pick rags from the workhouse floor

You don’t want much, you just want more

You waited fifteen years for the whistle to blow

When they say "work," when they say "no"

If you don’t believe that I’m going for good

You can count the days I’m gone and chop up the chairs for firewood

Reports are coming in of a coal train robbery

It’s like another world, or it had better be

Reports are coming in of a coal train robbery

Reports are coming in of a coal train robbery

Credits

• Written by: D.P.A. MacManus
• Produced by: Elvis Costello, Kevin Killen and T Bone Burnett
• Musicians:

Elvis Costello - vocals, guitars, piano

T Bone Burnett - National Resonator guitar

Benmont Tench - Vox Continental organ, Baldwin spinet

Jerry Scheff - fuzz & Hofner basses

Jerry Marotta - drums

Michael Blair - tympani, tambourine, whiplash, anvil

Discography

Albums:

• Spike, 1989
• Spike (Deluxe Edition), Rhino, 2001
• This section may be incomplete.

Singles:

• This section may be incomplete.

Collections:

• Album Name, Year
• This section may be incomplete.

Alternate Versions:

• Coal Train Robberies (demo)

Spike (Deluxe Edition), Rhino, 2001

• This section may be incomplete.

Soundtracks:

• none

Various Artists collections:

• none

Covers

Recorded by:

• none
• This section may be incomplete.

Performed by:

• none
• This section may be incomplete.

Bootlegs

• This section is incomplete.