Infinitely Losing My Edge
Yeah, I'm losing my edge.
I'm losing my edge.
The kids are coming up from behind.
I'm losing my edge.
I'm losing my edge to the kids from Guatemala and from Delhi.
But I was there.
I was there in 1968.
I was there at the first Bowie show in Bromley.
I'm losing my edge.
I'm losing my edge to the kids whose footsteps I hear when they get on the decks.
I'm losing my edge to the internet seekers who can tell me every member of every good group from 1964 to 1974.
I'm losing my edge.
To all the kids in Lagos and Sao Paulo.
I'm losing my edge to the art-school Stockholm kids in little jackets and borrowed nostalgia for the unremembered nineties.
I'm losing my edge.
I'm losing my edge.
I can hear the footsteps every night on the decks.
But I was there.
I was there in 1983 at the first Bronski Beat practice in a loft in Brixton.
I was working on the synthesizer sounds with much patience.
I was there when Robert Palmer started up his first band.
I told him, "Don't do it that way. You'll never make a dime."
I was there.
I was the first guy playing Michelle Simonal to the disco kids.
I played it at the Astoria.
Everybody thought I was crazy.
We all know.
I was there.
I was there.
I've never been wrong.
But I'm losing my edge to better-looking people with better ideas and more talent.
And they're actually really, really nice.
I'm losing my edge.
I heard you have a compilation of every good song ever done by anybody.
Every great song by Crispian St. Peters. All the underground hits.
All Gregory Isaacs tracks. I heard you have a vinyl of every the Normal record on German import.
I heard that you have a white label of every seminal crunk hit - 1985, '86, '87.
I heard that you have a CD compilation of every good '80s cut and another box set from the '70s.
I hear you're buying a mellotron and a spring reverb and are throwing your macbook out the window because you want to make something real. You want to make a Mark Hollis record.
I hear that you and your band have sold your arpeggiator and bought a snare.
I hear that you and your band have sold your snare and bought an arpeggiator.
I hear everybody that you know is more relevant than everybody that I know.
But have you seen my records?
Subhumans,
Bootsy's Rubber Band,
Connie Case,
Carl Craig,
Scrapy,
Joy Division,
Heavy D & The Boyz,
Metal Thangz,
Marmalade,
Echospace,
Tubeway Army,
Icehouse,
K-Klass,
Lizzy Mercier Descloux,
Lucky Dragons,
Young Marble Giants,
Sound Behaviour,
Parry Music,
Davy DMX,
Pere Ubu,
Eric Dolphy,
The Dave Clark Five,
Deepchord,
Don Cherry,
Crime,
10cc,
The Electric Prunes,
Main Source,
Cameo,
Rahsaan Roland Kirk,
UT,
The Cramps,
Pharaoh Sanders and the Fire Engines,
Crooked Eye,
Neil Young,
Jeru the Damaja,
The Last Poets,
Jeff Lynne,
Television,
AZ,
Josef K,
The Monks,
Negative Approach,
Liaisons Dangereuses,
Arthur Verocai,
Adolescents,
Johnny Clarke,
Gang of Four,
The Gories,
Panda Bear,
Section 25,
Reagan Youth,
T.S.O.L.,
Traffic Nightmare,
Black Moon,
Bobby Womack,
John Holt,
Peter & Gordon,
Black Pus,
Faraquet,
The Golliwogs,
Y Pants,
Excepter, Excepter, Excepter, Excepter.
You don't know what you really want.
You don't know what you really want.
You don't know what you really want.
You don't know what you really want.
You don't know what you really want.
You don't know what you really want.
You don't know what you really want.
You don't know what you really want.
You don't know what you really want.
You don't know what you really want.
You don't know what you really want.
You don't know what you really want.
You don't know what you really want.
You don't know what you really want.
You don't know what you really want.