Ah, 1988. I’d… borrowed… the Siouxsie & the Banshees album, Peepshow, from someone-or-other and put it straight into heavy rotation for soundtracking my life at that point and time in space. Good driving music for those long hauls up and down the lonelier parts of California’s freeway system.

This song, Burn-Up, was particularly well suited for barreling west on the 152 (the stretch between the 99 and Los Banos, deepest, darkest Central Valley) in the lonely hours just past dawn, with only the crop-dusters gamboling overhead for company, the air already an agriculture flavored furnace.

Jeez, I can still taste it, some twenty years later.

Roll the windows down (’cause the air conditioning’s on the fritz) and turn the volume up. We’re going for a little ride.

Lyrics!

A crumpled future in your fist
The killing streak ascends sun kissed
And the firestarter from within
Pokes out from fever blistered grin
King Salamander that’s his name
A desert maker that’s his aim
The benign cremator, branding iron in his hand
Eager and willing to torch the land

All fire and brimstone
This jack-o-lantern
He likes to watch the buildings burn

His ardour smoulders, phosphorous flies
He radiates with urgence to hypnotise
Stoke the furnace, feed his need
This thirst for fire is all he seeks
He’s the blazing rubber making tracks
The blue touch paper at your back

All fire and brimstone
This salamander king
He basks while all around him burns

`Giddy-up, burn-up, not fade away’
These words ignite and pave his way
`Giddy-up, burn-up, stoke it up and turn it up’
He sings these words in fervid frame

All fire and brimstone
This jack-o-lantern
He likes to watch the pyres burn

Jack be nimble, Jack be quick
Jack jump over the candlestick

• BROWSE / IN TIMELINE
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• BROWSE / IN Song of the Day
• « “White Trash Trouble Man” – The Mutants
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