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God Sends Quails

from Sticks And Stones (Deluxe Remaster) by 77s

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    Package contains "Sticks And Stones" a bonus CD titled, "This Is The Way Love Was", plus a booklet with photos and extensive liner notes written by Michael Roe.

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about

This one nearly broke up the group! Written during the same period as the Island LP material, I introduced a very rough draft of the song for
the band’s perusal during the spring of 1988. No one much liked it, so I urged several rehearsals to search out what good, if any, could be found. After exhausting both Mercy Mercy and You Don’t Scare Me, we’d been looking for a non-blues showpiece-type tune on a larger scale for quite some time. I was hoping that this was it. It wasn’t. After what seemed like ages of hellish rehearsals consisting mostly of pounding and thrashing over the ominous bass line, I got disgusted with the then hideous chorus and wrote the one you now hear. Last-ditch infusions of such pop devices notwithstanding, things took a very dark turn soon afterward. Again, at my insistence, we entered the studio that summer to record what ended up as an abortive rough sketch of something I had hoped would become a masterpiece. Worse yet, the only lyrics I’d completed at the time were the “you failed, you failed, you can’t go back” bits which only helped to reinforce the sense of doom surrounding the song. We stopped working on it.

One more failed attempt to complete the track several months later again gave way to ennui and frustration. It was over.

lyrics

You fail
You try half-hearted and fail
One foot drags behind you
One foot tripping in front of you

You fail
You spit out manna, God sends quails
Dry bones pile up behind you
More wet mirages in front of you

You can't go back
You can't go back

You failed
You sunk like Jonah to the whale
Big mouths follow behind you
Still small voice swallowed up by you

You failed
You picked the right time to fail
Got your past behind you
Got your future in front of you

You can't go back
You can go on

You failed
You picked the right time to fail

Got your past behind you
Got your future in front of you

You can't go back
You can go on

You can't go back
You can go on

You can't go back
You can go on

credits

from Sticks And Stones (Deluxe Remaster), released March 13, 2012
(Mike Roe) - © 1988 Fools Of The World, LTD. (ASCAP)

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77s Sacramento, California

"The 77's will take you on a journey through the past, present, and future of rock & roll" - Island Records radio advertisement, 1987.

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