#1 Greatest Felice Brothers song (so Far)- Frankie's Gun!

The response to Frankie's Gun is usually immediate. Everyone falls in love with this song, and it's a gateway to the rest of their music. Written in one day, it sounds old, but it's hook-laden cadence and points of reference are all fresh. Now the song has become somewhat of a minor cultural phenomenon, popping up in film and tv and being passed around the world via twitter, facebook and YouTube.

What's most interesting to me is the transformative power of the song in many of our lives. I once saw an interview on 60 Minutes with Bruce Springsteen, where he gets asked if he ever tires of playing "Born To Run" after 30 years of playing it virtually every night. He answered forcefully, no. He explained that each time the band played the song, he could look around the stage at the guys he grew up with, he knew from when they all had nothing, and they all could collectively share those 4 minutes, knowing what that song brought them and their families. It opened up the whole world to them and their loved ones.

Frankie's Gun! ensured that The Felice Brothers, have a career. It's opened up doors and opportunities for them, and help give a living, to the guys in the band. This blog or forum would likely not exist without that song. Let's hope that have another miracle in them.

My car goes
Chicago
Every weekend to pick up some cargo
I think I know the bloody way by now, Frankie
And turn the god damn radio down, thank you
Pull over
Count the money
But don't count the thirty in the glove box buddy
That's for to buy Lucille some clothes

Bang bang bang went Frankie's gun
He shot me down Lucille
He shot me down

Work zones double fines
Don't pass the double lines
Trailer McDonald's rest stop trailer double wide
I saw a man hit my mom one time, really
I hurt him so damn bad I had to hide in Jersey
Called my mama told her
In the dresser
There's ten or twenty dollars but there ain't no lesser
That's for to take my sister to the picture show

Bang bang bang went Frankie's gun
He shot me down Lucille
He shot me down

Sha nay na sha nay na na na ...



Slip make a fender shine
Frankie you're a friend of mine
Got me off a bender after long legged Brenda died
I thought we might be on a roll this time Frankie
I could have swore the box said Hollywood blanks but
You see my mama
Please tell her
I left a little rock in a box in the cellar
That's for to wear till kingdom come

Bang bang bang went Frankie's gun
He shot me down Lucille
He shot me down

#2 Greatest Felice Brothers song (so Far)- Don't Wake the Scarecrow

The tragic tale of a junkie and a hooker wrapped up in the setting of L Frank Baum's classic Wonderful Wizard of OZ, written and sung by Simone Felice, is as Uncut magazine called it, "one of the best songs written in the past twenty years". Its really a miracle, one that can so shake the listener, that the characters become part of our day. Is it a true tale of Simone's life? not sure. James, once said that Simone told him it was true, Simone once said, its true, but he only observed it. That said i have never heard a song that conjured up such vivid mental images, that i keep expecting the film version of this song to be released.
The line in the song that really connects these characters to world of the living is;
"I'd find you there in the bath
We'd cook up your shit in a tin can
And you started calling me Tin Man
And we started making plans to begin again
Begin again"

Neil McCormick of the London Telegraph says of Simone, "
But when he tells stories from his own life, as he did on the Felice Brothers remarkable 'Scarecrow' (which I think is lyrically the greatest song of recent years, with its incredible internal rhyming scheme, bold metaphor and powerful emotion) he goes to places few artists ever touch. "

I included both versions of this song, Felice Brothers and Duke and the King

full lyrics


Would you love me
If I told you I was born upstream
If I told you I come from money
White money
Would you love me
Would you love me

Well, I was born down
By a bad little river in a poor town
Where an indian-giver put a board out
It said "Boarding House"
Call him Scarecrow
He kept whores around

And I'd go there
I'd wait my turn on the broke stairs
And get me the girl with the gold hair
Aw yeah, leave your clothes there
On the folding chair

In that cold room
our breath would twist just like ghosts do
You said, "Call me Dorothy in red shoes"
And the bed moved
The bed moved
The bed moved

Tracy, don't you wake that scarecrow tonight

Well, the man would come in
It's hard living right giving head when
The sad days of winter have set in
And the medicine for an mannequin is heroin

I'd find you there in the bath
We'd cook up your shit in a tin can
And you started calling me Tin Man
And we started making plans to begin again
Begin again

You saved a C note
Told me you felt like a seagull
Told me to meet at the depot
With the needle, then maybe we'd go
To Reno

Where you'd be my desert dove
And we'd find a way to make better love
Said, "Baby, that's how the West was won"
And the blood-red sun
Yeah, the blood-red sun
And the blood-red sun

Tracy, don't you wake that scarecrow tonight

Well, the man cries,
"Who gives a damn when a tramp dies?"
But I loved you there in the lamp light
With your bare thighs
And the halo of your hair line

And all my lifelong
I'll never shake off your siren song
And all of your talk about dying young
With an iron lung and that crazy way

You said, "Simone,
I think I might stay here with Scarecrow tonight
Simone, I think I'm gonna stay here with Scarecrow tonight."








Don't Wake the Scarecrow (The Duke and the King)

#4 Greatest Felice Brothers Song (so far)- Ballad of Lou the Welterweight

play here



About 5 years ago, sitting on their fathers porch, before there ever was a touring band, Simone and James Felice were stunned at a new song their brother Ian had just written, called "Ballad of Lou The Welterweight", about a down and out pugilist, who "had a way like Errol Flynn". Unlike other great boxing songs like the imagined tragedy of The Hurricane, (the real tragedy was the victims, which is likely why Dylan refuses to play it), Lou the Welterweight is a heart wrenching tale of a man toiling his trade, paying the ultimate price for it, and the ones he leaves behind. Its one of the very best story songs ever written.

Most often sports themed music and film deal with characters like Lou, as they get older, trying to come to grips with their diminished existence (Pride of the Yankees, Bull Durham, On The Waterfront), but this character is very different. Lou is unaware of his impending doom, his diminished abilities, and in this way he resembles Scorcese's "Raging Bull".