The ROOT! Compendium - Lyrics
All lyrics © ROOT!
I Wish I Was Tex Perkins
I wish I was Tex Perkins[1]
I wish I was Tex Perkins
I wish I was Tex Perkins,
He's a killer with the ladies
He's every sun kissed Aussie girls
Favourite kind o' shady
Lascivious, oblivious, in his gasoline stained dacks,
He waits to meet your daughter on the wrong side of the tracks
He's every high flying business womans idea of rough trade[2]
Even brainy feminists queue up to be enslaved
He flings his tradesmans ladder up to your wifes balustrade[3]
He goes on like that endless road, he just keeps on getting laid
He stands astride your bedhead with those slightly bandy legs
Two thousand girls call him in the night, no one ever calls him Greg[4]
No meat and three veg suburbia for this man, if you please
He is Tex Perkins, he eats roots and leaves.[5]
I wish I was Tex Perkins
I wish I was Tex Perkins
What is Tex short for?
You know, just by way of subtext
Did he work with Skasey at Qintex[6],
Or, in his case that'd be Quim-tex?[7]
Is his cerebral cortex
So massive its a vortex?
Or is his heart so wounded,
Its all wrapped up in Gore-tex[8]?
Hmm, I lost your interest
To get it back in context
His name is probably rhyming slang
For "Totally Unlimited Hot Sex"
I wish I was Tex Perkins
I wish I was Tex Perkins
I wish I was Tex Perkins, though I'm worried about his smoking[9]
I can't see TP on an IV in some hospital bed choking
But that's how we're different he don't worry 'bout no future
He don't think about a cancerous football bladder bursting from a suture
He don't think about amputation, the surgeons circular saw
Sorry, I got a bit morbid there, I really should get out more
Lets get back to why
Tex is our kinda guy
Unlike me, he doesn't need
A persona in which to hide
He doesn't need my cowboy hat, my crappy re-invention,
He never had to say "Suppose a root's outta the question?"
With his magnetic crotch, he's quick to scotch mere trifles like these.
He is Tex Perkins, he eats roots and leaves.
I wish I was
He aint no Bertolt Brecht[10]
I wish I was
But the ladies shore connect
I wish I was Tex Perkins
I wish I was Tex Perkins
I wish I was Tex Perkins
I wish I was Tex Perkins
I wish I was Tex Perkins
I wish I was Tex Perkins
Information
1) Debuted on the ROOT! myspace page, July 9, 2007.
2) First performed live at The Esplanade Hotel, August 3, 2007.
3) Thanks to Bill, Roger, HolyJoeSmith, Damo, and more for assistance with these lyrics.
4) After the verse ending in "Gore-tex," DC Root once commented live "Some of my lyrics really shit me."
1) Tex Perkins is a singer. He is most well known for leading Australian band The Cruel Sea.
2) Rough Trade in business is where supply of an item comes at detrimental cost. eg, timber trade - deforestation. Or, to put it in more relevant terms: Rough Trade in business is when a party receives an unwholsome product.
3) A baluster, in archetecture, is a vertical piece used for supporting a handrail or parapet.
4) Tex Perkins' name is actually Gregory Steven Perkins.
5) A reference to the Australian joke: "Why is a man like a koala? Because he eats, roots and leaves."
6) Christopher Skase was managing director of Australian company Qintex which owned interests in Channel 7, Mirage Resorts, Hardy Bros. jewellery and a number of other businesses. Qintex went bankrupt in 1989.
7) Quim is a slang term for vagina.
8) Invented by Robert Gore (with Wilbert Gore), Gore-Tex is best known as a waterproof fabric, however it has applications elswhere, including medical implants.
9) Tex Perkins was (is?) a smoker.
10) Bertolt Brecht was a dramatist. He is most well known for developing the Brechtian method.
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