This is on a second album--
I'm really selling stuff here--
"The Author Reflects on His 35th Birthday."
And this is sung by Bobby Womack.
It'll be released in the United States soon.
"Author Reflects on His 35th Birthday."
"35?
I have been looking forward to you for many years now,
so much so that I feel you and I are old friends.
And so on this day, 35, I propose a toast to me and you.
35?
From this day on, I swear before the bountiful Osiris that if I
ever--
if I EVER try to bring out the best in folks again,
I want somebody to take me outside and kick me up and down
the sidewalk or set me in a corner
with a funnel on my head.
[LAUGHTER]
Make me as hard as a rock, 35, like the fella
in a story about the big one that got away.
Let me laugh my head off with Moby Dick
as we reminisce about them suckers
who went down with the Pequod.
35?
I ain't been mean enough.
Make me real, real mean, mean as old Marie rolling her eyes,
mean as the town Bessie sings about,
'where all the birds sing bass.'
35?
Make me Tennessee mean, cobra mean, cuckoo mean, engine mean,
Dracula mean, Beethovenian-brows mean, Miles Davis mean,
'don't offer assistance when quicksand is tugging some poor
dope under mean,' pawnbroker mean, Pharaoh mean.
That's it, 35, make me Pharaoh mean, mean as can be,
mean as the dickens, meaner than mean.
When I walk down the street, I want them to whisper,
there goes Mr. Mean.
'He's double mean.
He even turned the skeletons in his closet out into the cold.'
[LAUGHTER]
And 35?
Don't let me trust anybody over Reed.
But just in case, put a tail on that Negro too."