The lights are out
The lies are old
The lovers mourn
The lies they told
Fade the lights
Fade the sun
Fade to a setting star
Fade to the sound of rain
Falling star, falling rain
So much to listen to
The tambourine and the bird who plays it
Blackhand's bad life
I'm automatic, man
She's out to get you
And someone's on the roof
someone asked me to dedicate a poem. here it is. hey, ok?
Someone asked me to elaborate on this song, in 2021, two decades after writing this, esp. about the last three lines. Automatic Man is probably a reference to the song of that name by Ashcan School (you can find it on YouTube with id E05Gimzzn9w). That was one of the songs I discovered (and obsessed over) in the Napster era. You would download a song from someone, then check out the rest of their music library, and you would find nice songs you'd never heard of. I still have a few tracks by those guys, that I'm listening right now- I haven't heard those in a while. I think I discovered them because their song Sanity is a cool thing on top of The End by The Doors.
The other two lines- no clue. I think the song is inspired (or rips off) some song by The Cardigans that is currently eluding me. Tambourine and Birds/Byrds are a reference of course to Tambourine Man and The Byrds, who covered that. Initially I thought Blackhand was about Morgan Blackhand from the Cyberpunk 2020 RPG, but more likely it's about the song Mala Vida (bad life, in Spanish) by Mano Negra (black hand). I don't know who's on the roof- I was thinking of Brain Damage by Pink Floyd... but it's not that- it's some slow song about insanity and the lyrics say "is in the roof" (also thinking I Am the Walrus or Strawberry Fields Forever by The Beatles, but it's not those either). Or something else, my ear for English has always been terrible, so that might even be a misheard lyric.
She's out to get you makes me think of Blondie... It's not Maria, though...