Going to Mexico - Steve Miller Band
After yesterday we're still on the border, but this time heading south, in this angry, slashing ditty from Stevie and the boys.
I love songs with the opening words coming in before the instruments, making them unkaraoke-able; in this case it makes the beginning as abrupt as the slamming of a door:
Pack my bags don't be too slow should have quit you baby a long time ago,
left you flat
and split for Mexico
This is the track that I heard on John Peel's show on Radio One when I was 15 and convinced me to go out and buy the album - Number 5 by Steve "Guitar" Miller. And it restored my reputation amongst my peers as someone who was "cool" and progressive in his musical taste, what with the scorching guitar licks and growling rhythm section. But what spoke to me as much as the music was the hard, seething, poetry of his short phrases, delivered with almost casual rudeness:
I've had enough of your lies To last a long, long time You and your mother, babe You're like a nursery rhyme You're much too slow I'm goin' to Mexico
Not since Dylan was someone so honest about the anger of the breakdown of a relationship.