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1970s Kitchen Tapes Music Writing

The Mill Point Road Song Lyrics

More Details Arising From The Kitchen Tapes

Intro by Greg, Lyrics by Trenna

Introduction

Trenna had quite a nice study desk when I first met her in 1987. It was very solid, and had one of those inlays on the desk top that look like green leather. It has three drawers on either side, and it is solid.

It was one she bought new, so it is no antique, but it is still a nice piece. It made it’s way to Kensington when Trenna moved in with me, and I still use it today.

In the left hand top drawer was stored Trenna’s notebook of poems, but there was also another book right next to it. This one contained song lyrics.

I don’t think I ever read them whilst Trenna was alive but I am aware of the story that attaches to it.

Trenna had a friend Bob. This is the same Bob who is mentioned in The Kitchen Tapes, HERE. Bob ended up marrying Trenna’s friend Helen.

According to Tren, Bob and others would come around to her and Helen’s house at 19 Mill Point Road in South Perth. Trenna would pull out her book of lyrics and Bob or others, playing their guitars would put the lyrics to music.

Then they would sing together. I asked Helen about this and she didn’t recall it. Helen thinks it may have happened when Tren lived at Bey Apartments – the same guys were involved.

The dates in the Contents page of the lyric book suggest it was in the Mill Point Road period, but who knows. Memory is such an unreliable thing.

Regardless of where it happened, here are the lyrics from the book.

The Song Lyrics From 1975

Kill the Common   (Dated 19 June 1975)

When I walked into the room, I was escorted to a chair

By a man in plastic overalls and real chewing gum hair

He led me in quite normally and seated me gently down 

He offered me champagne and commented on my gown 

I paused before I took the glass, but he stood patiently waiting

With the glass to my eye, I gazed at the room and disliked what my eyes were creating 

 

I’m dreaming, dreaming

What’s the meaning, meaning 

Dreaming meaning 

I ain’t going to die, then I’m surely high

 

So many strange men and women sprawled out on beds

Who all had distorted bodies and distorted heads 

I heard someone clapping for everyone’s attention 

He looked like something from another dimension 

He stood on a giant toadstool in the centre of the room 

At 7,000 years old, he was fresh from his tomb

 

I’m dreaming, dreaming 

What’s the meaning, meaning 

Dreaming meaning

I ain’t going to die, then I’m surely high

 

He was frightening to look at, he made me feel ill

As he said I was common and commons we kill 

All the distorted bodies rose from each bed 

They were circling around me, I’d soon be dead 

My mind exploded, for no more I could take 

Then I rolled over in bed and was finally awake

 

I was dreaming, dreaming 

It had no meaning, meaning 

Dreaming without meaning 

Sure I won’t die, ‘cause I ain’t even high

 

The dream had frightened me, I believed it, I think 

So I decided what I needed was a good strong drink 

I rang room service, to send up some champagne 

In my dream I drank this, now I was doing it again

When the champagne was brought in, I couldn’t help but stare 

At the man in plastic overalls with real chewing gum hair

 

Was I dreaming, dreaming

Did it have some meaning, meaning

Dreaming surely has a meaning

Maybe I’ll die. I was really high 

 

Am I already dead

If I’m already dead

Let me drink to my life in my bed 

 *  *  *  *  *

 Rhythmic Cloud   (Dated 7 July 1975)

I feel the rhythm pumping through my veins 

I hear the songs, but I don’t hear their names 

I can’t keep still, I’m moving all around

Just got to get me more funking sound 

The amplifiers are turned way up loud 

The music has sent me far up to a cloud 

 

Bring me down – down – down 

I’ve got to – get back down

Oh bring me down 

Down – down – to Ear – t h

 

The music’s dying, it’s drifting away 

Is there no more music, in the world left to play 

My body’s turning with my arms outspread 

Somehow I’ve got to get more rhythm in my head 

I must be floating, ‘cause my feet ain’t on the floor 

I can’t hear the music, there’s no rhythm any more

 

Bring me down – down – down 

I’ve got to – get back down

Oh bring me down 

Down – down – to Ear – t h

 

I’ve finally landed, but the whole world seems wrong 

People are saying that no one can write a song

There’s people everywhere, but they ain’t really living 

If only we could get us, some more of that rhythm

The entire world would be dancing and clapping really loud 

Then all us people would be a rhythmic cloud

 

So don’t bring us down – down – down 

We’re happy – up – on this – cloud

Don’t bring us down 

Down – down – to Ear – th

 

So don’t bring us down – down – down 

We don’t want to – touch – the ground

Don’t bring us down 

Down – down – to Ear – th

 

‘Cause – man – what’s it – worth

 *  *  *  *  *

Love Fighting    (Dated 9 August 1975)

Whose place tonight? 

For our weekly fight 

Don’t forget to bring your gloves 

There’ll be punches flying, as do doves

 

Hey man, don’t ask us what it’s all for 

We’ve been fighting for 10,000 years or more

 

There’s cool cat Charlie, who’s only got one arm 

But he’s able to punch out, all of Goldfish’s charm 

Goldfish is actually some cat with a fin 

And by now he’s used to having his face punched in 

 

Don’t question our life, as I said before

We’ll still be fighting in a thousand years or more 

 

We’ve got big mother Cocaine 

And man she has to be insane 

She sits cross legged on a cow skin rug 

Greeting men and women with her deadly bear hug 

 

Even the chicks don’t like to be a bore 

So they keep fighting each week, ‘cause that’s our law

 

Our 10 feet tall odd bodd, we all call Shultz

Who’s really a midget that likes to wear stilts 

He gets kicked and called the local freak 

But he turns up as usual every week

 

Well, I guess we’re all just masochists

We adore the feeling of face to fists

Some people naturally will think we do wrong 

If you’re not, “some people”, next week, come along

 

We’ll be fighting each other though we won’t be sore 

Everyone will be pleaing for more and for more 

 *  *  *  *  *

Everyday Legend   (Dated 2 September 1975)

Take a look a little closer and really try to see 

If it’s happiness or fortune that you’re going to gain from me 

My bones are made of silver and my bed is made of gold 

And for a thousand years, every day this story has been told 

You were a downtown baby, you had no name 

Even though you waited, your parents never came 

You always were neglected, never loved at all 

When you should have been so tall and strong, you were oh so frail and small

 

But what do you care, it’s just an everyday legend 

You say you’ve heard it all before 

It’s going to keep on happening 

Just as it has before 

It’s just an everyday legend

 

The day of your 11th year you turned into a mute 

People patted your silent head, because you were so cute 

You gazed at them, your lips so tight, but your eyes were saying plenty

Although your heart cried out, you remained the same till the day that you turned 20 

Then you opened your mouth, but you closed your eyes, and to the world you said 

Until now you hadn’t lived at all, until now you had been dead 

Finally you were going to be rich, you would make yourself a name 

And be accepted socially, you would never be the same

 

But what do you care, it’s just an everyday legend 

You say you’ve heard it all before 

It’s going to keep on happening 

Just as it has before 

It’s just an everyday legend

 

But oh you were so foolish to speak so terribly loud 

When you had no intention to come down from that cloud 

So you finally became an apple core, you rotted in the sun 

All your goodness slowly evaporating, till finally you had none 

You tried to win my heart, but I saw through your evil plot 

You would have me for my money, because I had such a lot 

And now I’m asking, for your sake, not to tell any lies

But to try and look at life as it is, through your, now, closed eyes

 *  *  *  *  *

Cancer is No Great Romancer  (Dated 22 October 1975)

I love this world, when I lay with you 

I can feel that you’re happy too

But Darling I’ll be leaving soon 

And there is nothing I can do 

 

You can’t always win the one that you love 

For your friends may be quicker than you 

You can’t always live in a world filled with love 

When cancer is living in you

 

My closest girlfriend is your wife 

You loved her when you wed 

But alone one night, you told me that 

Your love for her was dead

 

You turned to me to give you love 

We cheated your wife and my friend 

My conscience could not allow her to know 

But I guess she would know in the end

 

You can’t always win the one that you love 

For your friends may be quicker than you 

You can’t always live in a world filled with love 

When cancer is living in you

 

The cancer that grows within me now 

Is known to only me 

So I’ll just vanish from our mixed up world 

And set your conscience free

 

You can’t always win the one that you love 

For your friends may be quicker than you 

You can’t always live in a world filled with love 

When cancer is living in you

 *  *  *  *  *

You’ve Played Your Cards Sister (Dated 2 November 1975)

He of course, announced me casually 

You smiled, as if to say 

Hi! How are you doing? 

What brings you out this way? 

 

Well my love, it’s been some time 

An awfully long, long time 

Since my fingers touched your silky hair 

And caressed your slender form

 

I know some people, can understand 

That we were born like we are 

But ninety out of an average hundred 

Can not accept us so far

 

I’ve died so many times 

Since you said you had to leave 

You needed money, more than my love 

So you married, out of greed

 

My brother’s wealth captured your eye 

You played your cards just right 

Now you finally have all that you need 

Except what you need every night 

 

I know some people, can understand 

That we were born like we are 

But ninety out of an average hundred 

Can not accept us so far

 

How do you feel, when you go to bed? 

And he’s aching to make love to you 

Do you tell him, you can’t turn on with him? 

But with his younger sister, you do

 

Come on, tell me how you feel? 

Does it make you ache inside? 

Do you wish you were back in my loving arms? 

And forgetting those nights that I cried

 

I know some people, can understand 

That we were born like we are 

But ninety out of an average hundred 

Can not accept us so far

 *  *  *  *  *

Trenna next to an old horse drawn cart
Trenna with a cart in the grounds of The Old Mill, just metres from where she and Helen lived at 19 Mill Point Road, South Perth. She was probably thinking of this cart and the nearby mill when she wrote the song “Portrait of a Mill”. Trenna has dated the photo as 24 September 1975 – about a month and a half before she wrote the song lyrics.

Portrait of a Mill   (Dated 11 November 1975)

Each night I see, the lighted hands, of the mill turning round 

Forming a brilliant golden haze in the sky and on the ground 

It looks kind of like a Ferris wheel, at a show with no one there 

Portraying a silent loneliness, there’s eeriness in the air

 

 Occasionally some tourists come, to see this famous site 

 But they look around the mill in silence, afraid to stir the night 

 Then as quietly as they had come, they quietly depart 

 Leaving the mill alone again, and breaking some more of its heart

 

The hands of the windmill that slowly turn around 

Are symbolic of the wheat that they once ground 

The mill now stands in silence sadness, remembering days that have gone 

And it seems to me, it’s now silent role, is so terribly wrong

 

In earlier days, when the mill was young, it didn’t look the same 

There were people hurrying everywhere, from miles around they came 

They brought their carts of wheat for the modern mill to grind 

It was the busiest mill in the country, the only of its kind 

 

But now the mill has come to a halt, it grinds the wheat no more 

And the carts are no longer filled with wheat as they were before 

They lay in peace alongside the mill, in a graveyard of their own 

Remembering the long hard days, the happiness they had known 

 

The hands of the windmill that slowly turn around 

Are symbolic of the wheat that they once ground 

The mill now stands in silence sadness, remembering days that have gone 

And it seems to me, it’s now silent role, is so terribly wrong

 *  *  *  *  *


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3 replies on “The Mill Point Road Song Lyrics”

Hi Helen, thanks for reading the lyrics.
When I first read them I wasn’t all that impressed but as I transcribed them I started thinking quite a lot deeper about them, and was admiring of them.
They’re quite psychedelic (especially “Kill the Common”) which isn’t surprising for 1975.
My favourite was the one about the Old Mill, very close to where the two of you lived. I went and had a look at the Old Mill yesterday, and they have removed the lights that used to be on the sails, and which Trenna refers to in the first line of that song. More authentic, I guess, but less romantic!

My memory fails me regarding Tren’s poetry and we were living in South Perth when she wrote these last poems. We weren’t taking drugs or even drinking much mainly because we couldn’t afford it and yet her poetry comes from a brain that wasn’t the average. It’s a shame Tren didn’t pursue it but isn’t it wonderful that we have the bits we have.

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