The RAZ (Robert Allen Zimmerman)
By Larry Fyffe
Now look at all you jugglers, and you clowns
Carrying Siamese cats on your shoulders, jumping up and down
Sucking up all that juice, thinking you got it made
And patting each other on the back
And hipping each other on who’s the greatest cat in town
President Kennedy he’s calling me up
So’s my friend Brigette Bardot
Anita Ekberg
Sophia Loren
Ernest Borgnine
An’ little Bo Beep from up on top of the hill
All them other hills will give you a song to straighten you out
I went back there for ya to get me straight
And all the cats around told me they didn’t know who I was talkin’ about
But I’m gonna put a cat on you
The coolest, whippingest, wailingness, swingingest cat
That’s ever been down in the well
The strummingest cat that ever stepped on this green and pleasant land
And they called this here cat
The RAZ
He’s a carpenter kitty
Now the RAZ was the kind of cat
That came on so cool, so groovy
When he laid it down
Tambourine Man
It laid around!
Naturally all the rest of the cats said
“Man, look at that cat wail
He’s a-wailing up a shelter from the storm up there”
Hey, I’m telling you, he’s laying it down right
I’m trying to dig up what’s the cat’s tied on the tracks
Pushing him to give more miracle licks
And RAZ says, “Cool babies
Tell you what I’m gonna do
I ain’t takin’ two, four, six, eight of you cats
I’m gonna take all twelve of you studs
And straighten you all out at the same time
Say, you cats, you cats, look like you’re pretty hip”
He says, “You buddy with me”
So the RAZ and his buddies they get off after midnight
Walk down the boulevards of broken cars
Where they bump into a little red bike with a bent frame
And RAZ say, “I don’t know what I would do
Without this love we call ours”
The RAZ looks at that little red bike with the bent frame
And he say ” What’s a-matter with you?”
And the little red bike say
“My frame is bent, RAZ”
And he looked right down in the window of the little bike’s soul
And he laid his hands on her Golden Loom
And he say, “Bend a little more”
And the RAZ straightened right out
And a little red arrow pierced his heart
Room-Boom!
And RAZ say, “I’m taking you with me when I go”
And he say to his cat buddies
“Be like Blake, dig infinity!”
And they dug it. And when they dug it, Whap!
There was a flash of thunder
And when they looked there was a great big, swinging, smoked fish in one hand
And in the other a lazy, gone-crazy loaf of honey-tasting sweetbread
Why these poor cats flipped
The RAZ never did nothing simple
Not under the moon and stars
When he laid it down, he laid it!
Everyone’s talking ’bout the RAZ
What a great cat he is
How he’s swinging the glory of love
How he stomps on the money-changers’ charts
And knocking on the corners of heaven’s door
How he put it down to one Cat, dug it
Didn’t dig it
Put it down twice, dug it
Didn’t dig it
Put it down a third, dug it
Boom
Walked away with the answer still blowing in the wind
Now, they’re pulling on the tails of RAZ’s long black coat
Waiting for him to save everybody in his wife’s home town