Hurry Down Doomsday
(The Bugs Are Taking over)




"...my favourite track on that record was

'Hurry Down Doomsday'. 

In retrospect, I think it's on the wrong place
 
on the record, straight after 

'The Other Side of Summer',

because it reduces both those 

pieces slightly. I heard it in 

isolation and I thought, wow, 

that's a wonderful piece, very

original sounding, there's nothing 

quite like it. It says something 

that I really believed at the 

time - I still have days like that 

when I feel, fuck this, let's get 

it over with. Let's drop the big one 

now, as Randy Newman says. It's the 

same impulse on a cosmic level as 

'Tramp The Dirt Down' was on a 

personal level. It's fighting the 

negative, which comes upon all of us."


[Record Collector interview 1995]




The man in the corner of this picture has a sinister purpose
In the teeming Temple of the Railroad Kings
He's planting a trashy paperback book for accidental purchase
Containing all the secrets of life and other useless things

But I can't bring myself to look
Wake up Zombie write yourself another book
You want to scream and shout my little flaxen lout
Hurry down Doomsday the bugs are taking over

She sleeps with the shirt of a late, great country singer
Stretched out on her poor jealous husband's pillow
In time you can turn these obsessions into careers
While the parents of those kidnapped children 
start the bidding for their tears

But I can't bring myself to look
Wake up Zombie
Get yourself off the book
You want to scream and shout my little waxen lout
Hurry down Doomsday the bugs are taking over

Forget about Beethoven, Rembrandt and rock and roll
Forget about Mickey Mouse, Marlboro and Coca Cola
Forget about Cadillac, Mercedes and Toyota
Forget about Buddha, Allah, Jesus and Jehovah
Hurry down Doomsday the bugs are taking over

Any day now a giant insect mutation
Will swoop down and devour the white man's burden
Starting out with all of the sensitive ones
Better make like a fly if you don't want to die
Look out there goes Gordon

But I can't bring myself to think
Wake up Zombie
Kick up a big stink
You want to scream and shout my little Saxon lout
Hurry down Doomsday the bugs are taking over