“Condo Fucks City Rockers”

Lyrics

Everybody wants to be the controller
Well I’m sending this one out to all the stop drop and rollers
All you posers, you pogos, you pop lockers
I'm sending this one out to all the Condo Fucks City Rockers

Now you’re broke, out on the street
Twisted up inside, still dancing, dead on your feet
Yeah you used to go to work, now you don’t even bother
Now you’re doing the Condo Fucks City Rockers

Rude girls kicking down the Plymouth Rock
The kids on the corner can’t stop won’t stop
Feel no way by the chaos proper
I'm sending this one out to all the Condo Fucks City Rockers

Yeah everybody out on the street
Dancing so hard you disappear into the beat
We used to get up in the morning, now we don't even bother
Everybody’s doing the Condo Fucks City Rockers

Copyright © 2019 Karl Ward

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I’ve never been to Jamaica. I’ve barely been to Connecticut. But I do have mad experience with being a broke kid who lived for music and wanted to get the hell out of my situation. “Feel no way by the chaos proper.” You have to.

This was the third song I finished on the Condo Fucks City Rockers record. The music came together quickly, and most of the lyrics too, except for the second verse that I wrote a few weeks later on a bus stuck in traffic on the Garden State Parkway. I’ve been interested in Jamaican music for half my life now, but I really haven’t done much music that shows that influence. Anyway, I read Can’t Stop Won’t Stop by Jeff Chang in grad school and that was the jumping off point for this song, in particular that moment when Jamaican music and culture took its place in New York and environs alongside rock and punk and R&B. Jonny Greenwood is the Controller is such a great collection that I picked up around the time the Condo Fucks became a real thing. I don’t think I heard the Jamaican term “controller” until that compilation, or at least I didn’t know what it meant. It’s entirely possible that I don’t know what it means now.