From the recording THIEVES
Lyrics
THIEVES
She stands like Venus Di Milo
While I mix her drink
She comes from a family of cool-headed safecrackers
I have to stop and think
She’s gonna find some stooges and henchmen
I might fit the bill
A well-oiled team of mafia beauty queens
Some big shoes to fill
Oh, there are thieves in this world
She walks like a loaded slingshot while I lower the lights
She talks in a different tongue
As she reads me my rights
She cries like a wounded seagull
When I close the door
She knows what to do with the pantyhose
She’s done it before
Oh, there are thieves in this world
I hereby offer you my heart to burgle
As if I had a choice
A man needs an obstacle or two to hurdle
A woman needs her toys
Oh, there are thieves in this world
c 1994 by Wishnefsky, Dave Rodgers, and Todd Jameson
Dave – drums
Todd – backing vocals
Wishnefsky – vocals, acoustic guitar, electric guitars
Michael James – guest phase shifter
COMMENTS
As if your heart has never been stolen? I wrote this lyric in the late 80s to a completely different song. That particular song never thrilled me, but the lyrics begged to be relocated to more hospitable aural surroundings. So, one late night when I needed to be very quiet, I started lightly strumming my faithful acoustic guitar and constructed a new home for my restless words. I put down the guitar and a rough vocal down on tape. That became the foundation of the final recording. Dave did a brilliant job of playing the drums to my uneven sense of tempo. Michael James again demonstrated his prodigious virtuosity at knob twiddling, thereby bringing the instrumental section to life.
Thieves evolved as we played it live. Todd came up with some really nice vocal counterpoints. The chorus evolved into something more melodic and dramatic. During the instrumental, our guest guitarist extraordinaire Stephen Bock came up with a gorgeous, melodic solo that always made me want to waltz with my Takamine.
In 1995, we played an acoustic version of this song on a cable access TV talk show. The producer of the show was a friend of Mike’s and she never sent us a tape of the show like she promised. So that performance is lost forever. I do recall that the talk show host asked us some very silly questions, to which, like idiots, we gave perfectly honest and serious answers. We generally gave pretty lousy interviews – the kind that later on make you want to stick your head in a giant vat of brake fluid. The pen is mightier than the sword, and, in our case, mightier than trying to talk without inserting a few feet in our collective mouths. But it does make for a good laugh now. Wishnefsky