No Cure for L.A. Releases Gigs Lyrics Comments

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Author
Robyn Hitchcock
According to our records, Robyn has played this song 2 times, most recently at Robyn and Emma's house on June 16, 2021. He first performed it at The Chapel on June 08, 2017, 4 years earlier.

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Notes from Robyn on Patreon in 2020.
Los Angeles has always been a mythical place. It was the crucible for the movie business, and it is purpose-built for its inhabitants to furnish their isolated cellular nests with their individual dreams. Your car and your house - no need to spend too much time out of those two modules. I have been saying this for years and it's still true: LA’s superpower is to make even sunlight look artificial.

LA was mythical to me before I ever went there, and 35 years later remains so. Unlike some other great American cities, I’ve never woven my own story into it, really. I still see it through the twin lenses of Raymond Chandler and Jim Morrison, and both my nods to them (Morrison being The Lizard in my song of that name) were written before I ever visited. Cruising through the twilight vegetation in car I feel their spectral presences almost unbearably: the numb pleasures and the voyeuristic limbo of the detective/stalker. Beauty becomes a creepshow.

That said, I feel increasingly at home there - tho’ as a non-driver my Hollywood Englishman role would be a tough one. In my head there exists a phantom houseparty in Laurel Canyon Boulevard, set in the pre-Manson-era Hollywood Hills, where I would lock into the eternal groove - the groove of no return - and the Mystery One would read my cards in her purple robes...

...and perhaps that’s at the root of this song, recorded in 2017 - my latest offering to the Mythical City that has no core and no limits.

Lyrics

Siren, take me up into the hills
Where the avocados play
Drape your olive skin across your neighbours waterbed
One thing I'm sure is, there sure ain't no cure for L.A.

Siren, lead me to your swimming pool
Where the naked angels pray
Drip your fingertips across my aching shoulder blade
One thing I'm sure is, there sure ain't no cure for L.A.
One thing I'm sure is, there sure ain't no cure for L.A.

Siren, take me to your therapist
She got you where you are today
Run your undecided thoughts across my boiling brain
One thing I'm sure is, there sure ain't no cure for L.A.
One thing I'm sure is, there sure ain't no cure for L.A.

Siren, kiss me in the parking lot
It's kinda nice, I hear they say
You're a dish that's best served cold, but I'm not into that
One thing I'm sure is, there sure ain't no cure for L.A.
One thing I'm sure is, there sure ain't no cure for L.A.
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