Cockatoo Girls

Cockatoo Girls

(oehler)

Midnight in a foreign country
I’m dancing to my favorite DJ
Looking shiny
Acting shiny
Standing out from the crowd

The cockatoo girls come to the floor
I think I know what they want me for
We don’t know each other’s names
and it’s really quite a shame

One of them moves close
and I see
she’s dancing at me
but not with me
It’s so silly, very silly
the politics we play

A cockatoo girl comes to the floor
I think I know what she wants me for
I don’t even know her name
And it’s really qutie a shame

Music builds as we get closer
our eyes lock across the floor
feet apart but miles distant
tension clouds the air

Music ends and she’s departed
we never finish what we started
play the games and no one wins
can’t end what we begin

The cockatoo girl has left the floor
I didn’t know what she wanted me for
We don’t know each other’s names
and it’s really quite a shame

[EO] In 1999 I went to Iceland, to the first Airwaves Festival, and during a couple of great sets by Thievery Corporation and GusGus, I was set upon by rather attractive and drunk locals. I of course was entirely oblivious to a lot of this, as for the most part I was focused on what was going on onstage, not what was going on around me.

I didn’t notice was when my travelling companion pointed out that “these girls are attracted to your shiny shirt…like cockatoos!” that I had any inkling. I wrote this song on the flight home.

…and promptly lost it.

I stumbled across the crumpled lyric sheet last year while cleaning the basement in early 2012. Somehow it had survived moving, several floods, and numerous additional cleanings over the course of 13 years. I took this as an indication that it was somehow worth recording.