Better Than Dead

I’m sick of being lied to

Mistreated and abused

I’ve kept my mouth shut

And lived on hopes & prayers

But the answer always seems

You can’t just live on dreams

Sometimes you have to 

Clean up these affairs

Well, I trusted in you once

I guess I was just a dunce

To believe that anything 

You said was true

Well, you took you never gave

I was no more than your slave

You left me all mixed up 

And so confused

But, it’s not my desire

To put you to a trial by fire 

But if you push me 

That’s just what we’ll do

You better make things right 

Or you’ll disappear one night

And you’ll wake up 

With one hell of a tattoo

No, I wouldn’t kill you dead

But there’d be written 

‘cross your head

In a permanent message 

For all the world to see

How you cheated and you lied,

Stole, robbed & denied

Just how bad you treated me!

Oh Yeah!

Just how bad you treated me!

We once had an agent that wooed us to let him represent us. We had been looking for one as it’s difficult to do everything and agents have the contacts. He said he could get us lots of gigs, and residency in France so we could also become ‘intermittent du spectacle’. All we had to do was let him collect all the fees for playing, whereafter he would pay the French taxes, take his cut and send us the balance. He had a few other bands as well including a band with a very famous name, although they were not that famous band. We should have realized how shady he was. In the beginning, the few gigs were good, but we made less due to ‘paying taxes’. We could deal with that knowing we would be legal. Then the gigs started to become few and far between. He suggested we should find gigs to fill in but to be sure and send him the money so he could divvy out the taxes, “and a small fee for handling it all”. Long story short, he got us almost no gigs, no residency, and no, he never paid those taxes for us pocketing all the money. When we fired him he said, “If you leave me, you can never come back and you will find it difficult to find work in France.” He then badmouthed us to other promoters and indeed we had a difficult time. I was pissed! But it was better to write out my fantasy in a song rather than to take violent action against him.
As a footnote to this story, he has since passed on from this existence. I checked up on his FB page and see he has no friends from the time we knew him, not even his “beloved” assistant.