Trouble In Paris (Ghosts Upon The Road) Songtext

Eric Andersen

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Trouble In Paris (Ghosts Upon The Road) Songtext
Looking out the window, one wintry Norwegian night, on the cold soft snow that weighed down the boughs of the tall spruces and made the world smooth and quiet, I had a strange vision. I started to see fog and gas lamps and in the mist the blurred red lights of the Moulin Rouge. I saw a woman light a cigarette. I heard a scream and saw a fleeing shadow on the wall leaving only a cloak's hem visible on the wet cobblestones in the crescent light. It was Paris and it could have been the 1880's. It is a murder ballad that came like a little movie.

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There's a blue shadow moving through the Moulin Rouge
And a man with a knife point pickin his teeth
An off duty cop sits with his back to the door
And somebody just took a piss in the sink
The cop's drinkin Pernod thinks he's drinkin absinthe
With the girl who had loved him on the Rue St. Denis
While somebody's slinkin smokin under a light
And there's trouble in Paris tonight

Now Simone pulls the collar up tight to her throat
While the riverboats knock under the old Pont Neuf
A rat makes a run for his hole in the wall
She stops by a street light and lights a straight cigarette
A Gitane on his knees starts to howl like a dog
She closes her purse and tries to peer through the fog
Nothin seems wrong but somethin ain't right
And there's trouble in Paris tonight

Now the man cleanin his teeth well he ain't satisfied
He's hungry for somethin that he just can't define
The one by the sink is now sweeping the floor
And the cop he ran short of dreams a long time ago
While under a street lamp there's trouble it seems
First there's a struggle and then there's a scream
She didn't know what hit her when she asked for a light
And there's trouble in Paris tonight

Simone had been a town girl not far north of Nantes
Who did it for money once then she just couldn't stop
Had a fight with her mother another runaway teen
Who had hotel love with a cop on the Rue St. Denis
And a boy once abandoned by a cop and a whore
Has a knife in his hands he was a child of the war
It was either Simone or cut out the lights
And there's trouble in Paris tonight

There's a blue shadow moving through the Moulin Rouge
And a man with a knife point pickin his teeth
An off duty cop sits with his back to the door
And somebody just took a piss in the sink
While somebody's standin out cold in the rain
Could be all warm inside drinking champagne
Bin thin as a shadow smokin under a light
And there's trouble in Paris tonight

Bein thin as a shadow smokin under a light
And there's trouble in Paris tonight