STEPHEN LOMAS: Music

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One time I worked for a company that thought it would be amusing to send me to El Paso - twice! As the song illustrates my first impressions of the town weren't that great but I must admit that it soon grew on me.
It has a particular charm, though I still don't like desert.

I’m in El Paso, hot dusty afternoon
Been drivin' all ‘round town,
Now I’ve checked into my room.
Everything is old here,,
And made o’ broken stone;
This hotel room could be anywhere;
Anywhere but home.

Juarez ain’t far, don’t think I’ll go;
Down the hill there’s the Rio Grande,
Be in Mexico.
Same tumbledown of houses
And gardens with nothin’ green;
Brown craggy rocks & wide blue sky,
With nothing in between.

Seems every corner got a bar, more beat up than the last;
Billiard rooms & old saloons,
Windows of darkened glass.
Old Cadillacs & Oldsmobiles,
Fill the parking space;
In the doorway stands a man
Got the desert on his face

East out of El Paso, where the highway starts to bend.
Shadows point off to the mountains
In the distance that won’t end.
Everything is greener here,
And the scrub holds down the plains,
The mountains slowly march away;
They won’t be back again.