I was raised in New York City,
Where the money grows on trees.
And the flowers all look gritty,
And the people look diseased.
Come up from New Jersey,
where I sung the Bayonne3 Blues.
I watched the roller derby,
On the seven-thirty news.

I thought I'd be a folksinger.
I went down to MacDougal Street4,
And Bleeker4, where the stars got stoned.
But the union hall was closed,
And the stars out on the road,
Making money singing anti-money songs.

I went back up to Broadway,
I took the IRT5.
Some old man in a raincoat,
Parked his body next to me,
"Do you want to make some money fast?"
And then he grabbed me by the ass.
I got derailed at Forty-Second street.

I asked somebody for the time,
She asked me to her room.
She said, "I've got a water bed."
I said, "I’ve got the flu.
You look just like a friend of mine,
I never liked too well."
She sold picture postcards,
Of the crack in the Liberty Bell.

I went into the Taco Bell,
To get myself some lunch.
They rushed me to the hospital,
To have my stomach pumped.
Run over on the corner,
By a wheelchair with no horn.
I fell into a manhole,
Find more similar lyrics on http://mp3lyrics.com/HLg7And was baptized and re-born.

I moved out to Long Island,
Bought a color TV.
I watch the doctor shows,
I'm a soap opera queen.
I think I got pneumonia,
I'm sure I’ve got TB.
It may not be a hell of a life,
But it’s life enough for me.

Instrumental to end.

BAYONNE BLUES (LIVE BAND VERSION)1
Written by: Janis Ian
Performed by: Janis Ian
Appears on: Unreleased 3: Society's Child-20062.

1Janis writes of this song, "I must have been around 14 when I started
this, just after my family moved to New York City. Everything in it
actually happened to me one weekend shortly after, and I remained in a
state of culture shock for a good six months! By the time I finished the
song I was in my late teens, a seasoned New Yorker, and I truly felt I'd
been 'raised in New York City,' even though I'd grown up in New Jersey. We
never lived in Bayonne, but my dad worked there for a while, and
'Farmingdale' and 'East Orange' just didn't scan."

2Transcribed from the track on this album.

3Refers to the city of Bayonne, New Jersey.

4MacDougal and Bleeker Streets are in the heart of Greenwich Village
where most of the folk music cafés were located in the 1960s.

5IRT stands for the Interborough Rapid Transit, which is part of the
Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA), is New York City's subway
system.

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