Lyrics to
Rags And Bones

This version of Rags And Bones was released by The Band in 1975.

Our Decade Lyrics The Band profile has all of the Rags And Bones lyrics from 1975 and many more songs from the The Band discography that we have on file.

Here's more interesting things in songs and lyrics tied to The Band or about the 1970s in general.

Catch a taxi to the fountainhead

Blinking neon penny arcade
A young Caruso on the fire escape
Painted face ladies on parade
The newsboy on the corner
Singing out headlines
And a fiddler selling pencils
The sign reads: Help the blind

Comin’ up the lane callin’
Workin’ while the rain’s fallin’
Ragman, your song of the street
Keeps haunting my memory

Music in the air
I hear it ev’rywhere
Rags, bones and old city songs
Hear them, how they talk to me

Trolley car rings out the morning
Whistle blows at noon
A cat fight breaks open the night
While watch dogs bay at the moon
A preacher on an orange crate
With a Salvation Army Band
And clicking along the cobbled stones
That’s the sound of the ice-cream man

Comin’ up the lane callin’
Workin’ while the rain’s fallin’
Ragman, your song of the street
Keeps haunting my memory
Music in the air
I hear it ev’rywhere
Rags, bones and old city songs
Hear them, how they talk to me

The organ grinder and his monkey
Still walkin’ the same old beat
The shoe-shine boy slappin’ leather
He puts the rhythm in your feet
Strollin’ by the churchyard
List’nin’ to the Sunday choir
With voices rising to the heavens
Like sirens screaming to a fire

Comin’ up to the lane callin’
Workin’ while the rain’s fallin’
Ragman, your song of the street
Keeps haunting my memory
Music in the air
I hear it ev’rywhere
Rags, bones and old city songs
Play them one more time for me

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The Band has released many songs over the years besides Rags And Bones. The Band released songs from 1968 to 2002 spanning across albums like Music From Big Pink, The Band, Stage Fright, Cahoots, Moondog Matinee, Northern Lights - Southern Cross, Islands, Jericho, High On The Hog, Jubilation, and The Last Waltz. Decade Lyrics has over lyrics & songs by The Band.

If you're a fan of popular 1970s songs looking for more songs from 1975 or the 1970s overall, you've come to the right place!

About Lyrics and Rags And Bones by The Band

The lyrics to Rags And Bones are just the words, phrases, verses and chorus that The Band used when the song was created in 1975. The lyrics to Rags And Bones have both easy-to-spot meanings and hidden metaphors that have been discussed by the music press and fans, but only The Band and any collaborators know all of the inspirations for the song.

If you like etymology or breaking apart phrases and words, it is easy to understand the lyrics to Rags And Bones by The Band. The word "lyric" itself derives from the Latin word lyricus, with the actual English word lyrics applied to the definition "words set to music" listed in Stainer and Barrett's 1876 Dictionary of Musical Terms. Continuing the chain, the Latin word lyricus derives from the Greek word λυρικός or lyrikós. This somewhat means "poetry accompanied by the lyre" or "words set to music." You can easily see that by looking at the background of the word lyric, that the "lyrics to Rags And Bones" means the words set to the music of Rags And Bones, or poetry accompanied by the lyre played by The Band. The singular form "lyric" is still used to mean the complete words to a song. However, the singular form lyric is also commonly used to refer to a specific line (or phrase) within a song's lyrics. Hence, by this analysis of word structure, you could say that the lyric to Rags And Bones and the lyrics to Rags And Bones are both one and the same thing. None of this talk about the word Lyrics is really relevant to fans of The Band who came here looking just for the lyrics to Rags And Bones, but we feel it is still fun to learn what's behind commonly used words and lyrics in songs.

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