Annotated lyrics for The Hold Steady song 'Chicago Seemed Tired Last Night' - Nelson Algren came to Paddy / At some party at The Dead End Alley / Yeah, he told him what to celebrate / And I met William Butler Yeats / Sunday night dance party, Summer 1988 / At first I thought it might be William Blake / We mix our own mythologies / We push them out through PA systems / We dictate our doxologies / We try to get sleeping kids to sit up and listen / And I'm not saying that we could save you / But we could put you in a place where you could save yourself / And if you don't get born again / At least you'll get high as hell / Yeah, and sweet St. Paul / That must be the hardest luck saint of 'em all / We met him at some suburban St. Paul mall / Yeah, and St. Teresa came to Holly / But I wasn't even at that party / I'd already moved out to New York City / Yeah, when Judas went up and kissed him / I almost got sick / I guess I knew what was coming / I guess I knew it was coming / We gather our gospels from gossip and bar talk / And then we declare them the truth / We salvage our sermons from message boards and scene reports / And we sic them on the youth / Yeah, we try out new testaments on the guys sitting next to us / In the bars with the bars on the windows, alright / And even if you don't get converted tonight / You gotta admit the band's pretty tight / They did 'She's Got Legs' into 'Ain't Too Proud To Beg' / Into something by the Dixie Dregs / And they faked their way through 'Fairytale of New York' / When the band stopped playing we howled out for more / Hey Nelson Algren, Chicago seemed tired last night / They had cigarettes where there were supposed to be eyes / Hey William Butler Yeats, all the Irish seemed wired last night / They tried to separate our girls from our guys / They had cigarettes where there were supposed to be eyes