West End Avenue

The Magic Show, Theatre Nerds

Song Title : West End Avenue

Show Name : The Magic Show

Character Name : Cal

Gender : Female

Age : Young Adult

Vocal Part : Mezzo-Soprano

Range : Bb3-D5

Style : Uptempo (Piano Pop)

Mood : Dramatic, Bitter/Ironic

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Context & Lyrics


Cal, a magician’s assistant, realizes that her career and love life are not working out, so she considers reluctantly returning to West End Avenue.

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All of your life you wake up to the taxis and the chimes
To the bathroom with the roaches and the breakfast with the Times.
And you subway to school with kids whose folks all live in twenty blocks
In a high-rise rented carton or a co-op brownstone box, with double locks.

West End Avenue.
Babies in carts and poodles barking,
West End Avenue.
Planning the day around the parking.

You tell yourself, “I will be free.”
West End Avenue,
You won’t get me.

All of your life you watch the shrinks and lawyers on parade,
Watch the brokers in their worsted and the ad men in their suede.
While upstairs a soprano tries to sing the waltz from “La Boheme.”
And you watch ’em and you listen and you judge and you condemn:
You’re not like them.

West End Avenue.
Delis and laundromats and gay bars,
West End Avenue.
Only a block away from Zabars.

But you were meant to really fly.
West End Avenue,
Good bye, good bye.

And then suddenly you’re out there on your own.
But you forgot that free could also mean alone.
And when all that freedom gets too much for you,
Ooh, what do you do?

You pack up your boots and blue jeans and your records and your pride,
And you tell yourself you ventured and you tell yourself you tried.
And it’s back to the surly doormen and the canopies you go.
And the buses seem to chuckle and the towers seem to crow:
“We told you so.”

West End Avenue,
Find me a golden cage to perch in.
West End Avenue,
Open your arms to one more urchin
Who’s crawlin’ back to mama’s den.
West End Avenue,
You win again!

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