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Includes unlimited streaming via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality downloads of Births, Deaths and Marriages, (We Are) The Infidels, Happy Families, A Shopkeeper will Not Appear, and Friday Night At the Trabi Races.
1. |
And Yet It Moves!
03:05
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And yet, it moves!
Blow off the cobwebs,
shake the dust and start anew...
And yet it moves!
Where have we been? Through time and space we’ve raced
this marvelous machine, oh the sights we’ve seen
I must have dialed-in the wrong co-ordinates
And ended up crash-landed in this wilderness,
this emptiness...
But I’ll be back to tell you all,
to tell you all.
How now my friends? My Transit van of Fire, the tour
that never ends? that never ends...
The morning’s cold. Catch my reflection in the glass
I have grown old! how time has told.
I’ve slept a thousand years,
in troubled dreams I’ve roamed.
But now I am awake, I’ve rolled away the stone
And I am back to tell you all, to tell you all,
And now like Lazarus I’m back to tell you all,
Like Lazy Lazarus I’m back to tell you all!
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2. |
Alfred Mynn
04:02
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Do not ask me for advice,
for I’m a man who measures once and cuts twice.
I learned the error of my ways
lost between the landscape and the life-class.
But with the sun upon my face,
suddenly I warm towards the human race,
as I consider Alfred Mynn
who hit the ball into the tall grass.
Picture green playing fields and then,
you might picture two ungainly Gentlemen,
Who did fierce battle through the day
then took their pleasure in a tall glass
And though I live without a plan,
set no example to my fellow man,
For this I offer Alfred Mynn
who hit the ball into the tall grass,
the Kind and Manly Alfred Mynn
who hit the ball into the tall grass
And if the sun shines, make hay while the sun shines.
It’s better to’ve been burned and to have learned
than to have stayed inside
Drink deeply from the cup of love,
there is no calling-in the days past.
Forgive the philistines’ indifference,
and those who mock you in their ignorance;
Truth is, they could not tell the difference
between their own culture and a cow’s arse.
Heed not too much of what your parents say
for though they love you they have had their day
and you must make your own mistakes,
just cross your fingers as the die’s cast!
Never forget that you are free
and make half-heartedness your enemy,
just like the kind and manly Alfred Mynn
who hit the ball into the tall grass
the strong and gentle Alfred Mynn
who walked out into the tall grass
And if the sun shines, make hay while the sun shines
It’s better to’ve been burned and to have learned
than to have stayed inside
Drink deeply from the cup of love,
there is no calling-in the days past
In which I picture Alfred Mynn
who walked out into the tall grass
the kind and manly Alfred Mynn
who sleeps at last under the tall grass.
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3. |
We Are the Infidels
04:20
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Eve bought an apple as she walked in the morning sun
She wasn’t thinking much about the life to come
just market stalls, swept on the human tide.
A pound-shop prophet in a mac rails at passers-by
the placard on his back says ‘The End is Nigh’;
their shopping bags hang heavy by their sides.
He tells them:’Plague, pestilence are the signs of the
Apocalypse to come’. His sermon fell on cabbages and kale.
They answer: ‘Doubt, blasphemy... We carry on when
catastrophe befalls. We are compelled: we are the Infidels.’
The church-bells in the square toll the afternoon
the sound drifts through the streets to an upstairs room
where time stands still. Two lovers slowly rouse.
He’s singing softly to himself while the fawcett drips,
she puts a cigarette to her lipsticked lips.
As she exhales, she says: ‘This is what I’ve found:
‘Lust, vanity, are the guiding lights of humanity.
They shine a light sublime, and how they lead us well.
You can take piety, the leaden pall of sobriety to hell
We broke the spell, we are the Infidels.’
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4. |
Gas and Air
05:23
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I was the scarecrow, Prince of the Hedgerow
with frost on my frock-coat and rain in my ears.
You were the May Queen, attended by butterflies
and ours was a harvest that lasted all year.
Well soon there were spinning-tops and skipping-ropes
the building blocks of a strange new world order
so we feathered the nest, and from the school
to the factory to the green fields there was deference
that one generation passed on to the next
And they gave us pleasure parks, dogs that bark,
a pub that never closes, carriageway and marriage vows
and photo-album poses: It’s gas and air,
forget your cares for life’s no bed of roses or so
they say. Well, it’s enough to get you through the day
There’s no need to doff your cap or break your back
your feudal lords are history, pull up a seat
and warm your feet and tell me that you’ve missed me.
It’s gas and air, forget your cares, but where we’re
going’s a mystery; well anyway, it’s getting closer
every day.
Cold ashes in the firebox on a branch-line grown-over
where the flower of youth lined the platform full-blown.
And the seargent-at-arms had straw for a bayonet
It was the flight from the land,
destination now known.
And he wore a tin hat midst the tank traps and
the tumbleweed, it was she sowed the stripes on
his corporal’s vest. But with the wars of the
roses their chapter now closes and one generation
makes way for the next
And they gave us starter-homes, stepping-stones,
the art of conversation...‘ Just called to say
I’m on my way, I’ll see you at the station.
I’ve got no doubts at all but I just can’t recall
what was my destination. Well anyway, it’s getting
closer every day.
There’s no need to doff your cap or break your back
your feudal lords are history, pull up a seat
and warm your feet and tell me that you’ve missed me.
It’s gas and air, forget your cares, but where we’re
going’s a mystery; well anyway, it’s getting closer
every day.
Oh my love, there’s a caterpillar on the motorway
he knows where he’s going, but progress is slow
and you’re still the May Queen as you fly past
in the 4 x 4, heading here or heading there
Or wherever you go.
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5. |
A Man Quite Ordinary
04:19
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Bad King John ruled on a whim, well he was just a man
quite ordinary. And England's woes flowed not from him,
but from the sceptre that he carried.
For every grand old duke of yore
there are ten thousand tired soldiers, and 'dirty
people of no name' who carry them upon their shoulders
Ours is the brisk October breeze that wakes us from
a summer slumber, to fill the shops and football grounds
in unvainquishable number. Our's is the trusty '3-for-2'
their's the power and the glory. Our's is just
to carry on, that is the never-ending story.
Headmistresses and shopkeepers, air-raid wardens,
homesick sailors accountants and solicitors, nurses,
janitors and gaolers. In the hour of great need
it was they who moved the mountain
not a prophet, priest or anyone
that the holy books recounted.
Good Queen Bess was strong indeed but not the equal
of her daughters who stack the supermarket shelves
and bring home the bacon -- as they taught us.
And in the hour of great need
it is they who move the mountain
though they are lost to history
as the history books recount it.
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6. |
Happy Families
04:29
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Potts the Painter’s Son would have visions.
New colours in his head, grand ambitions
It’s time to break away,
see what you can be
But now matter what you say, however far you stray
forever shall you play Happy Families
Great-grandfathers’ choices, Victorian voices,
all of them echoing still, echoing still.
Mrs Bun the Baker’s Wife spurned her daughter
who’d struggled all her life to support her.
Still it’s hard to turn away from all these sad things:
the struggle to belong, or just to get along,
Always choosing wrong – Happy Families.
All of the pain, all the searching in vain
all of it echoing still, echoing still.
And so I stole away the Baker’s Daughter
I didn’t do the things that I oughta.
But luck was on my side.
Love was on my side.
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7. |
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There lived a handsome rambling man, who owned a smile
and a panel van. In the age before everything,
how polaroid captured him
How we leave our mark, oh let me count the ways
How we write our names upon the sand
So I signed my name by yours and we stood before the
town hall doors. For what kind of a life is this, if
there are no witnesses? Midst mums, dads and half-sisters,
a love duly registered. Yes we choose our allegiances
and harbour our greivances midst births, deaths and
marriages, and such gravity as this.
Now the cat gets kicked in spite and the baby howls
all night, when did we sign up for this? Was there
something that I missed? The memory of a kiss and
such eternal bliss.
But I remember a summer’s day, of which there’s no
record made. All of our friends still there, all
laughing without a care. The sum of a life was this
less births deaths and marriages.
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8. |
French Lessons
03:44
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In the spirit of adventure, you're a braver soul than me
so you enrolled yourself in night-school
and took French lessons to see
New sights, unbroken horizons, dark nights.
Still life, in pointillist colour, half light
If we could turn the clock back now I don't know if you
would return, but if the past were not imperfect
there'd be nothing we could learn.
Show me, water lillies and warm seas. As rain sweeps
the Tuilerie gardens, a Cezanne sketch on Gitane cartons.
In ancient/other times, the language/lyric of love flowed line by line
now I find I search for those words we left behind,
Vainly, vainly...
Now for casual repartee I leave the phrasebook on the
shelf and though I think I've grasped the grammar,
I'm a stranger to myself.
Lately, i'm lost in translation, lately.
Save me, from conditional clauses, hopeless causes,
pregnant pauses...
Dans la foret des tristesses mes mots sont perdu,
comme l'amour.
Dans l'apres-midi de nos coeurs, je les chercherai encore.
je les trouverai encore.
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9. |
The Diary of a Nobody
04:57
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I was lying in a bed of delphiniums blue,
and geraniums red.
It was like the dormouse said...
How shall I begin this tale of no consequence?
It takes place within municipal offices
where I catalog your births, deaths and marriages,
vaunted times
Chrysanthemums white, or a rose for a button-hole
funeral wreaths or confetti that falls on the
cold marble steps you ascend and descend
in an endless line
And at night, walking home, I look in
at the light of human company, bright
without knowing the taste of it
Like a fly, seeking sunlight who’s drawn to the glass,
but who cannot get past to feel the embrace of it
'Dear Diary,' I write...
So I write these words, the words of a nobody
there are many like me, composing our litanies
largely ignored, we navigate corridors weightlessly
it's the urge to record while we still have memory
to show that we've lived
to show that we'd meant to be more than we were
more than we amounted to, finally
In my books, I arrange A to Z
the lives of others long dead
are painted into posterity
and they live again
these unremarkable men,
who picked up a pen
to fend off eternity
And so, 'Dear Diary,' I write...
Other people's lives, are a strange carousel
I can hear the organ grind.
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10. |
The Quiet Life
04:42
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Spaces, empty spaces. Ancient pathways, sacred places
Mute memorials of wars and weddings from long before.
Quiet Life, it's the Quiet Life: sleeping streets on
lonely hillsides, village stores where be;;s on doors
will ring no more
When my heart feels fit to burst, why does the woodlark
sing its verse so softly, oh so softly?
Faces, smiling faces. Passing ghosts with cardboard
cases filled with longing for the song they knew before.
As the darkness falls around me, far below builds
the tsunami, quietly, very quietly
Crowded rooms that fill with laughter, bring me noise
forever-after, for the storm inside of me will not relent
No it'll never be the Quiet Life, no not the Quiet Life...
For me.
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