Live Wire

A live wire
Lives for today
Look at what you’re doing
It matters not what you say

I’ll tell you what is what
I’ll tell you what is meant to be
All is not well in the land of the free

I’m a live wire from a spark
I have grown
But when I’m gone
You’ll be on your own
Can’t you feel my pulse
The current runs through me
I could be underfoot
Don’t tread on me

Like a live wire
Watch it burn
Put the knife in oppression
When it’s back is turned

The real live wire
The mean defier
I stand against all odds
The equalizer forged of fiber –
That stands up against the gods
Here to serve
The rebels nerve
And give his tongue its lash
But when the battles turn
And the ships are burned
Then you know that’s where I’ll be

Lyrics; John Haggerty / Pierre Kezdy.
Music; Naked Raygun
From the album; Jettison.

Prozac People

I woke up in the darkness and i tried to see the clock
It was four a.m.
I was curled up like a foetus and my muscles were stretched taut
I couldn’t face the burden of another week of worry
I was broken
I took a green and yellow pill.
washed down with filter coffee
’til it kicked in
Get me out
Keep me up
Level me out

I was isolated by the way i thought and felt
They saw my moodswings
I travelled down the longitude of opposite emotions
I bi-polar
In the north they saw my upside. my excitable and optimistic spirit
In the south they saw my anger and my tears and my despair
They saw my moodswings
Get me out
Keep me up
Level me out
I was one of the prozac people
I was one of the prozac people

Don’t monitor this guinea pig for research any more
I will try again
Pharmaceutical conglomerates just count me as a unit
For their product
Identify the enemy. remove the source of fear
Start to change my life
It’s a false state of elation
You can join the prozac nation
If you want to
Get me out
Keep me up
Level me out
I was one of the prozac people
I was one of the prozac people

Lyrics; Jaz Coleman
Music;Killing Joke

That’s Progress

Gimme a M (M),
gimme an A (A),
gimme an U (U),
gimme a L (L)
Gimme your money! (Sure!)
What’s that spell? (Maul!)
What’s that spell? (Shopping maul!)

‘scuse me, pardon my greed,you’re evicted, time to leave.
Don’t matter if your family’s lived here 30 years.
We’re tripling the rent.
Time’s up, the sheriff’s here.
Too bad for you if you freeze out in the street.

The croissant and cookie palace downstairs will symbolize
The old neighborhood whose soul has slowly died,
Been gentrified.
That’s progress!
Doesn’t progress make you feel good inside?

Cameras catch you running red lights
schoolrooms with no windows
Computer picks your career at age 15.
Universal price code I.D.’s
With the stripe the laser reads
and records where you’ve been,when you’re sick and what you eat.
For every spy in government
There’s 50 private eyes,
Who round up dirt on you to keep on file
Then sell the file.

That’s progress!
Doesn’t progress make you feel good inside?
That’s progress!
That’s progress!
Progress don’t make me feel so good inside.

You can’t live here, we won’t hire you,we know all the nasty things you do.
Bought a dossier on your whole life
Clear back to the pranks you did in school at age 5.

There’s millions on file
At the touch of a button.
Your boss or your landlord
Will love our choice cuts of gossip
if it’s lies, what can you do?
‘cos it costs too much to sue 
The last person who’ll ever see your file is you.

Had enough, I moved back home
To the mountains where I belong 
But ski resorts have tamed the wild west.
The hills we used to roam
Now they’re privately owned and scarred with cheezy suburbs and cement.
The ‘tracts for sale’ sign promises ‘deer in your back yard
‘if the deer somehow get past the fences and guards
And the industrial ‘park’.
Oh no! Not again!
All this progress makes me feel ill inside!
That’s progress!
That’s progress!

Looks like I’ll have to move to yellowknife.
Progress
Your idea of progress wrecks too many lives.

Lyrics: Jello Biafra
Music: DOA
From the Movie Soundtrack Terminal City Ricochet

Walls Of Silence

Sick of all these dumb solutions
Why not tell me something new?
I’ve been hearing so much bullshit
It’s impossible to tell the truth
How can they preach all their morals
When they’re worse than we’ll ever be?
We’re a useless threat to their walls of silence
But there’s no solution to convince me

You can scream-shout-fight the system
But it won’t fight back…Safe behind their walls of silence

The system stinks and we all know it
But the mass protesters get nowhere
A wall of arms against a wall of silence
They just pretend that we’re not there
And there’s nothing we can do about it
Fighting each other all day long
Divide ourselves by petty ritual
Then we wonder what went wrong.

Lyrics: Dick Lucas
Music: Subhumans
From the album; Worlds Apart.

Spirit Of Radio

Begin the day
With a friendly voice
A companion unobtrusive
Plays that song that’s so elusive
And the magic music
Makes your morning mood
Off on your way
Hit the open road
There is magic at your fingers
For the Spirit ever lingers
Undemanding contact in your happy solitude

[Chorus:]
Invisible airwaves crackle with life
Bright antennae bristle with the energy
Emotional feedback on timeless wavelength
Bearing a gift beyond price, almost free

All this machinery
Making modern music
Can still be open hearted
Not so coldly charted
It’s really just a question…
Of your honesty….
Yeah! your honesty
One likes to believe in the freedom of music
But glittering prizes
And endless compromises
Shatter the illusion of integrity

[Chorus]

For the words of the prophets were written on the studio wall
Concert hall
And echoes with the sounds of salesmen

Lyrics; Neil Peart
Music; Rush
From the album
“Permanent Waves”

The first Rush song I ever heard and I loved it straight away, from there I discovered a band that made fantastic music, coupled with excellent intelligent lyrics.
And for me both those elements are what makes great music. Music that you feel and lyrics that make you think.

Most people are content to accept the music/artists that appear on mainstream. Go looking, there’s a wealth of imaginative original work out there.

“Popularity is the hallmark of mediocrity” (Oscar Wilde)

Natural Science

[1. Tide Pools]

When the ebbing tide retreats
Along the rocky shoreline
It leaves a trail of tidal pools
In a short-lived galaxy
Each microcosmic planet
A complete society
A simple kind of mirror
To reflect upon our own
All the busy little creatures
Chasing out their destinies
Living in their pools
They soon forget about the sea…

Wheels within wheels in a spiral array
A pattern so grand and complex
Time after time
We lose sight of the way
Our causes can’t see their effects

[2. Hyperspace]

A quantum leap forward
In time and in space
The universe learned to expand
The mess and the magic
Triumphant and tragic
A mechanized world out of hand
Computerized clinic
For superior cynics
Who dance to a synthetic band
In their own image
Their world is fashioned
No wonder they don’t understand

[3. Permanent Waves]

Science, like nature
Must also be tamed
With a view towards
Its preservation
Given the same
State of integrity
It will surely serve us well
Art as expression
Not as market campaigns
Will still capture our imaginations
Given the same
State of integrity
It will surely help us along
The most endangered species
The honest man
Will still survive annihilation
Forming a world
State of integrity
Sensitive, open and strong
Wave after wave will flow with the tide
And bury the world as it does
Tide after tide will flow and recede
Leaving life to go on as it was…

Lyrics: Neil Peart
Music: Rush
From the album:
Permanent Waves

The Enemy Within (Part I of Fear)

Things crawl in the darkness
That imagination spins
Needles at your nerve ends
Crawl like spiders on your skin
Pounding in your temples
And a surge of adrenaline
Every muscle tensed
To fence the enemy within

[Chorus:]
I’m not giving in to security under pressure
I’m not missing out on the promise of adventure
I’m not giving up on implausible dreams
Experience to extremes
Experience to extremes…

Suspicious looking stranger
Flashes you a dangerous grin
Shadows across your window…
Was it only trees in the wind?
Every breath a static charge
A tongue that tastes like tin
Steely-eyed outside
To hide the enemy within

To you, is it movement
Or is it action?
Is it contact or just reaction?
And you…revolution
Or just resistance?
Is it living?
Or just existence?
Yeah, you!
It takes a little more persistence
To get up and go the distance

[Chorus]

Lyrics: Neil Peart
Music: Rush
From the album; Grace Under Pressure.

The Beautiful Dead

You are an inspiration to me
You are my inspiration
Of how not to be
You are my inspiration
To achieve a better way of life

The crowd was one
(oblivion ran deep) 
A consciousness
Of cannon-fodder
Walking in its sleep 
Vacant expressions
(and don’t look ahead) 
Everybody dance
With the beautiful dead I said!

All queue up and grovel for a hit 
Someone pulls the reins
Then you chew at the bit 
Encouraged by commercials
To spend beyond my means
I laughed as it all
Fell apart at the seams 
(Hey! Take a look at tomorrow) 
But will I inherit the good green earth? 

Such a lovely world 

All mod-cons
There was dust on the drums 
My electronic beat-box
Got the job done
Everybody emulate
The pulse of the soul 
And change your clothes
(to make you feel whole)
Effort and sweat
Was a thing of the past
(they said!)
Welcome to the world
Of the beautiful dead

Lyrics; Jaz Coleman
Music; Killing Joke

Talk Is Cheap

Talk is cheap and its easy to shout 
If we spent all our time working things out 
Would it change anything? 
Words are cheap and anyone can sing 
So let’s sing a song about all the wrongs 

Complaining and straining
This is where it belongs 
Or so some one said
It must’ve been something I read

But while I weas reading
 The ethics lay bleeding 
Stab the back of the hand that feeds you 

We fall apart in the ‘basic human nature’ excuse 
It’s the heart of the gig that bleeds 
From the endless soul self-abuse 
Tied to the bar in the hope of reviews 
From the obvious to the obtuse

The critics who sound so profound 
About the mythical ‘new underground’
 
But talk is cheap 
The words of wisdom put you to sleep 
And you don’t even read the cuttings you keep 
Just following trends 
The trail never ends 
When all the solutions are just round the bend 

You’re upholding ideas that you’d never defend 
In the endless search you cannot comprehend 
That there’s nothing that wonderful 
In worshipping trivial 
Ego material 
Music sells papers
Who sell you the feeling 
As if it was missing (Yeah really)

Talk is cheap 
Till you put it in print 
Sing as you read 
The words all fit 

Now we’re learning the words 
Obscure or absurd 
It makes no difference 
It never gets heard 
No it never gets ‘in’ 
What you really want to win 
When there’s nothing to be
You say ‘look at me!’ 
And it works!
Yes it works! 
Talk is cheap 
But shouting is free!

Lyrics: Dick Lucas

PAINT

I heard the notes all fade away 
Leaving their memorial stones 
Yesterday’s thoughts have come to stay…..
Until they decompose 

A picture paints a thousand words 
With nothing much to say 
What last night seemed had to be heard 
Is left unsaid today 

So when you said you understood 
I couldn’t understand 
I was looking at an empty beach 
As you saw the grains of sand 

I was counting views from windows 
When you looked in from outside 
The light was blurred and distant 
And several cities wide 

So I turn up the volume 
To hear the notes so dim 
You said you couldn’t hear it 
So I asked you to come in 
Then you held up a mirror 
I saw my face congeal
I was thin and getting thinner 
And I dreamt it was for real

Lyrics: Dick Lucas
Music: Citizen Fish, from the album “Free Souls In A Trapped Environment”