The Adventures of Tobasco da Gama

Hey! I think it’s time for a lyrics post, yeah?

One of the advantages of having an anarchist partner is that you learn about how awesome all of the Chumbawamba songs apart from “Tubthumping” are. Here’s an example:

Have a word with your Patron Saint
Cover up the cracks with a lick of paint
All The exit doors are all double-locked
Because St Sebastian sways but doesn’t rock

Here’s to you – you put up a fight
You’re the last to leave, now turn out the light
You danced to the Devil and the Feathery wife
Now the Ordnance Survey is mapping out your life

Look at the small print: it’s what we agreed -
Sign your name before we teach you how to read
This is the land, the Land of Do What You’re Told
The Land of the Free: if you don’t leave the fold
Smile a little wider as you’re waiting to be sold
This is the land, the Land of Do What You’re Told

I’m a celebrity – let me in here
One last jump from the end of the pier
We breached the wall, but I was too tired to run
My Get Up And Go got up and now it’s gone

Look at the small print: it’s what we agreed -
Sign your name before we teach you how to read
This is the land, the Land of Do What You’re Told
The Land of the Free: if you don’t leave the fold
Smile a little wider as you’re waiting to be sold
This is the land, the Land of Do What You’re Told

This is the land, the Land of Do What You’re Told
With a little lip service to breaking the mold
Smile a little wider as you’re waiting to be sold
This is the land, the Land of Do What You’re Told

(Repeat)
We’re going on strike for twelve percent
We’re not downhearted yet
They’re filming it all for a reality show
So twelve percent we’ll get

Hey, it’s been a while since I did a lyrics post, hasn’t it? 90% of the others have been Neko Case, so this one might as be, too. (Ganked from the best lyrics site I’ve found, Always On the Run.)

Neko Case impresses me in that she continues to evolve her sound with every album she does, and furthermore her lyrics just seem to get richer and richer every time. If people aren’t studying this stuff in lit classes two decades from now, I’m gonna be having words with academia. At any rate, my favourite song off her latest album, Middle Cyclone, is either “Red Tide” or “Prison Girls”, but the one I relate to most is “This Tornado Loves You”. I think we all know how this feels:

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Bodies of Water is the most overtly religious band that will ever be featured on my blog, but they kick ass, so deal with it. I saw their show on Tuesday with Rebecca, who’s responsible for turning me on to their music in the first place, and while I already loved them from listening to their album, they’re the kind of band that you need to see live, because their whole thing, their entire appeal, comes from the fact that they, in their own words, “sing very emphatically, usually all at once”. You can respect that from a distance, but you need to see them in the flesh to really get it.

These are people who are just so fucking into what they’re doing that you cannot help but love them for it.

The ironic thing — apart from the fact of two atheists being so in love with an openly Christian band, I mean — is that I just finished the chapter of Hector Avalos’ The End of Biblical Studies destroying the apologetic justification that the Bible contains unique aesthetic and artistic value not present in lesser-known works of equal antiquity. I agree with him, completely, so how is it that a band which cribs lines from the Bible in many of their songs can produce something that actually does have a unique artistic value above and beyond the source?

Well, if I can put on my humanist hat for a moment, it’s all about what I just said: these people are really into what they do. Art takes its inspiration from wherever it can, and in this case it was the Bible. The actual creation of the inspired work of art came from not from the dusty tome itself but from a transmutation of those lines of ancient lore in the crucible of the minds of these talented musicians, applying their selves genuinely to the effort of expressing what they felt inside them.

Which is always awesome, in the original sense of inspiring awe.

With that all side, time to let them speak for themselves. Video first, then the lyrics, because as I said you really need to see and hear these guys to feel how genuine they are.

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Happy May Day, everybody! Today’s lyrics selection honours the great achievements of the Glorious Communist Worker’s Paradise, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics!

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Everybody needs a chaser after that fucking D’Souza thing. So, I’m in a Rilo Kiley mood this morning. Here’s “Plane Crash in C”. (Lyrics from Always on the Run, who I like to link to because they’re a really good lyric site without a lot of the bullshit ads that most have.)

YouTube:

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I don’t usually like to post in rapid succession, but at the moment one of my roommates has a ton of people over for a party of some kind and another is fucking his girlfriend rather loudly not three feet from where I’m typing this. The walls, they are a little thin. So posting to my blog and listening to music are about all I can do.

The apology dealt with, here are some song lyrics:

Dear landlord,
Please don’t put a price on my soul.
My burden is heavy,
My dreams are beyond control.
When that steamboat whistle blows,
I’m gonna give you all I got to give,
And I do hope you receive it well,
Dependin’ on the way you feel that you live.

Dear landlord,
Please heed these words that I speak.
I know you’ve suffered much,
But in this you are not so unique.
All of us, at times, we might work too hard
To have it too fast and too much,
And anyone can fill his life up
With things he can see but he just cannot touch.

Dear landlord,
Please don’t dismiss my case.
I’m not about to argue,
I’m not about to move to no other place.
Now, each of us has his own special gift
And you know this was meant to be true,
And if you don’t underestimate me,
I won’t underestimate you.

It should be obvious by this point that I’m a huge fan of Neko Case. Through her, I’m a pretty big fan of the New Pornographers as well. This naturally led to me sampling the other projects of the heavy hitters of the New Pornographers, like Destroyer and A.C. Newman’s solo work. While certainly good, they nonetheless failed to grab me.

And then I saw the New Porngraphers live last October and took notice of Kathryn Calder, who not only doubles Neko on the background vocals but also is at least partly responsible for the awesome keyboards. Ms. Calder is also a member of Immaculate Machine, who I eventually got around to checking out thanks to my eMusic subscription.

Verdict: Immaculate Machine fucking rock. I can’t recommend them enough to anybody who likes indie rock that can appropriately be described as badass. Because they are that. Badass. To demonstrate, here are the lyrics to “Army” off Ones and Zeroes. (Unfortunately, this song isn’t on YouTube, but “Broken Ship” is.)

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What better for Christmas than a punk song about gentrification and suburban sprawl, courtesy of Defiance, Ohio? Basically nothing.

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I’ve had a lot of ideas for posts recently that got nowhere not because I don’t have anything to say — I do, absolutely — but rather I just don’t have the energy to write them down. Outrage fatigue? After close to a year of blogging, probably yeah.

So go read this and this. If you want my takes, Winston Smith at Philosoraptor (great name) is right on, while Charles Bird of Obsidian Wings is missing the point. In particular, I think the trends that Charles points out represent plain old regression to the mean; furthermore, those very trends are just a red herring. I have a further point here that throws in Mazlow’s Hierarchy of Needs. Maybe I’ll get to writing a post expounding my position on the “positive trends in Iraq” meme, but not now.

Right now, I’m just going to post some lyrics from Defiance Ohio. As I said before, they kick ass. Basically, they’re what would have happened if the Dead Kennedys had fiddles instead of guitars. Seriously, this song in particular calls to mind the great soul-searching activist songs like “Chickenshit Conformist“/”Where Do Ya Draw the Line” and “Revolution“. Only with the aforementioned fiddles, which is awesome.

Plus YouTube!

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Leave aside the fact that Defiance Ohio is a great name for a band. They also play acoustic punk, and if you think I’m not totally on board for that, you’re wrong. And when I say “punk”, I don’t mean skater bois whining about girls, I mean this:

They say the new world order is just god’s master plan but if the blueprint calls for some to starve, don’t blame god’s right-hand man, ’cause the president is holy, and the president is pious, and hallelujah! he’s a good ol’ boy! hosannah in the highest!

The plan is written in god’s hand so only bush can read it, and it calls for battle in god’s name and it calls for bush to lead it, and the blueprint calls to drill for oil, and exterminate the land, and if you can’t hear god’s calling, then you’re probably from france! cause the USA is holy, and the USA is pious, and hallelujah! god is on our side! hosannah in the highest!

And god is great, and god is good, and let us thank god for our food, we may well have more than we need and god well yet have mouths to feed, but god is great, and god is good, and someday soon, he’ll feed you, too, ’cause once we’ve got our yachts and crowns, god planned some food to trickle down, so just keep those thoughts holy, be patient and be pious, and hallelujah! god’ll grant your prayers, hosannah in the highest!

And I thank god for a god so mild, who spared the rod and spoiled the child, and signed a blank check so his boys and girls could buy up the entire world, so don’t think us rude if we intrude, but god in heaven ordained us to, so you best improve that attitude and step aside we’ve work to do and thanks for keeping things in shape ’til we could come and take our place. Oh hallelujah! ain’t life great? Hosanna in the highest!

Capitalisation and line breaks are left as found on their website. Defiance Ohio are too fucking punk for capital letters and traditional verse structures.