Time

Tickin' away the moments that make up a dull day
You fritter and waste the hours in an off hand way
Kickin' around on a piece of ground in your home town
Waiting for someone or something to show you the way

Tired of lying in the sunshine staying home to watch the rain
You are young and life is long and there is time to kill today
And then one day you find - ten years have got behind you
No one told you when to run, you missed the starting gun

And you run and you run to catch up with the sun, but its sinking
And racing around to come up behind you again
The sun is the same in the relative way, but youre older
Shorter of breath and one day closer to death

Every year is getting shorter, never seem to find the time
Plans that either come to naught or half a page of scribbled lines
Hanging on in quiet desperation is the english way
The time is gone, the song is over, thought Id something more to say

Home, home again
I like to be here when I can
And when I come home cold and tired
Its good to warm my bones beside the fire
Far away across the field
The tolling of the iron bell
Calls the faithful to their knees
To hear the softly spoken magic spells.

You gotta keep one eye looking over your shoulder...

Dogs


You gotta be crazy, you gotta have a real need.
You gotta sleep on your toes, and when you're on the street,
You gotta be able to pick out the easy meat with your eyes closed.
And then moving in silently, down wind and out of sight,
You gotta strike when the moment is right without thinking.

And after a while, you can work on points for style.
Like the club tie, and the firm handshake,
A certain look in the eye and an easy smile.
You have to be trusted by the people that you lie to,
So that when they turn their backs on you,
You'll get the chance to put the knife in.

You gotta keep one eye looking over your shoulder.
You know it's going to get harder, and harder, and harder as you get older.
And in the end you'll pack up and fly down south,
Hide your head in the sand,
Just another sad old man,
All alone and dying of cancer.

And when you loose control, you'll reap the harvest you have sown.
And as the fear grows, the bad blood slows and turns to stone.
And it's too late to lose the weight you used to need to throw around.
So have a good drown, as you go down, all alone,
Dragged down by the stone.

I gotta admit that I'm a little bit confused.
Sometimes it seems to me as if I'm just being used.
Gotta stay awake, gotta try and shake off this creeping malaise.
If I don't stand my own ground, how can I find my way out of this maze?

Deaf, dumb, and blind, you just keep on pretending
That everyone's expendable and no-one has a real friend.
And it seems to you the thing to do would be to isolate the winner
And everything's done under the sun,
And you believe at heart, everyone's a killer.

Who was born in a house full of pain.
Who was trained not to spit in the fan.
Who was told what to do by the man.
Who was broken by trained personnel.
Who was fitted with collar and chain.
Who was given a pat on the back.
Who was breaking away from the pack.
Who was only a stranger at home.
Who was ground down in the end.
Who was found dead on the phone.
Who was dragged down by the stone.

Image © riverwoodyt

Any fellow on the road

Every Strangers' Eyes


[Waitress:] "Hello, you wanna cup of coffee?"
[Customers:] "Heh, Turn that fucking juke box down
You want to turn down that juke box....loud in here"
[Waitress:] "I'm sorry, would you like a cup of coffee?
Ok, you take cream and sugar? Sure."

In truck stops and hamburger joints
In Cadillac limousines
In the company of has-beens
And bent-backs
And sleeping forms on pavement steps
In libraries and railway stations
In books and banks
In the pages of history
In suicidal cavalry attacks
I recognize...
Myself in every stranger's eyes

And in wheelchairs by monuments
Under tube trains and commuter accidents
In council care and county courts
At Easter fairs and sea-side resorts
In drawing rooms and city morgues
In award winning photographs
Of life rafts on the China seas
In transit camps, under arc lamps
On unloading ramps
In faces blurred by rubber stamps
I recognize...
Myself in every stranger's eyes

And now, from where I stand
Upon this hill
I plundered from the pool
I look around
I search the skies
I shade my eyes
So nearly blind
And I see signs of half remembered days
I hear bells that chime in strange familiar ways
I recognize...
The hope you kindle in your eyes

It's oh so easy now
As we lie here in the dark
Nothing interferes, it's obvious
How to beat the tears
That threaten to snuff out
The spark of our love

Brain Damage

The lunatic is on the grass
Remembering games
And daisy chains and laughs
Got to keep the loonies on the path

The lunatics are in my hall
The paper holds their folded faces to the floor
And every day the paper boy brings more

And if the dam breaks open many years too soon
And if there is no room upon the hill
And if your head explodes with dark forebodings too
I'll see you on the dark side of the moon

The lunatic is in my head
You raise the blade, you make the change
You rearrange me 'till I'm sane
You lock the door
And throw away the key
And there's someone in my head, but it's not me

And if the cloud bursts thunder in your ear
You shout and no one seems to hear
And if the band you're in starts playing different tunes
I'll see you on the dark side of the moon

The Dark Side of the Moon
artwork by Storm Thorgerson

Information is power, Jim

You are listening to KAOS
In Los Angeles and we've got Billy on the line
. . .
Sunset Strip

I like staying with my Uncle Dave
And I like playing with his great dane
But I don't fit
I feel alien and strange Kinda outa range

I like riding in my Uncle's car
Down to the beach where the pretty girls all parade
And movie stars and paparazzi play
The Charles Atlas kicking sand in the face game

And I sit in the canyon with my back to the sea
There's a blood red dragon on a field of green
Calling me back

Back to the Black Hills again
Ooh, Billy come home

Billy is searching for his native land
Flicking through the stations with the dial in his head
Picking up ~~~ and
A male voice choir on the short wave band

Billy taps out Jim's number on the phone
Sits shaking as he waits for Jim's answering tone
Come on my friend, speak to me please
The land of my fathers is calling to me
And I sit in the canyon with my back to the sea
There's a blood red dragon on a field of green
Calling me back, back to the Black Hills again
Ooh, ooh, Billy come home

Come on home
He sits in the canyon with his back to the sea
Sees a blood red dragon on a field of green
He hears a male voice choir singing Billy come home
Billy, come home

Alright, that's a song called Radio Waves

You are listening to KAOS
In Los Angeles and we've got Billy on the line
. . .
Radio Waves

Radio waves. Radio waves.
He hears radio waves. Radio waves.
The atmosphere is thin and cold
The yellow sun is getting old
The ozone overflows with radio waves
AM, FM, weather and news
Our leaders had a frank exchange of views
Are you confused, radio waves.

Radio waves, radio waves
AM radio waves, FM radio waves
Radio waves, mind-numbing radio waves
Fish-stunning radio waves
Radio waves.

Magic Billy in his wheel chair
Is picking up all this stuff in the air
Billy is face to face with outer space
Messages from distant stars
The local police calling all cars, radio waves

Hear them radio waves, radio waves
Jesus saves radio, radio waves
Radio waves, AM radio waves, FM radio waves
All them radio waves

Radio waves, radio waves, he hears radio waves
Radio waves, hopeful radio waves, dopeful radio waves
Radio waves, Russian radio waves, Prussian radio waves
Eastern radio waves, Western radio waves
Testing radio waves, one two. One two.
Radio waves. Getting through to you
More code radio waves, Tobacco road radio waves
South to Paloma radio waves, Oklahoma City radio waves
Sitting pretty radio waves, nitty-gritty radio waves
Radio waves

Radio K.A.O.S.

The story

Benny is a Welsh coal miner.
He is a radio ham.
He is 23 years old, married to Molly.
They have a son, young Ben, aged 4, and a new baby.
They look after Benny's twin brother
Billy, who is apparently a vegetable.
The mine is closed by the market forces.
The Male Voice Choir stops singing, the village is dying.

One night Benny takes Billy on a pub crawl.
Drunk in a brightly-lit shopping mall,
Benny vents his anger on a shop window full of multiple
TV images of Margaret Thatcher's mocking condescension.
In defiance, he steals a cordless phone.
Later that night, Benny cavorts dangerously
on the parapet of a motorway footbridge,
in theatrical protest at the tabloid press.
That same night, a cab driver is killed
by a concrete block dropped off a similar bridge.
The police come to question Benny;
he hides the cordless 'phone
under the cushion of Billy's wheelchair.

Billy is different,
he can receive radio waves directly
without the aid of a tuner;
he explores the cordless phone,
recognizing its radioness.
Benny is sent to prison.
Billy feels as if half of him has been cut off.
He misses Benny's nightly conversations
with radio hams in foreign parts.
Molly, unable to cope,
sends Billy to stay with his Great Uncle David,
who had emigrated to the USA during the war.
Much as Billy likes Uncle David
and the sunshine and all the new radio in LA,
he cannot adjust to the cultural upheaval
and the loss of Benny, who for him is 'home'.

Uncle David, now an old man,
is haunted by having worked on
the Manhattan project
during World War II,
designing the Atom Bomb,
and seeks to atone.
He also is a radio ham;
he often talks to other hams
about the Black Hills of his youth,
the Male Voice Choir, about home.
He is saddened by the use of telecommunication
to trivialize important issues, the soap opera of state.
However, Live Aid has decynicised him to an extent.
Billy listens to David
and hears the truth the old man speaks.

Billy experiments with his cordless phone,
he learns to make calls.
He accesses computers and speech synthesizers,
he learns to speak.
Billy makes contact with Jim a DJ at Radio KAOS,
a renegade rock station,
fighting a lone rear guard action
against format radio.
Billy and Jim become radio friends,
Reagan and Thatcher bomb Lybia.
Billy perceives this as an act of
political "entertainment" fireworks
to focus attention away from problems at "home".

Billy has developed his expertise
with the cordless phone to the point
where he can now control
the most powerful computers in the world.
He plans an "entertainment" of his own.
He simulates nuclear attack everywhere,
but de-activates
the military capability of "the powers that be" to retaliate.
In extremes perceptions change,
Panic, comedy, compassion.
In a SAC bunker a soldier
in a white cravat turns a key to launch the counter attack.
Nothing happens;
impotently he kicks the console, hurting his foot.
He watches the approaching blips on the radar screen.
As impact approaches,
he thinks of his wife and kids,
he puts his fingers in his ears.

Silence.
White out.
Black out.
Lights out.
It didn't happen, we're still alive.
Billy has drained the earth
of power to create his illusion.
All over the dark side of the earth, candles are lit.
In the pub in Billy's home village in Wales
one man starts to sing; the other men join in.
The tide is turning

Another Brick In The Wall (Part II)

Graham Broad

Dave Kilminster

Snowy White

Ian Ritchie

Andy Fairweather-Low

Katie Kissoon

PP Arnold

Carol Kenyon

Jon Carin

Harry Waters

We don't need no education
We don't need no thought control
No dark sarcasm in the classroom
Teachers leave the kids alone
Hey teacher leave us kids alone
All in all it's just another brick in the wall

Now things are really what they seem

Sheep

Harmlessly passing your time in the grassland away
Only dimly aware of a certain unease in the air
You better watch out
There may be dogs about
I've looked over Jordan and I have seen
Things are not what they seem.

What do you get for pretending the danger's not real
Meek and obedient you follow the leader
Down well trodden corridors into the valley of steel
What a surprise!
A look of terminal shock in your eyes
Now things are really what they seem
No, this is no bad dream.

The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want
He makes me down to lie
Through pastures green he leadeth me the silent waters by
With bright knives he releaseth my soul
He maketh me to hang on hooks in high places
He converteth me to lamb cutlets
For lo,m he hath great power and great hunger
When cometh the day we lowly ones
Through quiet reflection and great dedication
Master the art of karate
Lo, we shall rise up
And then we'll make the bugger's eyes water.

Bleeding and babbling we fell on his neck with a scream
Wave upon wave of demented avengers
March cheerfully out of obscurity into the dream.

Have you heard the news?
The dogs are dead!
You better stay home
And do as you're told
Get out of the road if you want to grow old

I've used up my last wish...

Three Wishes



Reached back from the bottle
and rubbed against the lamp
Genie came out smiling like some Eastern tramp
He said hey boy what's happening, what is going on?
You can have three wishes if it don't take too long...
if it don't take too long...

I said well, I wish they were all happy in India
Wish somebody'd help me write this song
I wish when I was young,
my old man had not been gone...
Genie said consider it done,

There's something in the air,
and you don't know what it is,
you see someone through the window
Who you've just learned to miss,
and the road leads on to glory but
You've used up your last wish
And you want her to come home.
Bring her home!

Genie said I'm sorry,
but that's the way it goes...
Where the hell's the lamp sucker,
it's time for me to go bye

There's something in the air,
and you don't know what it is
You see someone through the window
who you've just learned to miss
And the road leads on to glory
but you've used up your last wish
Your last wish and you want her to come home...
Home...