LYRIC: With Burning Anger

With burning anger I

Sing songs written in my youth

Furious that the 

lyrics still apply

Police brutality, government lies

Capitalism Sucks, innocents die

The Profitganda media march us to war

The rich getting richer the poor staying poor

With burning anger I

Watch the daily proof

A vindication I wish 

I wish was not the truth

Same ideologies/different hairstyles

Progress Ever Backwards for another few miles

Fat on Junk Food News and Culturally Dead

I Fear For The World, cuz it’s losing it’s head 

Is This What Democracy Looks Like?

Surely There Must Be More Than This To Life?

Or are we Too Lazy To Live?

With burning anger I

Write another song

Familiar lyrics

Until the problem’s gone

I stared at my navel but now I am back

To point out our failings and show where we lack

I play this guitar with burning anger 

We’re still Not The Good Guys

And we never were

LYRIC: The End of the World (Today)

The people have spoken and I’m feeling sick

Who could imagine things changing this quick

Frustrated, ignorant grasping at straws

These are the things that make people start wars

I tremble as everyday life starts to look

Like the opening chapters of an old history book

These were the dark days that caused Rome to fall

These were the factors that started it all

The end of the world

Comes without warning

The end of the world

Is today

A moment of madness undoing the years

Of progress it’s taken to get us to here

Long battles fought and hard victories won

The evolution of civilization

Enlightenment can’t last without any lights

And now we are facing the darkest of nights

Desperation giving way to despair

The people have spoken and I’m feeling scared

The comfort of thinking it can’t happen here

Is the surest sign that it is already near

Right on your doorstep, right on your street

Amazing how well we can walk in our sleep

Napping our way through this democracy

Uninformed, responsibility-free

Until we awake and blink open our eyes

It’s hard to believe that we’re even surprised

LYRIC: March In Line

March in line for the London Olympics

March in line for the Queen’s Jubilee

March in line for the coalition government

March in line for the economy

March in line as they take away your services

March in line as your pay and pension freeze

March in line as they take away your benefits

March in line as they bring you to your knees

March in line as they talk about the deficit 

March in line and don’t talk about the war

March in line and forget about the cause of this

March in line and don’t ask what you’re marching for

And don’t forget your flags

Yes you must wave your pretty flags

And march in line for the right team in the football game

March in line and love the same celebrities

March in line and pick conveyor opportunities

March in line to serve your master’s every need

March in line when they tell you that you lost your job

March in line as they spin your tears to gold

March in line to the growing unemployment queue

March in line and maybe you won’t feel the cold

March in line for the new great depression

March in line for a taste of poverty

March in line for the bankers and their bonuses

March in line in the name of your country

And don’t forget your flags

Yes you must wave your pretty flags

Starving children dressed in rags

They all wave their pretty flags

And march in line

March in line like a lamb off to the slaughter

March in line and say a prayer for corporate greed

March in line and stop asking awkward questions

March in line and march until your feet bleed.

March in line.

LYRIC: Same Ideologies/ Different Hairstyles

They're doing that dance again

Using all the same moves

Each one claiming concern

And an interest in you

They offer me up a choice

That gives me no choice

And participation

That gives me no voice

My representatives represent nothing I want or need

Behind the rhetoric and lies, there ain't nothing but greed

Same ideologies different hairstyles, same pro-freemarket creed

The choice of who sickens me less, that's my democracy

They say all the right things, promise us the earth

Such meaningless statements, the truth as clear as dirt

The same mistake every four years

And when has it ever paid off?

They play on our hopes and our fears

And fuck us again and again and again

They're raking it in-as we are suffering-just to profit them

No choice-between the parties-it's just the monied-whose interests are taken account of

When there's no meaning left in voting, disenfranchised all are we

We can't let them get away with this deception anymore

We are the many and they just the priveledged few

We have the numbers now all that's left to do is to...

Find our hearts, build our strength and reclaim what is ours once again

LYRIC: Welcome to England (TM)

You think you live in a free nation? 

Well all I see is a corporation 

The government's our bosses and we are their slaves 

Poor health and safety and no minimum wage 

The day that we're born, we punch in the clock 

Only when dead do we finally sign off 

In between we slave away 

Life disallowed for those without pay 

Welcome to England, registered trademark

An affiliate of The West.Inc 

Your life is ours, we've supplied you a number… 

Shut up! Obey! You're our commodity! We'll use you until you die! 

If free, why must we earn our living? 

Life's a right that they are not giving! 

What do you work for? For joy or for cash? 

How much do you give how much do you get back? 

Fulfillment lacking there's no time for you 

Insignificant parts, just a human screw 

Keep you in line with fear and obey 

So they can use you for another day! 

Welcome to England, registered trademark

An affiliate of The West.Inc 

Your life is ours, we've supplied you a number… 

Shut up! Obey! You're our commodity! We'll use you until you die! 

Piss off, fuck you, I'm not your commodity, I'll resist and reclaim my life! 

LYRIC: This Is What Democracy Looks Like

Streets filled with conspiracy 

The Masses Screaming To Be Free 

Demonstrators everywhere 

The rich are having quite a scare 

Fighting against corruption and a murderous regime 

The masses are uprising and are taking to the streets 

Protest's a right supposedly in this democracy 

So why the fuck is everywhere surrounded by police? 

Banners and singing against tear-gas, clubs and guns 

Who is really protecting the peace? 

This is what democracy looks like 

Is this what democracy looks like? 

Everyday people get fucked 

By this system so corrupt 

Corporate, capitalist sacks of shit 

Screw us over for more profit 

But now we're getting restless and we're beating on our drums 

A battle cry for freedom in our mass demonstrations 

Our anger turned to magic and some more direct action 

A democratic right to voice our dissatisfaction 

We're growing stronger not going away 

In fear they bring in their armies! 

This is what democracy looks like 

Is this what democracy looks like? 

Cuz to me it just looks like Marshall law! 

Undercover cops sparking up violence 

Military nerve gasses to stop our dissent 

Arrested for political opinions 

As rubber bullets fly at our painted faces 

The class war illustrated 

As the cops protect the ruling class 

This is your fucking democracy 

Aren't you proud of what you let pass? 

Freedom of speech beaten away 

We speak our minds, their batons raise! 

The confrontation evidence they've something to protect 

Throw all you can at us cuz we will never rest! 

We will fight until we win 

Your mind manipulation is fading fast! 

This ain't what democracy looks like! 

This ain't what democracy looks like! 

Because it's not a democracy when you're beaten up for speaking out 

This ain't a democracy-oh no! 

LYRIC: President Grab-a-Pussy

Make America Great Again by making Americans hate again

President Grab-a-pussy
President build-a-wall
President golden showers
Awaiting Putin’s call
President carnage
President Fake News
President intolerant
Of anyone else’s views
President little hands
President insecure
President winning
Like we’ve never won before
President no tax
President billionaire
President who thinks a blind trust
Can be a family affair
President Islamophobe
President election hack
President taking all our progress
And turning all that progress back
President American carnage
President America first!
President 45
who made 43 no longer the worst
President Apprentice
President You’re fired
President who so many racist, sexist, assholes you have inspired

I thought I’d have something clever to say
After Donald Trump’s inauguration day
The crowning of a President endorsed by the KKK
In the same week we celebrated the birth of MLK?
But what words are left that can make any of this OK?
And at the same time acknowledge that this isn’t going away?
That orange Hitler was the victor and that he’s here to stay?
That our deepest ideals are about to be betrayed?
And so far from what is decent we have very clearly strayed?
Besides, how many more times do his failings have to be displayed?
The sheer number of disqualifying factors could form a fucking parade!
Yet that didn’t seem to matter on last year’s election day
And it is too late now even if they did somehow persuade
So we are forced to pull the covers on this rotten bed we made
And slumber four years with one eye open the fractured sleep of the afraid

President Twitter troll
President repeal
President the art of making a fucking deal
President thin-skinned
President litigious
President who lies so much that his bullshit is prodigious
President unethical
President regrettable
President whose war crimes soon won’t be hypothetical
President birther
President body-shamer
President class of ‘13 WWE hall of famer
President insulting
President inflamer
President who put to rest the claim they’re all the samer
President real estate
President corrupt
President who like his businesses will leave us all bankrupt
President climate denier
President nuclear slaughter
President who creepily seems to want to fuck his own daughter

Whenever I picked up my pen today
Or opened my mouth up to vent today
The words died on my tongue or the page today
Just “President Trump” then I’d start to fade
That sentence alone and the joke was made
Cutting deeper than any satirical blade
Four syllables that feel like a hand grenade
Like a burning hot day when you can’t find shade
You can’t even laugh you feel so dismayed
Depression so heavy it can’t be weighed
A bill that’s so large it cannot be paid
So this is the best I could serenade
These lemons not even Beyonce could turn into lemonade:

Whatever your politics
Whoever you are
Let’s agree Reality TV has now gone too far

LYRIC: The Lofty Oracles

My old friend insomnia’s here
But just once this last political year
I want to sleep election night without fear
My eyes stinging with tears
Wondering when the dust clears
What it is I will hear?
Is it sobbing or cheers?
And whose cheers and whose tears?
Will I wake up amazed that the old order’s been razed
Our society finally awoke from its daze?
Or with the sucker punch of recognizing
My fellow citizens have been lionizing
The lies
And swallowing bullshit down whole when they go to the poll?

Believing budget-butchers slash with compassion rather than to let the business cash-in
Assuming competence with the economy comes at the cost of our humanity
Hoodwinked by media-trained faux passion
Following spin-doctored narratives the way the shallow follow fashion
Ignoring the catastrophic situation of our growing homeless population
A social welfare devastation – you see them sleeping rough around the station
And as the trains get more expensive – don’t even think about what your rent is
Or how our jobs get less secure as our bosses demand more and more
And how our wages aren’t enough to buy the never-ending stuff
We need to buy to stay alive – our cost of living a living suicide
With our healthcare no longer healthy, it’s funding cut by the super-wealthy,
And a diminishing education due to austerity’s financial obliteration

But we’re so quick to cite futility,
Invent inherent inability,
In the name of false stability
We choose decline with such rapidity

And I find it so regrettable
The agenda’s so easily settable
By those desperate to make inevitable
The idea utopia isn’t gettable

But there’s no evidence detectable
Revolution ain’t selectable
Even though THE LOFTY ORACLES
May have denounced it unelectable

And I must say I’m curious
Why it is we’re aren’t all furious
And how it is so many seem contented
With unnecessary inequality which could so easily have been prevented
Instead becoming cemented like no alternatives have been invented
Which could’ve been implemented to untorment the now tormented
But each solution that’s presented is always swiftly circumvented
By the ones who all assented to the policies I’ve documented
We’re abandoned and unrepresented; a selfish greed unprecedented
But we just go about our day like this destruction is okay
We shrug our shoulders, shake our head
Avert our eyes from all the dead
Normalize what should be scandals, legitimize economic vandals,
As systematically they dismantle rights which underfoot they trample
And we pretend the mood is not so sombre; that’s the propaganda we all conjure
As the wrongs keep getting wronger
The waiting lists keep getting longer,
The vulnerable forsaken, fundamental rights keep getting taken, yet so many refuse to waken to the truth of our situation!
All this corruption, all this bribery
My outrage could fill a fucking library
But while we should be out marching down on the streets
Instead pearls of non-wisdom are set to repeat
How this is “the real world”, how life “has” to be
Manufactured demands treated inerrantly
“Educated” opinions that hide strategy
Promoted and parroted adherently
Clung to despite the incoherency

All hope discarded in this cowed paradigm
Of the self-harming Groundhog Day we vote for each time

And there’s no evidence detectable
Revolution ain’t selectable
Even though THE LOFTY ORACLES
May have denounced it unelectable

LYRIC: The Ballot Was a Bomb

It’s like we booby-trapped the future

An open wound bleeding out and there ain’t no hope of suture

I wish I could wish a happy new year

But I’m watching wheels rolling forward to a catastrophic fear

Dormant malice now awake

I barely recognise a world in which this wasn’t a mistake

But the mistake that I won’t make

Is pretending everything we hold dear isn’t now at stake

Before a storm there may be calm

But if you think that means it’s over be prepared to be alarmed

Because the ballot was a bomb

THE BALLOT WAS A BOMB

June 24, November 9

Grief-stricken, the saner citizens came to terms with our decline

I hold passports in both places

A dual-citizen duelling with the thought of all those racists

Walls and borders instead of embraces

So much hate in so many faces

But the sun came up and life went on

And you could almost make believe the worst was never gonna come

Hoping that it can’t happen here

But it always does and always has on this the history is clear

THE BALLOT WAS A BOMB

The ballot was a bomb

X in the box lit the fuse and some forget the fuse is long

It reminds me of oh-nine

All that false hope after the world crashed and you thought you had survived

But unravelling takes time

You’re dangling from a rope; don’t see the strands start to untwine

Because that poison acted slow

The Great Recession already got you but you didn’t even know

Cut by cut they chopped us down

You didn’t notice you were falling till your body hit the ground

So yeah – he’s not even President yet

But I get no comfort from the tweets of the President elect

Or the big business bigots he has chosen to select

Or the petty little grudges he seems unable to forget

And our Brexit may lay in a Schrodinger state

Both in Europe and out until the trigger date

But a stay of execution merely postpones our fate

And can’t erase the result of our referendum of hate

2016 fucked the future – our votes flipped the switch

Is it any wonder those celebrities chose to die and jump the ship?

It hasn’t happened yet, but by the pricking of my thumbs

The ballot was a bomb and something wicked this way comes

THE BALLOT WAS A BOMB

LYRIC: The Tone of our Oppression

It’s easy to say they’re all the same

Same ideologies under a slightly different name

And I remember, as a kid, thinking Bill Hicks was so deft

With his “puppet on the right” and his “puppet on the left”

I’m just as guilty as him as I sang “vote for change”

Implying the choice is fiction when you’re choosing from a range

Of options limited from pretty bad to even worse

I sang democracy’s eulogy and packed it in a hearse

Because it’s evident to all of us that we’re not truly represented

And if voting could change anything they’d have made a law against it

But while I confess we are being oppressed, I think that history’s shown

When it comes to our oppression each election sets the tone

Because there’s a tone to our oppression

We choose the tone of our oppression

What is the tone of our oppression?

There is a tone to our oppression 

Each campaign sets parameters of what we should debate

Do we pick the puppet who speaks of love or the puppet who speaks of hate?

Each candidate has a worldview of what problems we all face

And this worldview is instructive of where priorities will be placed

For while utopia remains a goal, we’re not in utopia yet

And we can’t afford idealistic gambles with our social safety net

Because people actually live and die based on policy decisions

We might agree they’re not perfect but don’t tell me all politicians

Are all basically the same when that is blatantly untrue

The lesser of two evils entails a better of the two

It’s not a lot but it’s not nothing and it’s time we heed this lesson

Their rhetoric sets a mandate for the tone of our oppression

Because there’s a tone to our oppression

We choose the tone of our oppression

What is the tone of our oppression?

There is a tone to our oppression 

We choose the tone of our oppression

Real lives will be affected by who is and isn’t elected

LYRIC: Vote For Change

 The economy is fucked

You want a job you’re out of luck

And don’t you feel that sense of déjà vu?

For have we not heard this before?

The promise that they’ll do much more,

Kick the old guard out and start anew?

And isn’t it incredible

How absolutely gullible

In the end we all turn out to be?

The same old lies, a different voice

We still believe we have a choice

A vote for change we never really see

When we VOTE FOR CHANGE

One speaks of audacity

The other a Big Society

In practice both illusions are the same

The re-branding of old ideas

Contemporized with modern fears

The same old story under a new name

And isn’t it familiar?

Euphoria, hysteria,

The sense of something new to start again?

And how that feeling soon falls flat

A creeping dread, you realize that

The brand new day you dreamt of never came

Still you VOTE FOR CHANGE

Did you really think they’d let you choose?

If it meant they might actually lose?

Did you really think you had a say?

When with the promise of salvation you’ll shut up and go away?

They keep on giving us black eyes

And yet we still feign our surprise

Every time the fist flies to our face

The actors change the play’s the same

Different rules to an unchanged game

A wealth of evidence on which to base

This isn’t just conspiracy

But documented history:

Those with power don’t let go the reigns

Yet still we hope each time again

That this is now and that was then

And blindly follow liars lulling “change”

And we VOTE FOR CHANGE