1. |
The Thin Green Line
03:31
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We're faced with mile-high piles of money sitting in banks
Gold bars, credit cards, aeroplanes and tanks
Buy, buy, satisfy, call me when you're rich
Cheap food, cows dying in a ditch
We're having a hard time
Holding the Thin Green Line
We're faced with out of town shopping malls,
suburban housing boom
Inner city empty lots, damp in all the rooms
Bulls and bears, speculators, euros, yen
And the baby's crying again
So come on down to the bottle bank
Make your deposit and relax
Nothing's going on behind your backs
We'll make all the big decisions
You just watch the television
Smash the brown! Smash the green! Smash the clear!
It won't happen here
We watch the last of the species vanish from the screens
And get replaced by killer dogs and their men on the scene
There are peeping toms, pop songs, crime & sin & sex
All spewing out on newsprint while the forest dies a death
They're cooling down reactors while the natives die of thirst
They say let's all pull together - you first
They say let's
All pull together (you first !!!)
Let's all pull together (you first !!!)
Let's all pull together (you first !!!)
But they never pull together no wonder
We're having a hard time
Holding the Thin Green Line
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2. |
Wake Me Up
03:44
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I’ve seen a lot and a lot I’ve seen
Hope I never stop dreaming if you know what I mean
Sometimes it all ends in disarray
Sometimes I feel myself slipping away
Chorus
My soul’s asleep now, wake me up
My body’s fading, wake me up
My soul’s asleep, come on and wake me up
Baby it’s subtle and it does it well
I just walk on through underneath that spell
Flashing lights and jamboree
Baby the world drains the life out of me
Repeat Chorus
On these streets I’m blind
Though the road is signed
I gotta look behind to find my way
This could be the matinee
The remains of the day
I try to stay awake but I’m slipping away
Repeat Chorus
I’ve seen a lot and a lot I’ve seen
Sometimes I fall through the gaps in between
And then world it begins to sway
Pretty soon I can feel myself slipping away
Wake me up
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3. |
I've Got Faith In You
03:25
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4. |
Killing Fields
05:05
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I fell in love with the bleak fields and sombre streets of Ieper
A place of rain and wide horizons
Its renaissance greatness resurrected
In the winter mists of fen and flatland.
The shadow of tragedy heavy on the landscape...
Mass graves, grassy craters - drizzle, silence and bad drains
Beer, chocolate and death.
I fell in love with impossibly foxy men and women;
Boys and girls called Bart and Ilse,
Wim, Luc, Annalies, Ariane & Lieve...
Faces straight out of Van Eyck paintings
Arguing and laughing over beers in bars.
Not the bland blonds of Holland & the North
But tempered by latin blood, gallic madness
And cursed with a fatal romantic yearning
My heart longed to know them all by name
Killing Fields, in the Killing Fields
Sitting here drinking in the killing fields
Killing Fields, in the Killing Fields
Kissing and drinking in the killing fields
I fell in love with a maddening language
Ancient, subtle and gutteral:
Mouthfuls of vowels, impossible consonants
Dialects different in every village;
Underpinned by an invisible linguistic rift
And the strife of life on an ethnic faultline
A land jackboot-trampled twice in a century;
The appalling scrawl of spraycan racists
Forgetting the terrible lesson of history
And eager only to repeat it.
I fell in love with a capital city north of Napoleon's Waterloo
Multilingual, rich with immigrants
With a passion for fashion, food and politics & music
African jazz, Parisian hip-hop,
Homegrown house and a riotous nightlife,
Grand cafés in filthy buildings
playing Toots Thielamans & Django Reinhardt
Boulevards jammed with trams and taxis
The sad, magnificent, sprawling, seedy metropolis
At the very heart of Old Europe
Sitting and drinking....in the Killing Fields
Smoking and joking....in the Killing Fields
Living & loving....in the Killing Fields
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5. |
The Flood
05:20
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The southern chalk downland is soaked after weeks of hard rain,
The streams that were dry since the war, they’re flowing again,
But the water’s still rising, it’s only a metre below
The streets of the old county town, it’s got nowhere to go,
And the river runs out of these hills, and the cellar is starting to fill.
The fields and the farmland lie under their blanket of mud,
It’s soaking the roots and the branches; it’s rotting the buds,
Round here everyone’s counting the cost of the flood,
Cost of the flood
Yet under the cruel sun, the desert drifts ever more south,
Like the spars of old ships, the cattle bones bleach in the drought,
When they’re weary of praying for rain, all the young men are heading for Spain
But the shoreline was just beyond reach and now someone lies drowned,
Where the lovers stretch out on the beaches that border the towns,
Round here everyone’s watching the world spinning round
Spinning round
So let’s stand on the white cliffs and look over to France,
Where hundreds are waiting for darkness to take one more chance,
As the trucks in the neon-lit parks become cages instead of an ark
Our credit is worthless, the aid and investments no good,
When they’re paying their debts with their families, our loans back with blood,
Now the dam has been breached; it’s the year of the flood
It’s the year of the flood
It’s the year of the flood
The year of the flood
It’s the year of the flood
And a rain is gonna fall
In the year of the flood
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6. |
Are We Alright
03:11
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You don’t need to shout
You don’t need to cry
Paint on the front door
Or laugh in the clouds
I had a moment’s fear
That you can put to flight
Just reassure me
That we’re alright
Are we alright?
Are we still strong?
We’ve got one last chance
So don’t get it wrong
Cos I will hold my breath
I will count to ten
When I open my eyes
I will ask again
So don’t make me beg
Don’t make me plead
Leave me with some dignity
I will stay cool and calm tonight
I just need to know if we are still alright
You know it won’t take much
To turn black to white
Just one gentle touch
I’ve been awake for hours
I wanna sleep tonight
Won’t you tell me
That we’re alright?
So don’t make me beg
Don’t make me plead
Leave me with some dignity
Are we all right
Are we still strong
We’ve got one last chance
Don’t get it wrong
I’ve been awake for hours
I wanna sleep tonight
Come on tell me
That we’re alright
Are we alright
Are we alright
Just reassure me that we’re alright
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7. |
Cold Heart Of England
02:57
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Hard winds are blowing down the High Street today
Just look around you
Family firms selling up and moving away
And the names that surround you
And though they’re familiar you don’t feel at home
When you could be in Kansas, you could be in Rome
All closing down in the small country towns
In the cold heart of England
You don’t see the stars when the light’s overspill
Is too bright and too strong
From hundreds of homes on the side of the hill
Just where did we come from?
Now we’ve been told to build ten thousand more
And cover the countryside we came here for
Trees coming down on the edge of the town
In the cold heart of England
Well it’s Saturday night with the boys in the square
The cars and the fights, broken glass everywhere
I’ve no picture postcard to send you from there
It’s the cold heart of England
So it’s grey supermarkets, instead of green fields
To pay all our wages
‘Til we’re choking in traffic and tied to the wheels
Like cattle in cages
And if you work within limits the law will allow
You’ll find the land’s under concrete instead of the plough
Where are you Swampy? We need you right now
In the cold heart of England
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8. |
Strange Way
04:47
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Strange way to start a revolution
Strange way to get a better tan
Strange way to hold a power breakfast
Strange way show your business plan
Strange way to test if wood would splinter
Strange way to do performance art
Strange way to say “I’ll see you later”
Strange way to leave behind your heart
Strange dissident of meekness
And nurse of tangled souls
And so unlike the holy
To end up full of holes
Strange way
Strange way to hang around for hours
Strange way to imitate a kite
Strange way to get a view of Auschwitz
Strange way to represent the light
Strange way to watch for stormy weather
Strange way to disprove gravity
Strange way to go around fund-raising
Strange way to sing I am liberty
Strange dissident of meekness
And nurse of tangled souls
And so unlike the holy
To end up full of holes
Strange way
Strange way to test for haemophillia
Strange way to spend a happy hour
Strange way to down a bitter cocktail
Strange way to merchandise your power
Strange way to reassure your mother
Strange way to finish your world tour
Strange way to pose for all those paintings
Strange way to gather in the poor
Strange dissident of meekness
And nurse of tangled souls
And so unlike the holy
To end up full of holes
This world is too much with us
Could we not now just elope?
Strange way to hold us closer
Strange way to give us hope
Strange way
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9. |
You Tattooed Me
04:58
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Stranded in Antwerp in June '54
Streets full of refugees
And rumours of war
In a queue at the station a stranger arrived
You walked up and fixed me with wild hazel eyes
But the hotel was crowded - I followed in fright
You slammed the door behind us, smashed out the light
You said "why try to fight it" - to my racing heart
Then we nuzzled like animals
And kissed in the dark
We wrecked the bed, spent the rent
Left there without a cent
Drank the fare, never made the train
Till 25 I was barely alive
And I wondered what hit me
When you tattooed me... tattooed me
You tattooed me... tattooed me
And I wondered what hit me when you came
Shacked up in basements behind broken doors
Bugs in the blanket, and glass on the floor
Cold, broke and hungry, with quarrels and fights
Coughing blood thru the winter - I felt so alive
And on one fatal day you signed your life away
I was too weak for alarm
(I was) drunk and asleep
As you left for the fleet… you tattooed your name on my arm
Yeah you tattooed me... tattooed me
Ohh-oh
You tattooed me... tattooed me
Your name - with a needle - on my arm
Ohh-oh, oh-ohhhh, ohh-oh, oh-ohhhh
With the peace in Geneva the world crawled away
From the brink of oblivion - we all breathed again
And when you deserted no more letters came
My life cut to pieces, I started again
When I was on the mend I drifted to Zaventem
Worked there unloading the planes
And I paid my way on a thousand a day
And I never did see you again
But you tattooed me... tattooed me
You tattooed me... tattooed me
You tattooed me... tattooed me
The mark of the needle remains
You tattooed me... tattooed me
And I knew that we'd never meet again
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10. |
Please Sir
04:14
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She was always a very pretty lady
He had always caught her eye
They were married in a mining valley
And swore they’d be together until the day that they died
Twenty years later with the coal all gone
And golden lamp in his hand
He stands at the bar with a pint in his hand and his friends
They all agree together that they don’t understand
Meanwhile little David takes his books off to school
And learns of the times gone past
And when it comes to questions he puts up his hand
There’s something that he just wants to ask
Please sir can you give me an answer
Please sir you know it doesn’t seem fair
‘Cos last night as I walked through the door
I thought I saw my father crying sat in his chair
She stood there with her arms around him and she said
She promised him a better day
But after twenty years of working underground
It’s not just your job that they take away
Sometimes he’d walk to the edge of his world
And stare at the valley below
He thought about leaving maybe running away
But knew there was nowhere to go
Please sir can you give me an answer
Please sir you know I just can’t see
Please sir when you make these decisions
Do you have a vision of what happens to me
Life goes on in a mining valley
But the young men leave for a better wage
And every day he coughs and he splutters
He knows love is the reason he stays
He knows love is the reason he stays
Meanwhile little David takes his books off to school
And learns of the times gone past
And when it comes to questions he puts up his and
There’s something that he just wants to ask
Please sir can you give me an answer
Please sir you know it doesn’t seem fair
‘Cos last night as I walked through the door
I thought I saw my daddy crying sat in his chair
Please sir can you give me and answer
Please sir you know I just can’t see
Please sir when you make these decisions
Do you have a vision of what happens to me
Do you know what happens to the likes of me?
Please take a look, take a look now
Take a look and see
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11. |
War Baby
05:06
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Only the very young and the very beautiful can be so aloof
Hanging out with the boys, all swagger and poise
I don't even care what other people are there
I just stare and stare and stare
I see your shadow in the swimming pool
I see your face in the shaving mirror
Time and time and time again
I follow your footsteps so quietly up the backstairs
And I hope and I pray you're never going to find me there
Smooth skin and tenderness long ago on a dark night
Wish I could see you once again just to remember it was true
I want to be still beside you - quiet and still beside you
Listening to your breathing and feeling your warmth again
War baby - you were a
War baby - this means
War baby - I'm scared, so scared
Of whatever it is you keep putting me through
I don't think I could stand another ten years of this fighting
All this stabbing and wounding - only getting my own back
I don't want to batter you to your feet and knees and elbows
When I'm kneeling like a candle at the foot of my own bed
Corresponding disasters every night on the TV
Sickening reality keeps gripping me in its guts
All my friends talk and joke and laugh about Armageddon
But like a nightmare it's still waiting there at the end of every day
War baby...etc
I don't think I could stand another ten years of this fighting
All this stabbing and wounding - only getting my own back
But later that same evening we were out in the car talking
When I suddenly wondered who the hell it was we were trying to fool
Co you were the first one that I ever wanted
And it's you I come home to at the end of every day
Like a mother-sucking baby, demanding and so helpless
A little old balding man, all wrinkles and bulging eyes
War baby - you were a
War baby - this means
War baby - I'm scared, so scared
Of whatever it is you keep putting me through
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12. |
I WIll Follow
03:01
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I’ve been looking to the time when I first met you.
When life seemed so sweet, seemed so right.
And I know you never change.
I know you never will.
But the winds of life have blown me all around
I will follow you
I must go on and on
I will follow
Wherever you lead me I will follow on
And the lies that they fed me,
Are the lies that I lived.
And they have their fill,
And they leave me all alone
As I run across this desert
As I run into your arms,
I feel the depth of your love
Like I’ve never known
I will follow you
I must go on and on
I will follow
Wherever you lead me I will follow on
And the passion is in my spirit,
Is the passion in my soul
Keeps me burning, keeps me running on and on
I will follow you
I must go on and on
I will follow
Wherever you lead me I will follow on
I will follow you
I must go on and on
I will follow
Wherever you lead me I will follow on.
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Tom Robinson London, UK
Tom Robinson (b.1950) is a UK songwriter & broadcaster first known in the 70s as an anti-racist and LGBT campaigner. He released 19 albums between 1975-2001 with various bands and has co-written songs with Elton John, Peter Gabriel, Dan Hartman and Manu Katché. He's an award-winning presenter at BBC Radio 6 Music, and released Only The Now (his first album in 19 years) in October 2015. ... more
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