lemon revolution

may time unwind its precious vine and throw up a tremor a hiccup of the soft summer air a burn of the daily oil fierce and bright flames lick wild in silent delight oxygen, air turns full and wide and smiles once creased to horror creased to madness creased to wide-eyed hunger return to the song the morning chortle soft and sweet, warm strokes on the cold haze golden flakes etched onto the black flames dance and run blue spark and fury through the joint where time’s fruit dropped to a common earth where beatles crawled an army hand in hand where the setting sun roared in sadness and joy entwined in misery and ecstasy soft grass laughing beneath tip-toeing feet young and old slip and slide meet neath the brief starry shell for what was ours is now gone and what is theirs is the time falling sands ticking into eternity’s bosom and the eye can only grow soft an...

Michael Rosen has written some excellent short posts about this on his blog . He writes about how feelings of elitism are cultivated within grammar schools and I'd say, are cultivated industrially within any school, grammar or not. Every day at primary school we were told who would pass and fail, we were 'placed' in class according to our positions in the tests,  we were told that the 'other' class would all fail,  we developed a sub-culture that feared local famous kids we knew as 'dangerous' (on no basis whatsoever),  we knew that many families had a reward/no reward system (usually a bike) for kids who passed/failed,  and a hundred other signs and gestures and attitudes and rumours. From this passage, you can see how the class divisions within British society are marked into people's minds from a very early age. It's a system which penetrates through to every facet of social life in Britain, where the tone of a conversation be...

at midnight all the agents and the superhuman crew come out and round up everyone that knows more than they do then they bring them to the factory where the heart-attack machine is strapped across their shoulders and then the kerosene is brought down from the castles by insurance men who go check to see that nobody is escaping to desolation row.... .... between the windows of the sea where lovely mermaids flow and nobody has to think too much about desolation row... ....   right now i can't read too good, don't send me no more letters no not unless youre mailin' from, desolation row     

Went to this talk recently with a friend, done up by the guardian - a live showing of their weekly football podcast. I haven't listened to the the podcast for a couple of years. The show discussed football in the sort of drawling, righteous, tautological tone you come across whenever you hear people talking about the game who clearly don't know very much about it. The show also said a lot about The Guardian, and how as an online football paper, it is trying to approach and perceive its audience: 1) The show was so obviously scripted. Jokes told by panel members and the subsequent reactions amongst the panel sounded well-rehearsed and discussed, to the point of being, well, not very funny. The slightest hint of the discussion reaching to an important and insightful depth was swiftly snuffed and stamped out by the alarm-bell flash of this irritating joke-card. The audience was overwhelmingly male and white, and the thrust of the evening appeared to be: let's not take...

This is a true gem of a tune. It’s probably the most poppy song on Second Coming , and I much prefer it to it’s sister song on the album, Ten Storey Love Song. Ten Storey is a good song in its own right, but lacks the lyrical anger and bitterness of the first album’s snake-fanged bite. Ten Storey is also the showcase of the new Ian Brown vocal: a voice which no longer slips and bleeds through the instrumental fabric but, ala Gallagher, tries to roar over and even fight against it. John Squire’s meatier, bold guitar lines demanded a louder, more potent vocal than the soft whispers of Fools Gold, and the smothered wail heard on This Is The One. Instrumentally, The Second Coming songs lacked the loose, almost improvised roll of the first album. There are fewer empty spaces, fewer moments of pure bass and drum and therefore, fewer moments for Brown to intone gently without competing against the lead guitar.  The lyrics on Second Coming were written entir...

stepping across stone and broken shards of rock skin sliced, streaming in blood step wearily across the gloomy plain darkness rises up from the horizon choking on the pale centre of the sky eyes glance around in blank expressions lonely hands tremble as rain howls and slams where money screams and shouts and drives where heads spin mad where the lonely cave breathes frost and ice where the finger holds out in desperate reach where loneliness binds like a snake in the night where your brain is drowned by hammering tide and spirit crunched in the silent bite

Two points on the recent Keith Vaz stuff: 1) The Sun newspaper has published what appear to be CCTV photographs of Vaz at a hotel. How on earth has The Sun obtained these images? You'd think that the publication of the images, published for the sake of it and not to aid any kind of criminal investigation, would break a handful of privacy laws. Rather typically, the entire British media establishment doesn't appear to care, and the issue of the CCTV images specifically - not just the reporting of activity - has not received any noteworthy attention at all. 2) Vaz caught telling prostitutes he'd pay for their cocaine the same week the nightclub Fabric gets shutdown on the so blatantly fudged premises of a 'drug problem'. One rule for them, one rule for us. In one instance, a cabal of corporate media collude to expose a politician's involvement in prostitution and the sale of illegal substances... he still stands, a fully-salaried MP. In another instance, fig...

faces turned to show a side crawls out beneath the turning wheel eye-wide mad, laughter framed secrets thrown beneath the bed time frozen hands curled in statements written and spoken clear hands meet and weave and hold and turning cogs run out to black monstrous machine to crazed words to bloody images, turning and clashing pictures carved into skull scenes broken and flashed time was carved in thirty lines and sliced folding and crumbling, tumbling rain from a cloud, rocks from a cliff to melt to burn to shine ablaze neath the day’s stoked furnace rhythms fall away silence creeps on through nighttime roads crawling through the streets and shops and towers and by the rivers and in the offices water recoiled   “it’s been great to see you” “see you soon!” ...

tired feet sit on the grey patched carpet silence cuts like a sword clicks and taps, outdoor rush winds a mad siren, feint in the background taps turned on their own tired be alone on your own bag under feet over anger drilling a hole mashed on a dinner plate men crushed on the oily rope girl froze by the dirty moat madness colour turned grey white sapped out of your eye madness

The best part of a Smiths song is always the end. The tunes grumble and rumble into a furious pace. The lyrics fade, the bass and drum continue to gather ferocious steam. Marr is offered the space to paint his picture, and Morrissey groans, wails or utters a beautifully senseless fragment. Send me your pillow, the one that you dream on . Ohhh. Ohh. Ohhhh.  Ohhh...hmm lalalalalalaaalaaaaa....lalalalalaaaaaalaaaa......