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See the survivors
in the upcoming acts,
they and the moguls
make a regular killing -
others take it lying
on their backs,
young blood is always
so willing.
Me, I'm pushing
thirty, that's the way it is,
too late to change
my mind.
They play it dirty
in the record biz
and you've got to
toe the line
if you wanna be
an A & R man when the singing's done
you'd better make
sure that you hedge your bets.
Me I'm pushing thirty
and still having fun,
I haven't stopped,
haven't stopped that yet!
All the writers watch
each other for the way to go,
follow each other
like lemmings -
swear they're all
waiting for Nicky Lowe
to turn out like
David Hemmings...
Me, I'm pushing
thirty and the steady zone,
perhaps I should
retire,
but even if it all
deserts me and I'm left alone
I still know that
I'm fuelled by fire...
In this rubish world
you've got to keep that under the lid,
'`cos they all hope
it'll disappear...
but even though
I'm pushing thirty,
maybe on the skids,
I still can be,
I still can be Nadir
One eye on the main
chance and one eye on the clock,
oh, where did his
brain go?
And when does a
veteran get to be a crock...
no gold at the end
of this rainbow!
He always boxed
clever with his shadowy hopes
but now he's in
trouble with his back on the ropes
and the hands of
time are bunched into fists,
yeh he's out for
the count.
The sword has sunk
in the lake
and now he's watching
dawn break
and now he waits
for the stake,
Drakul.
This boy's a fool,
this fool's a man...
all men are ruled
by the second hand.
They offered him
a deal (Here's the contract
just like an autograph
sign on the line
no need to think
or feel advances are abstract
or do anything but
laugh The future, defined.)
He's in possession,
yes he's possessed...
they had no fear,
he was so impressed
by the trappings
of success.
You'll see him down
the clubs or at the premiere
(it's just another
movie, it's just another act)
stumming in a pub,
everywhere that's anywhere...
(he's a man of the
people, just as long as the people
don't talk back)
on the Rio shore
or the Rome express
with a Chinese whore
or a Greek princess...
these are the trappings
of success.
But he's got no home
and he's got no friends
and the human mass
repel him.
Now he's on his
own and can't comprehend
did he sell out
or was he celled in?
(He's a prisoner
in a gilded cage.
He's a prisoner...he's
all the rage.)
He's waiting for
his plane and his first-class seat;
they've blown out
his brains with sticky kiddies' sweets;
the limo, the coke,
the celebrity guest-list,
the today jokes
and the gutter press...
the trappings of
success,
these are the trappings
of success.
The trappings of
success,
the trap of fame;
(in) the trap...big
game.
When I began I had
my hopes,
believed that I
could be a leading light of the stage,
but now I've stunned
myself to silence,
exhausted all my
inner rage,
extinguished all
my joy and violence,
trapped all my feelings
in a cage.
Every time that
i go to turn the pages of the calendar
I can see that I'm
not really going anywhere:
all these years
I have skirted round experience like a scavenger,
can I really feel?
- I wonder if I dare?
At the end of the
run, will there be anyone who cares?
And behind the actor's
pose, heaven knows
if there's anyone
left in there.
Energy Vampires,
crawling out of the wall...
they want to steal
my vitality,
they want to drink
it all.
This guy sais that
he wrote all my songs,
this girl sais she's
had my baby -
me, I don't know
them from Adam and Eve,
sometimes I really
believe I'm going crazy.
'Excuse me while
I suck your blood,
excuse me when I
phone you...
I've got every one
of your records, man,
doesn't that mean
I own you?'
Oh, sure, I long
ago decided to make myself an exponent
of the public possession
of the private obsession zone.
But now I'm serious,
let's be serious, I'm not selling you my soul;
try to put it in
the records but I've got to keep my life my own.
One thing I've not
got a lot of is time
and it's slipping
away...
I've got a life to live too.
If I now say that
I love you
how will that seem
in your eyes?
Oh, may my voice
fall into silence
if my words turn
out to be lies.
I never meant to
hurt you,
even though that's
what I do -
even though you
might not believe this
all my words were
meant for you.
There's no promise
I can give you that you wouldn't know was fake;
though I just want
to be with you, there's no show that I can make.
And in the evening,
when we sit and watch the TV
I know that this
silence just won't do me any good
and I want to beg
you, beg you, beg you to believe me...
I'd tell you if
I could,
I'd tell you if
I could.
but that doesn't
seem to get any closer,
and Moses has had
his day...
the tablets of law
are an advertising poster;
civilisation's here
to stay
and this is progress?
you must be joking!
Me' I'm looking
for any kind of hope.
I want the future
now,
I want to see it
on the screen,
I want to break
the bounds
that make our lives
so mean.
Oh, blind, blinded,
blinding hatred
of race, sex, religion,
colour, country and creed,
these scream from
the pages of everything I've read.
You just bring me
oppression and torture,
apartheid, corruption
and plague;
you just bring me
the rape of the planet
and joke world rights
at the Hague.
Oh, someday the
Millenium!
But how far is someday
away?
I want the future
now
I'm young, and it's
my right.
I want a reason
to be proud.
I want to see the
light.
I want the future
now,
I want to see it
on the screen,
I want to break
our bounds,
and make life worth
more than dreams.
Upon the tree of
knowledge
the fruit is bitter-sweet;
to the man in the
street
all its myriad benefits
Science confers
but we're still
in the dark, much as we always were.
Run your mind down
the sciences;
none of them lay
claim to show more than a part
but still we shout
out what we know
the science is enough
to break the mortal heart.
So bow down in adoration
to the wonder that is man;
we have learned
all we can,
we explore every
frontier that straddles our way
but we're still
in the dark, though we now call it day.
No, there is no answer,
there is no eternal
proof,
there is no timeless
truth;
though we lear to
encompass yet more with the eye
we are still in
the dark when it comes to the why.
We are still in the
dark,
bedded down
and so we still
lie.
Gold keys to the
cathedral,
they go with the
bishops cowl;
he lives a spiritual
life of material wealth.
Are things so very
different now?
Oh yeah
oh now:
save your prayers
for the future.
Say your prayers
for the future.
Oh, God's gone from
the cathedral,
a different power
now holds sway,
we can pack them
up in the history books
but the Middle Ages
won't go away.
And the answer to
our prayers is a Valium by the bedside,
now we follow the
pundits on TV;
now we put our faith
in Science and progress
and only have sex
upon our knees.
And those who are
strange are still locked in asylums
and a sterile Pope
prescribes the Pill
and those who are
rich are still getting richer
and those who are
poor still foot the bill.
And God lives in
underground silos,
hanging on for Judgement
day;
if we don't open
our eyes pretty soon
then the Dark Ages'll
be here to stay.
Tracing the line
of the skeleton coast,
ghost riders from
the Sud-West:
the original angels
of death they seem,
six motor-bikes
abreast.
Riding through the
oppressive nought,
now only the hardest
remain.
Look at the scars
of the tyre-tracks,
look to the bodies
behind their backs,
look at the bastards
bray.
In Africa today.
The bodies of Biko
and Soweto poor,
the christian message
of Dutch reform,
the sound of the
monster, the motor-bike roar,
the hate in the
eyes of the uniformed Boer,
the head and the
bucket, the boot and the floor...
racial torture and
racial war
in Africa today.
Come in Rhodesia,
South Africa, your time is up...
no protection on
a motor-bike;
sooner or later
the normal traffic's gonna get you.
Half-way up is half-way
peaking
the stroboscope
locks the lathe;
I look around for
a switch in phase...
the disco boom stands
firm, the eight-track's in, the rage
licks the present,
quickly flips the future page.
Check the deck: no
marked cards,
no sequentialled
straight or flush...
the dice won't still
the blood-line rush.
Run the star-flood
night, the cut-throat blade is stropped;
race your shadow...race
in case your shadow stops.
Everything so out
of order
no bias on the playback
head...
papers for the border
- all the tape is read,
the future burns
my tongue, the noise-gates all are shut,
breathe the vacuum,
believe there's reason for the cut.
Incipient white noise,
the stylus barely
tracks,
the air controllers
feed the stereo sonic smack.
There's so much I
had to mention
that seems to slip
my mind;
still, I swear that
my intentions
never left my hopes
behind
like the captain
who's been trapped
in the blind eye
of the whirlwind...
so he turns in search
of the divine.
I've got no answers
either,
I've got some stoties
on lucky days...
the sea-lanes are
crowded with people like us:
Castaways.
From soprano through
to basso
my voice so strains
to tell,
but I'm lost in
the Sargasso
of ideas that didn't
gel by a fraction,
so the action is
dispelled.
Me, I've got dull
reactions, protraction of doubt as well,
so it's no more
abide with me,
over the side with
me...
well, I know that
damn well...
Oh, this hump-back
of emotion,
it all seems to
go so fast:
one moment prince
of the ocean
and the next upon
the raft.
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