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Just when we started believing in something
We'll push the wall & start again
Come kick & screaming just like a baby
The open wound that never ends
A fragile piece of understanding
That's hurled in anger, falls in vain
With every charge of impossible questions
With every turn another bend
Maybe we deserve each other
I don't know
If we could tear it down and start again
But nothing really lasts forever I suppose
When here in my heart it's just another day
How dare they take my childhood away
Just when I need a place to hide
From weary dreams in every direction
From facing truths when worlds collide
This grain of truth is all I'm holding
Yes I love you, but 'so it goes'
The greed with which we devour our emotions
Is greater than the love we showed
Maybe we deserve each other
I don't know
If we could tear it down and start again
But nothing really lasts forever I suppose
When here in my heart it's just another day
Little Town (Jakszyk)
As a small, often scared, child my favourite place was the model village at Beaconsfield,
Bucks in England. Whilst the shouting grew louder, I would hide in my bedroom and fantasise
about being the only tiny human living amidst the scale models.
'You talk too much!'
'And what's the matter with that child of yours?'
Piece by piece
Line by line
I'm still the boy upon the stairs
Overhearing everything
Staring through the windows
Through the rain
Is every hallway just the same?
Close the door
Close my eyes
In ten years time I'll realise
It's there on my shoulders and every time I cry
I'll be alone in my little town
Just tell them all to leave me here
Won't take my heart to my little town
I'll leave it here to stay with you 'till it's allĀ through
I've worn out all these words
Now they just crumble when I try to speak
We could change the world
But lets change it all tomorrow
Please let me sleep
Let me sleep
I'll be alone in my little town
Just tell them all to leave me here
Won't take my heart to my little town
I'll leave it here to stay with you 'till it's allĀ through
The Devils Dictionary (Harrison/Jakszyk)
Ā polyrythmic instrumental.
After 3 (whilst playing 5) everybody!.
Damn This Town (Jakszyk)
I lived in L.A for a while and wanted to somehow write about the experience. There is a tour
of the stars homes availableĀ near Graumans Chinese Theatre called 'The Gray Line Tour'.
sleek limo takes you to places of interest. Mostly the homesĀ of the rich & famous in Beverly hills.
There is an alternative however ' The Graveline Tour' in which your tourĀ guide takes you, in a
hearse, to spots where famous murders and suicides took place. My favourite story from this trip
was that of English actress Peggy Entwistle. Peggy hadĀ become something of a success on
Broadway and had moved to Hollywood seeking fame & fortune. After years of failureĀ Peggy
climbed up on top of the Hollywood sign and threw her self off. Back in those day's the sign actually
said 'Hollywoodland'. Peggy chose the last, and indeed the thirteenth, letter for her final act. After
she died they found an unopened letter offering her a part in a movieĀ following an audition that she
was convinced she had failed. For me a poignant tale of how easily one can lose one's
perspective
in a town like L.A.
Another Paste Board ruin
Left decaying in the dust
One more tired illusion fails to warn you
From stardom to statistic
Turning tinsel town to rust
Another wounded dream returns to haunt you
She's cold & scared
And high up in the hills
Where the town below looks so small
Beyond the human wreckage
The tawdry and the cheap
Well maybe somewhere in the debris they may find you
Peggy dived off the Hollywood sign
Into oblivion and out of her mind
Her final performance just ran out of time
And the show came down
Peggy dived off the Hollywood sign
One last futile gesture was all she could find
To endless rejections and ill written lines
Tell them damn this town
Well you can damn this town
The Borders We Traded (Jakszyk)
I first met my real mother back in about '86. I travelled down to the small town of Beardon which is in
Arkansas in the States some 200 or so miles south of Little Rock. There's not much there just the
old lumber Mill which is doubtless. why the town exists in the first place. Jet lag meant
that I would
wake up very early and I wandered around the sleepingĀ town and went up to the railroad track. I was
struck by how different life would have been had I not been adopted and
brought up in this place.
How much of who I am is innately me and how much is upbringing and environment? Would I have
been a professional musician had I been brought up in such a place?
The Lumber mill train escapes this small and dusty town
Where the tracks seem to chase the sky forever
But this is not where I belong
Who'd know the stranger I'd become if this were home.
I'm the island you left and ran away
And the thousands of miles you chose to stay
Beyond the borders we traded
The borders I traded for you
There are ghosts in the wind that blow across these empty fields
Where the last missing crew flew off forever
Seems what courses through our veins barely shapes who we became
If this were true
I'm the island you left and ran away
And the thousands of miles you chose to stay
Beyond the borders we traded
The borders I traded with you
The borders I traded
The borders I traded with you
Time blurs these imaginary lines
The borders That faded disappeared
The Perfect Kiss (Jakszyk)
IIt goes right. It goes wrong. Its completely perfect but it's never going to work. Torturing ourselves in
pursuit of the romantic ideal. What a good idea eh?
Let them speak
I will not listen
Their good intentions are driving me mad
We talked so much the words just mean nothing now
She said ' You don't want me, you just want what you can't have'
Oh no
Fate wont choose and we're gonna have to face that some day
When here in our hearts we know we're never gonna feel like this
She said 'God damn you, you're a coward you're a fool that one day
Just turned his back on the world and threw away the perfect kiss
Burning bridges never came easy
With all this hindsight here in my hands
And I don't sleep for dreams of maybe
And the search for something she'll understand
Fate wont choose and we're gonna have to face that some day
When here in our hearts we know we're never gonna feel like this
She said 'God damn you, you're a coward you're a fool that one day
Just turned his back on the world and threw away the perfect kiss
Day fought night and night fought day
They fool each other and they rule the other
And the lies we keep won't ever sleep for always
Stay and fight or fight and stay
We fool each other and abuse they other
And that love that weeps and never sleeps is for always
Fate wont choose and we're gonna have to face that some day
When here in our hearts we know we're never gonna feel like this
She said 'God damn you, you're a coward you're a fool that one day
Just turned his back on the world and threw away the perfect kiss
Fate won't choose and I'm gonna have to face that one day
I turned my back on the worlds and threw way the perfect kiss
Your perfect kiss
I still need, I still want, I still love
Your perfect kiss
Well I waved at you as I sank under the water
Take these chains from me it never gets closer than this
And I screamed at you as I ran over the border
To hell with the world
There's poison in that perfect kiss
Saddleworth Moor (Jakszyk)
Instrumental. I have driven past Saddleworth Moor near Manchester on several occasions. It always
stuck me as a strange, still place with an eerie atmosphere. However following a near fatal attack on a
neighbour in my village it became apparent that overnight a natural beauty spot had obtained a
similar
tarnishing. Police and camera crews were camped up on the green for a week. So as with Saddleworth
where just a normal piece moor land has an image imposed upon it by history. This was
after all the place
were Myra Hindely and Ian Brady buried the small children that they had murdered. They had been tortured
and tape recordings made of these sick rituals. One of the jurors said
sometime after the case that one of
the most disturbing moments of the recorded cruelty was the sound of carol singers heard faintly outside
of the room as they killed a young child in the weeks leading up to Christmas.
Learning to Cry (Jakszyk)
Evaluating ones personal problems with the greater suffering of the world may seem like a great way
to make you feel better, but it doesn't work. Grief does not operate on a sliding scale. I stole the title from
a documentary about troops returning from the Falklands. A young gung ho officer, when
leaving for the
war, he was somewhat chastened by the aftermath of the experience. When asked on his return what he
had learnt he replied 'I learnt to cry'.
One of these days I'll make some sense of this all
But he more we learn the more we throw away
A lifeless woman with a child in her arms
And the more we see the more we look away
No matter where my feelings take me
It's a million miles away
Switching off is easy but our face won't go away
So maybe I'll never make much sense of it all
While there's tears in my eyes
And I'm a fool for it all
I'm learning to cry
I'm learning to cry
So maybe I'll never even see you again
Though you could tell me I was dreaming
If I could only get some sleep
The whole world could be dying and I'd still feel the same
For there's no logic in my reason
And there's no order in my grief
We could ration our tears forever and shed them one by one
Explaining all the reasons for everything we've done
One of these day's I'll find the key to all this
Why we feel what we feel
Why define what we miss
I'm learning to cry
I'm learning to cry
I'm learning to piece it all together
when no two pieces fit
I'm learning to cry
Distorted by the imagery of good and bad
The thinner line of honesty that we once had
An empty beach I Calais with my name in sand
The beach is still there but my name has been banned
It's four o'clock in the morning
Oh my God what have I done
And you wonder where she's sleeping
And you wonder what went wrong
And this emptiness inside me has a got a grip and won't let go
If there's a million people dying I just don't want to know
I'm learning to cry.
A Handful of Pearls (Jakszyk)
The
Mannihatten Indians apparently sold their island habitat to the Dutch for just a handful of pearls.
Various agreements, treaties and promises were subsequently broken by the 'white man' leaving the I
ndians a broken and dejected people. As a result they put a curse on the island claiming that in the future
a foreigner would die a violent death every day for the rest of time. At the time of writing this
song
statistics claimed that someone was murdered in New York every four hours.
These sacred hills contain the heart of everything
They came to dig for Gold and they're still digging for another seam
The ghost dancers sing to bring back the vanquished
A century older and mourners still wipe away tears
Peoples dreams died here
Well so it goes
This was how the west was won
Drunken Navajos at the end of John Wayne's gun
Earning a pittance in monument valley
A history re written over and over again
An irony not lost on them
For a handful of pearls we could have bought Manhattan
And we could be living there still
Four Hundred promises that crumbled into nothing
And dignity all but distilled
For a Handful of pearls
In the mobile homes where the prefabs and the debris stand
Lies the empty shell of a people and a tired land
The dust in the bars of the Sioux reservation
Are a million miles from civilisation and you
And more statistic that we never knew
For a handful of pearls we could have bought Manhattan
And we could be living there still
Four Hundred promises that crumbled into nothing
We could have stayed there until
Just a handful of pearls could have bought us nothing
Only the motive to kill
And we choke on the words
When every four hours someone is footing the bill
For a handful of pearls
Then And Now (for Steve Gaskel) (Jakszyk)
In '93 an old friend of mine died unexpectedly. Although I hadn't seen him much in recent years he'd been
a
very important figure for me in my teens. Steve had the largest record collection I'd ever seen and could
talk knowledgeably about every conceivable style of music the seventies had to offer. He
introduced me
to things hat I would not have heard of by any other means and was enthused by music. He also
encouraged me to make my own. His funeral brought back that time vividly. The present
and the past
sat rather uncomfortably next to each other. I remember driving home via my old secondary school, it
wasn't there. They'd knocked it down and built a new housing estate.
This is the place where my childhood stood
Al Airfix glue and balsa wood
But you can barely trace the outline of it now
A myth of England lost for good
Beneath the Sherlock Holmes and Robin Hoods
But we'll be swimming in nostalgia till we drown
Somewhere between then and now
We killed and ate our sacred cow's
And nothing seems the same somehow
It all just slipped away
The future that seemed crystal clear
Got stuck in time and disappeared
We watched an era ending here when Stevie went away
When all the dreaming turns to dust
And time has made a fool of us
Till I don't know if to laugh or if to cry
As one more hero betrays our trust
That Georgie Best in each of us
Limps back to the changing rooms to die
Somewhere between then and now
We killed and ate our sacred cow's
And nothing seems the same somehow
It all just slipped away
The future that seemed crystal clear
Got stuck in time and disappeared
We watched an era ending here when Stevie went away
Well there goes the punch line to God's big joke
The World we'd set to conquer is just another puff of smoke
It's just a speck on the horizon, just a childish memory
looks like I lost my sense of humour and my sense of irony
Somewhere between then and now
Mustard Gas & Roses (Jakszyk)
Mustard gas & roses is how Kurt Vonnegut says his wife describes the smell of his breath in the
morning after a nights drinking in the preface of his book 'Slaughter
House 5'. That's where the title
comes from but has nothing to do with the music.
We'll Change the World (Jakszyk)
'94 was the 25th anniversary of the Apollo moon landings. There were countless TV documentary's
celebrating this fact with lots of footage from the era. There was a widespread belief, in America in
particular, that it signified a unique turning point in the history of mankind and that it would
herald some
new global understanding of each other. Meanwhile more troops were moving into Vietnam. There has
since been some rather compelling evidence that the whole thing was a hoax and didn't
happen at all! .
This was written ironically from that '69 perspective.
Nikita Krushchev and the Kremlin weep
As one more propaganda war is won
And miles above the earth Buzz Aldrin sleeps
As a thousand conscripts reach Saigon
But these are days that we will praise in years to come
The liberation from an age of dark and ignorance is won
We chased the moon and won day soon
We'll change the world
We'll break these chains and start again
We'll change the world
Staring out in to the universe
To where our new frontier's begun
but from where he sits he sees a fragile sphere
But these are days for making history and song
An opportunity to prove the doubters and the sceptics wrong
We chased the moon and one day soon
We'll change the world
We'll break these chains and start again
We'll change the world
We caught the moon so one day soon
We'll change the world
We'll stake our claim and start again
We'll change the world
Only a cynic with nothing else to gain
Would dare to question motives and the debris that remains
Well it's a future in our grasp
In the hands of those we trust
Not some futile wish for glory
Or just some footprints in the dust
We'll change the world
We'll change the world
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