Discount Album

(Originally by Billy Bragg)

I've always been impressed with a girl
Who could sing for her supper and get breakfast as well
That's the way I am, heaven help me
He said, "We don't like peace camapigners 'round here"
As he nailed another one to the wall
And that's what gets me in trouble, heaven help me

Goodbye and good luck to all the rubbish that you've spoken
Goodbye and good luck to all the promises
you've broken
Your life has lost its dignity, its beauty and its passion
You're an accident waiting to happen
There you are standing at the bar
And you're giving me grief about the DDR
And that chip on your choulder gets bigger as you
get older
One of these night you're gonna get caught,
It'll give you a pregnant pause for thought
You're a dedicated swallower of fascism

Time up and time out
For all the liberties you've taken
Time up and time out for all the friends that
you've foresaken
If you choose to waste away like death is back in fashion
You're an accident waiting to happen

And my sins are so unoriginal
I have all the self-loathing of a wolf in sheep's clothing
In this carnival of carnivores,
Heaven help me

[Originally by Billy Bragg]

It may have been Camelot for Jack and Jacqueline
But on the Che Guevara highway filling up with gasoline
Fidel Castro's brother spies a rich lady who's crying
Over luxury's disappointment
So he walks over and he's trying
To sympathise with her but he thinks that he should warn her
That the Third World is just around the corner

In the Soviet Union a scientist is blinded
By the resumption of nuclear testing and he is reminded
That Dr Robert Oppenheimer's optimism fell
At the first hurdle

In the Cheese Pavilion and the only noise I hear
Is the sound of someone stacking chairs
And mopping up spilt beer
And someone asking questions and basking in the light
Of the fifteen fame filled minutes of the fanzine writer

Mixing Pop and Politics he asks me what the use is
I offer him embarrassment and my usual excuses
While looking down the corridor
Out to where the van is waiting
I'm looking for the Great Leap Forwards

Jumble sales are organised and pamphlets have been posted
Even after closing time there's still parties to be hosted
You can be active with the activists
Or sleep in with the sleepers
While you're waiting for the Great Leap Forwards

One leap forward, two leaps back
Will politics get me the sack?

here comes the future and you can't run from it
If you've got a blacklist I want to be on it

It's a mighty long way down rock 'n roll
From Top of the Pops to drawing the dole

If no one seems to understand
Start your own revolution and cut out the middleman

In a perfect world we'd all sing in tune
But this is reality so give me some room

So join the struggle while you may
The Revolution is just a T-shirt away
Waiting for the Great Leap Forwards

[Originally by Billy Bragg]

Rome never looks where she treads
Always her heavy hooves fall
On our stomachs, our hearts and our heads
And Rome never hears when we bawl

Her sentries pass on -- that is all
And we gather behind them in hordes
And plot to reconquer the Wall
With only our tongues for our swords

For we are the little folk -- we!
Too little to love or to hate
Leave us alone and you'll see
That we can bring down the state

Mistletoe killing an oak
Rats gnawing cables in two
Moths making holes in a cloak
How they must love what they do!

Yes -- and we little folk too
We are as busy as they
Working our works out of view
Watch, and you'll see it some day

No indeed! We are not strong
But we know of Peoples that are
Yes and we'll guide them along
To smash and destroy you in war

We shall be slaves just the same?
Yes, we have always been slaves
But you -- you will die of the shame
And then we will dance on your graves

We are the worm in the wood!
We are the rot at the root!
We are the taint in the blood!
We are the thorn in the foot!

Rudyard Kipling

(Originally by Billy Bragg)

Help save the youth of America
Help save them from themselves
Help save the sun-tanned surfer boys
And the Californian girls

When the lights go out in the rest of the World
What do our cousins say
They're playing in the sun and having fun, fun, fun
Till Daddy takes the gun away

From the Big Church to the Big River
And out to the Shining Sea
This is the Land of Opportunity
And there's a Monkey Trial on TV

A nation with their freezers full
Are dancing in their seats
While outside another nation
Is sleeping in the streets

Don't tell me the old, old story
Tell me the truth this time
Is the Man in the Mask or the Indian
An enemy or a friend of mine

Help save the youth of America
Help save the youth of the world
Help save the boys in uniform
Their mothers and their faithful girls

Listen to the voice of the soldier
Down in the killing zone
Talking about the cost of living
And the price of bringing him home

They're already shipping the body bags
Down by the Rio Grande
But you can fight for democracy at home
And not in some foreign land

And the fate of the great United States
Is entwined in the fate of us all
And the incident at Tschernobyl proves
The world we live in is very small

And the cities of Europe have burned before
And they may yet burn again
And if they do I hope you understand
That Washington will burn with them
Omaha will burn with them
Los Alamos will burn with them

(Originally by Billy Bragg)

I went out drinking with Thomas Paine
He said that all revolutions are not the same
They are as different as the cultures
That give them birth
For no one idea
Can solve every problem on Earth

So don't expect it all to happen
In some prophesied political fashion
For people are different
And so are nations
You can borrow ideas
But you can't borrow situations

In Leningrad the people say
Perestroika can be explained this way
The people who told us
That two and two is ten
Are now trying to tell us
That two and two is five

We're living in a North Sea Bubble
We're trying to spend our way out of trouble

You keep buying these things but you don't need them
But as long as you're comfortable it feels like freedom

My American friends don't know what to do
But they'll wait a long time for a Beverley Hills coup

War! What is it good for
It's good for business