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1. The Polaroid (extra on US "pH7")
Me holidays on the Southern Sands,
trying to get some fun by way of one night stands...
I clocked this girl, thought l'd give her the chat -
one of them Swedish blonde types
and l've always fancied that.
I showed her me Polaroid.
She said "I like it, will you
please take my picture?"
I say "Right then", thinking
this is gonna be me lucky day.
She whips off her bikini top
and I think "OK!"
I say "It only takes a minute
for this thing to develop."
She says "I'd better push off now
or me feller'll be jealous."
Just then I felt a hand on me collar,
and it was a Boy in Blue.
He says "You can't take
nude photographs on this beach,"
and "I'm arresting you."
I protested me innocence,
but it was no use, the picture was forming;
he gave me the official warning that day.
He'd seen me Polaroid,
so what could I say?
I looked around, but she'd disappeared,
I say "You don't understand, this was all her idea"
but the copper says "Don't worry son,
I get the picture OK."
He took me Polaroid
and I got ten days.
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2. You Hit me Where I Live (extra US track on "Skin")
There was something in the conversation,
ancient languages were breaking through;
I was falling for infatuation -
how about you?
You say it's nothing special,
that's just the way it is...
you hit me where I live.
Though I drink the cup it leaves me thirsting -
what on earth am I supposed to do?
When I try to speak I find my
bursting heart full of you.
You say it's only natural,
you say forget and forgive...
you hit me where I live.
I was once the man who felt no passion;
I was nothing till I fell for you.
You're a duelist in your own fashion,
eyes that run me through.
You say that it's a mixed blessing,
but I should take the gift you give...
you hit me where I live. |
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3. Roncevaux (on "Time Vaults")
Fight within a war within a song:
Roland dies, but memory lingers on....
Soldier, approaching the Gates of Spain,
treachery waits for you and the baggage train;
a rearguard stand, your final war, it's what you've been living for.
Soldier, as you sit astride Viellantif
Durendal abides inside your sheath; soon you shall grace the day.
Turpin and Oliver ride by your side,
bishop and king's pawn about to slide; do you feel fit to slay?
Carlon is riding far ahead
and cannot hear your voice if you call;
Ganelon, the traitor, in his tent
cannot wait to hear the word of your fall...soon both shall laugh, in different ways.
Soldier, approaching the Gates of Spain,
the Paynim are sharpening up their blades.
Glory! Your moment is here!
Can you see Marsilion yet?
Is that a vulture wheeling overhead?
Twenty thousand Frenchmen, the flower of honour;
stepfather's henchmen wait to fall on you - look around, the silent sound of death.
Saracen plots and Frenchman aids his plans:
ambuscade springs eternal life to man.
Soldier, now white rises from the cliffs of Roncevaux -
battle! Maybe you should heed the words of Oliver: it's time to blow your horn.
Carlon twists and sc reams out in his sleep,
Ganelon walks the night with knuckles raw; soon both shall die, in different ways.
And you can see Marsilion now,
Baligant wields Maltet in his hand;
now's the time to hold to virtuous vows,now's the time to fight and die alone in foreign lands.
Twenty thousand fall to sixty, there is no hope;
Oliover can well say "I told you so" now....Blow the horn and sound the call for help!
Too late, too late and Oliver falls,
now only Turpin and thee, back to back;
though Charelmagne wheels round tyo answer the call
when he arrives he'll find your body hacked.
Only revenge is left, Marsilion shall die,
only revenge is left, the traitor's eye is beamed....
Roland, the song is ended,
Roland, the song is ended,
Roland, the Song has only just begun. |
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4. The Boat of Millions of Years (b side of
"Refugees" single)
Horus, the son of Isis, lay in the marshes of Buto,
poisoned by Set.
She called out to the High God Ra
to kill this evil, that her child may live yet.
Casting aside her present fears
she called out on the Boat of Millions of Years...
Ra came and saw
and stopped the sun until he had cured
the life of the innocent.
Horus the Good lived in the North,
in lands of fertility and beauty
but Set stayed in the hard desert,
to him belonged all drought and perversity.
While he sheds his tears
beneath the Boat of Millions of Years
he fights to kill the hawk,
bearing with him evil and darkness.
But Horus lives with the sun.
Forever the battle rages,
evil tries to kill the innocent baby
and only Osiris, the Lord of the Dead,
can eventually save it.
So we must cast aside our future fears
and call out on the Boat of Millions of Years.
The God of Love is on our side
and with him we shall not die...
there's life in the Sun!
There's life in the Sun!
Only in violence is the cause lost:
in peace, grey Set can't kill our baby of love. |
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5. w (b side of "Theme One" single)
Life is an endless succession of waves,
you're happy and you're sad
and you don't appreciate the good times
until you'e in the bad....
You wake up one morning - w -
and you're twice as unhappy
as you've ever been before in your life.
You wake up, go to the window
and see smoke billowing across the lawn.
You pick your feet up, drag yourself downstairs
and you're gone.
You wake up one morning - w -
and you're twice as unhappy
as you've ever been before in your life.
You wake up, look to your left
but you see no reassuring head.
You stay in bed all day.
At six o'clock you realise you're dead. |
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6. Now and Forever (on the Alice CD "Il Sole nella
Pioggia")
At first sight
helplessly falling,
all at once lighter than air;
feels just like I've known you always...
so now it starts,
now and forever's begun.
You are,
you are the one.
I've been waiting for so long.
Now suddenly everything's shining,
now suddenly everything's clear;
here you are so close beside me
and now you've come
now and forever's begun.
You are,
you are the one I've been waiting for so long.
At first sight helplessly falling,
all at once lighter than air;
suddenly synchronous heartbeats...
so now it starts,
now and forever,
now and forever.
Now our forever's begun. |
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7. Firebrand (b side of "People you were Going to"
single)
Sunday night, twewlve weeks before winter,
the world is in a smoky haze.
Suddenly there appears a rider in the East,
brandishing flame.
CHORUS:"I ride and icy stallion, fire at each end
and poison at the centre;
you won't hear my words
as I scream into the darkness:
his plans are like a firebrand,
his plans are like a firebrand."
His steed strains as he reaches out over the reins
and hurls his flame at the West.
The mountains dissolve in fire
and he races through them, screaming:
CHORUS.
He rides on into the further darkness
brandishing his flame like a spear
and below him there races his ghost steed
draping the night in fear
CHORUS.
Njal, beware and heed the words
which emanate from Hildiglum. |
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8. The Liquidator (on "Time Vaults")
I read the news in a paper:
no flowers, please, donations to charity
like the N.S.P.C.V.d.G.G. -
yeh, send the money
to Guy and Hugh and David and me.
It's a joke,
there is no hope left,
oh, whoever might disagree.
Tell me juicy rumours,
dish me the dirt,
go on and rip the back right off my shirt.
Tell me how I hate Hugh Banton,
tell us that the bank account is zero
and that anyway there's non-one left to play to...
oh, well, there you go.
Are we ever going to get this act together on time?
It's been totally screwed up and I really just don't know.
Is there any way of keeping a clean feed line?
It's out of the question when the
triple distortion booster's blown.
"Jackson, please!"
"What's the matter,
man?"
"You're freaking me out, you know."
Only playing happy families,
maybe playing different tunes,
always playing too hard, too fast, too soon.
Waiting for our fate to take us,
waiting for the liquidator,
can't be cut off by the paper
in the middle of a show.
Waiting for our fate to take us,
waiting for the liquidator,
the only news is bad news
and the only story's breaking up
or carrying on.
Waiting, waiting, waiting, waiting...
carrying on. |
8. 清算人 （宮崎真彦 訳 2004/5/16）
新聞でニュースを読んだよ：
花はいらない、お願いだ、慈善寄付をしてくれ
全国ＶｄＧＧ虐待防止協会みたいな感じで−
やぁ、金を送ってくれ
ガイとヒュ−とデヴィッドと俺に。
冗談さ、
希望なんて残っちゃいない、
おぉ、誰が異議を唱えようとも。
俺に活きの良い噂話をしてくれよ、
俺に噂をぶちまけてくれ、
続けろよ、そして俺のシャツの背中の右側を切り裂いてくれ。
俺に、俺がどんなにヒュ−・バントンを憎んでいるか言ってみろよ、
俺たちに銀行口座がゼロだと言ってみろよ
そしてとにかく演奏すべきものは何一つ残っていないと…
おぉ、あぁ、また始まったよ。
そもそも俺たちは一緒にこんなことを時間どおりにやらなければならないのかい？
そいつは全く混乱してたし、俺は本当に知らないだけなんだ。
給電線をきれいに保っておく方法は何かあるのかい？
そいつは問題外だぜ
三重のディストーション・ブースターがぶん回されている時には。
「ジャクソン、お願いだ！」
「何か問題かい、あんた？」
「お前は俺をいらいらさせるんだよ、分かってるだろ。」
幸せな家族をただ演じていると
もしかすると違う曲を演奏しているかも、
いつもあまりにハードに演奏していると、あまりに早く、あまりに性急に。
俺たちの運命が俺たちを連れて行くのを待ちながら、
清算人を待ちながら、
紙切れで中断させられることなどない
ショーの半ばで。
俺たちの運命が俺たちを連れて行くのを待ちながら、
清算人を待ちながら、
唯一のニュースは悪いニュース
そして唯一のストーリーは解散すること
あるいは、続けていくこと。
待っている、待っている、待っている…
継続することを。
訳注：N.S.P.C.V.d.G.G.：NSPCC=National Society
for the Prevention of Cruelty to (Children)
=(英国)全国(児童)虐待防止協会のもじり |
9. Rift Valley (on "Time Vaults")
At the edge of the canyon,
looking down upon the haze...
which hides the future of this planet,
home, our earth through all the days
which have been and will come.
I hear the running feet of those yet to follow.
At the end of such life as I call my own
I glimpse that yet to come;
springing from me in the future
trees of family shall run.
I have carried the seed:
conceived from me, all people multiply forward.
When it's over they will dig me from the gorge
and proclaim that I am the first Man:
first soldier, first speaker, first tool-user,
that with me civilisation began, in some order.
I have stumbled...
Is it right or am I planned?
Still I feel it
still I know that some day
the world will fall to this human hand,
this clenched fist.
If that's the way it's going to be
I can only say "Good luck!".
You Men who follow on from me
must crawl your way out of here
or all our lives'll be
trapped in the chasm.
The dying day:
I stand upon the edge, stare down
at what's to come below.
In a way there's all the future in me,
destiny already known.
Already tired in my heart,
I start the long walk forward
into Rift Valley,
to rest in Rift Valley.
Still instinctively trying to save my kind
I survive into the future. |
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10. Rain, 3 a.m. (extra track on Virgin compilation
"The Calm")
Spitting drops of rain flow down
and touch my cheek,
intermingling with my tears
as I silently weep.
Then the fatality of life
presses close and probes in my eyes....
And I'm cold and hungry tonight.
These great black walls of brickwork
bow low and oppress my mind
like the words of people
I thought I'd left far behind;
the presence of the words and walls
is too close and it's far too clear
as the rain keeps washing through my tears,
as the rain just washes through my tears.
A drunk looks out at me and he quickly turns away;
he's hiding deep inside himself
all the ritual of this strange play.
There's no-one else upon the street,
just this dying old drunk and me
and the cat that's hiding in the tree.
My memory stretches back,
as I continue to cry,
to places where I went wrong,
although I still don't know quite why.
The flashing neon signsd proclaim
"All is void where the human lives"
and in the darkness no-one forgives.
And in the darkness no-one forgives. |
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11. The Honing of Homer (on David Jackson's Long
Hello Volume Three)
A shaft of light, an eagle's wing,
A mountain top, A signet ring,
A crucifix, The axe's swing,
These prosaic things will be gone in the twinkling of an eye.
With his voice falling short in the silence,
With his sight growing ever more dim,
With his senses now tuned to the infinite,
What place has envy in him?
What a waste of life observations,
If unaccompanied by any inner reflection or change;
If the way of life is mysterious,
The way of Man is even more strange.
With a whole range of feeling inside us,
We perceive but do not comprehend.
Like children with games full of magic,
Who toy with themselves to the end.
Toy with themselves to the end.
So many things pass before him
And in his fear he wishes he could hold them all close,
Even though his grasp is clumsy,
And there is nothing here he really knows.
In sublimely indifferent ignorance
Now where in the world he might miss(??)
His sight stretches out like a hand in the night
and is severed at the wrist.
So many thoughts come towards him,
So many dreams now as he slides on that deepest descent
into ultimate darkness,
So many tales, and all that they meant.
In sublimely indifferent eloquence
Now where in the world that he holds
His sight which has blinded him all of his life,
Is excised as the story is told.
…. As the stories are told…. |
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