H

Hammer, Stirrup & Anvil

Our Glorious Leader
Declares by decree:
‘The music of the Glorious State from this time on will be
Square-jawed and dreary
For the good of us all.’
Hammer, stirrup and anvil under state control

My name is Dimitri
Man of some renown
In this symphony of spies I keep my ear to the ground
Stave, crochet and quaver
Under the editor’s scrawl
Hammer, stirrup and anvil under state control

An operetta for our leader
A quartet for the drawer
He gets the rank cantatas
And I keep the score
A libretto for the death camps
Some day you’ll hear them all
Hammer, stirrup and anvil under state control
Hammer, stirrup and anvil under state control

Hanging on the Old Barbed Wire

If you want to find the general
I know where he is
I know where he is
I know where he is
If you want to find the general
I know where he is
He’s pinning another medal on his chest
I saw him, I saw him
Pinning another medal on his chest
Pinning another medal on his chest
If you want to find the colonel
I know where he is
I know where he is
I know where he is
If you want to find the colonel
I know where he is
He’s sitting in comfort stuffing his bloody gut
I saw him, I saw him
Sitting in comfort stuffing his bloody gut
If you want to find the seargent

I know where he is
I know where he is
I know where he is
If you want to find the seargent
I know where he is
He’s drinking all the company rum
I saw him, I saw him
Drinking all the company rum
Drinking all the company rum
If you want to find the private
I know where he is
I know where he is
I know where he is
If you want to find the private
I know where he is
He’s hanging on the old barbed wire
I saw him, I saw him
Hanging on the old barbed wire
Hanging on the old barbed wire

Happiness Is Just a Chant Away

I’m having a wonderful time drunk on communion wine
One sin over the seven
Sick all over the stairway to heaven
Bullshit, bullshit, priests without a pulpit
Shake shake shake your blessed bells
Ding dong, heaven calling, buzz buzz buzz, haircut sir
You put your whole self in, your whole self out
In out in out, shake it all about
With a pop song, pop song, smothering love bombs
You’re great I’m great everybody’s great
Everybody’s great
(Repeat)
Happiness is just a chant away
(Repeat)
Georgie got a needle and Georgie got a hit
Georgie got religion and a saviour on a stick
There’re a thousand Georgies all posing in a field
Which are false and which are real?
You put your whole self in, your whole self out
In out, in out, what’s it all about?
Pop song, pop song, smothering love bombs
You’re great i’m great everybody’s great
Everybody’s great
(Repeat)
Happiness is just a chant away
(Repeat)
I’m having a wonderful time drunk on communion wine
One sin over the seven
Sick all over the stairway to heaven
Harry Roberts, Harry Roberts, Roberts, Roberts, Harry, Harry
(Repeat)
Everybody got a good deal
Everybody got a guru
Everybody got a love bomb
Everybody got a hit song
(Repeat)

Her Majesty

Her majesty’s a pretty nice girl but she doesn’t have a lot to say
Her majesty’s a pretty nice girl but she changes from day to day
I wanna tell her that I love her a lot, but I gotta get a belly full of wine
Her majesty’s a pretty nice girl someday I’m gonna make her mine
Oh yeah, someday I’m gonna make her mine

Her majesty’s a pretty nice girl but she never does a thing for me
Her majesty’s a pretty nice girl but she keeps the worst company
All the lords and the ladies in waiting all crawling in the dirt like swine
Her majesty’s a pretty nice girl but I hope she’s the end of the line
Oh yeah, I hope she’s the end of the line

Her majesty’s living in a land of curtsies
A world of blue blood and Nazis, yeah

Her majesty’s a pretty nice girl but I think she ought to call it a day
Her majesty’s a pretty nice girl without one good reason to stay
I’d like to take her for a whiskey or two, but I’ve got a lot of things to do
Her majesty’s a throwaway song just short of a chorus or two
Oh yeah, short of a chorus or two

A world of corgies and inbreeding
The royal corpse is barely breathing

Her majesty’s a pretty nice girl with a circus for a family
Her majesty’s a pretty nice girl but she’s stuck with the royal We
I’d like to show her around the center of town but I haven’t got a carpet for
her feet
Her majesty’s a pretty nice girl but she’s pretty much obsolete
Oh yeah, she’s pretty much obsolete

Here’s The Rest Of Your Life

Why settle for what we’re shown
When there is so much more?
Sometimes the Book of Law
Is only half the story
Means and ends:
Deciding where to draw the line
Loss or work in Sellafield homes
Or the threat of cancers yet to come?
The choice is obvious:
There is no choice
Only the option of looking outside
This narrow definition of «What you see is all there will ever be»
There comes a time — that time is now —
When every second, every day
When every action, every thought
Will tell the world how you cast your vote
They break our legs
And we say «Thank you» when they offer us crutches
Tired of mild reform
Sick of hand-me-downs
We topple all the theories to the ground:
All real change
Must come from below
Our bosses must live in fear
Of the factory-floor
And when they smile
And they ask for my support,
I’ll give them these words
And a bloody nose:
You don’t help your enemy
When you’re at war
There are moments in all of our lives
Tiny sparks still deep inside
When a new-born baby cries
When you’re watching clouds in a summer sky
The first time you walked out on strike
Love and sex and holding light
Tings that can’t be bought
By promises and votes
I hate the things I love being criminalised
I hate the straight-jacket schools I grew up in
I hate MPs, judges and magistrates
I hate being taught to base my life on TV stars
I hate being kept waiting by bureaucrats
I hate wars, and all the people who love them
I hate the idea of living on other people’s backs
I hate being filed, registered and classified
I hate being watched and monitered
I hate police
I hate the way you talk down at me
I hate being told what to do
I hate you when you don’t listen
I hate the way you distort my sexuality with pornography
I hate the pain we inflict on each other
On animals, and on the Earth
And I hate how love songs have become such cliches
through endless, shallow repitition
Each angry word
Every cynical put-down
Every song is carefully born
From a hope of something better to come
All jumbled-up
Love and hate and love
Each prompted by the other:
For the cause of peace we have to go to war
Refusing to sleep
Whilst there’s a world to win
Yet happy to dream
Dreams make the plans to change this world
Not just some future heaven
But today and every day
In our place of work
In the queue for the metrobus
Organise!
Here’s the rest of our lives!
..A tiny spark still deep inside
We can and will run the factories and mills
We can and will educate ourselves
We can and will work the fields
We can and will police ourselves
We can and will create and build
Organise!
Here’s the rest of our lives!

Hey! You! Outside Now!

One year later
This queue never moved
I’ve got well dressed slugs
Crawling over my shoes
And all these bouncers
Pushing me around
Well I’ll huff and I’ll puff
I’ll blow your house down
In these hard times
No money for the arts
No money for a bonus
And my car won’t start
The taxman cometh
And the landlord too
Now something better chance
I’ve got things to do

Scratched record carries on forever
Last waltz carries on forever
Prize fighter carries on forever
Too much bowing
To the sacred cow
Hey! you! outside! now!

Two years later
And the tap still drips
This pain in my back
Means I still can’t sleep
They’re ripping up the longside
For plastic seats
We’re ripping off the gas
Just to make ends meet
Half the population
Living off crime
I’m talking ’bout the fuckers
On question time
Pop fops on horse
Haven’t got a clue
Now something better change
I’ve got things to do

Scratched record carries on forever
Last waltz carries on forever
Prize fighter carries on forever
Too much bowing
To the sacred cow
Hey! you! outside! now!

Three years later
And I’m still in this queue
Now somethnig better change
I’ve got things to do
Too much bowing
To the sacred cow
Hey! you! outside! now!

Home With Me

(Your world, my world)
(Your world, my world)

San Christobal on New Year’s Day (your world, my world)
Sunny beach, L.A. (your world, my world)
Blue and coral Kirkstall skies (your world, my world)
Timorese sunrise (your world, my world)
Fairfield Horseshoe in the snow (your world, my world)
Clashing worlds in Tokyo (your world, my world)
All the bars in County Cork (your world, my world)
Heavy rain, New York (your world, my world)

I sailed the seven seas
Carved my love on trees
I brought the whole world home with me
Home with me

(Your world, my world)

Barcelona cobbled streets (your world, my world)
Paris, 1968 (your world, my world)
Words along the Berlin wall (your world, my world)
When it’s just about to fall (your world, my world)

I sailed the seven seas
Carved my love on trees
I brought the whole world home with me
Home with me

(Your world, my world)
(Your world, my world)
(Your world, my world)

Gracelands, Memphis, Tennessee (your world, my world)
Killing time, Napoli (your world, my world)
Autumn Warsaw, grey and green (your world, my world)
Kronstadt 1917 (your world, my world)

I sailed the seven seas
Carved my love on trees
I brought the whole world home with me
Home with me

I sailed the seven seas
Carved my love on trees
I brought the whole world home with me
Home with me

Homophobia

Up behind the bus stop in the toilets off the street
There are traces of a killing on the floor beneath your feet
Mixed in with the piss and beer are bloodstains on the floor
From the boy who got his head kicked in a night or two before.Homophobia-the worst disease
You can’t love who you want to love in times like these
Homophobia-the worst disease
You can’t love who you want to love in times like these

In the pubs, clubs and burger bars, breeding pens for pigs,
Alcohol, testosterone and ignorance and fists
Packs of hunting animals roam across the town
They find an easy victim and they punch him to the ground.

Homophobia-the worst disease
You can’t love who you want to love in times like these
Homophobia-the worst disease
You can’t love who you want to love in times like these

The siren of the ambulance, the deadpan of the cops,
Chalk to mark the outline where the boy first dropped
Beware the holy trinity: church and state and law
For every death the virus gets more deadly than before.

Homophobia-the worst disease
You can’t love who you want to love in times like these
Homophobia-the worst disease
You can’t love who you want to love in times like these

How to Get Your Band on Television

I’m the Boss of the company
And I’ve got hunger working for me
Listen and you’ll begin to understand
I built my profits on stolen land
It’s the economics of supply and demand
And I make the demands around here
Product sells, people die
Same manipulation wrapped in lies
Give a little money and play your rock and roll
The biggest prizes to the biggest fools
Good evening ladies and gentlemen
Welcome to the show where you the audience participate
On our show tonight we got lost of surprises in store for you at home
In keeping with the fashion for charity, not change
Here’s out contribution—we’ve called it Slag Aid
For every pop star that we slag off today
A million pounds will be given away
Paul McCartney — come on down
With crocodile tears to irrigate this ground
Make of Ethiopia a fertile paradise
Where everyone sings Beatles songs and buys shares in EMI
Charity, starvation, and rock and roll
Let it be, eh Paulie?
Freddie Mercury, this is your life
Thank the Lord that you were born white
And thank apartheid for this wonderful opportunity
To peddle your hypocrisy in Sun City
A bit of a hot potato in a moment, eh Fred, in South Africa?
Well I’m sure there’s a video in there somewhere
David Bowie, the price is right
A suitful of compassion and a gobful of shite
Still the voices of those who doubt
Coca-Cola for the peasants to end this drought
David the world can only take so much
And with you around, we’re in for a really hard time
Jagger and Richards, game for a laugh
Dancing us down the garden path

To a place where money grows on trees
Where cocaine habits are financed by hunger and disease
There’s only one mountain in the rock and roll business
Ladies and Gentlemen, and it’s Mick Jagger
Ask the puppet-masters who pull the strings
Who makes the money when the puppets sing
Ask the corporations where does the money go
Ask the empty-bellied children what are we singing for
And Cliff Richard, three, two, one
The God who remains when the religion’s gone
Cliff, we’ve got a special surprise for you today
So come up closer, step this way
Cliff, you’re such an example of moral worth
Such a purist saint come to bless our earth
That on behalf of our viewers watching on telly
And on behalf of the millions with empty bellies
We’re donating something special that we’re all going to like
Cliff Richard, we’re going to nail you up to a cross tonight
Ladies and gentlemen, just imagine it, someone comes along, takes everything you own, your space, your house, separates you from your family and then hits you in the face if you say anything different. Well, that’s what we’ve been doing to the third world for the past four hundred years. That’s you and me. You the viewers at home, me in the studio, the pop stars, everyone. That’s how we make the third world, every day, today and every day. If you want any correspondence with the program, just send your answers, letter bombs only, to BP House, Victoria Street, London, SW1
Thank you and good night
Feed the world
Starve the rich
Goodnight
I know there must be more
I know there must be more
Than giving just a little bit more
When half of this world is so helplessly poor
Starved of the real solution
Charity and tradition
And the cycle of hungry children
Will keep on going ’round
I know there must be more
Will keep on going ’round
I know there must be more
Will keep on going ’round
I know there must be more
‘Till we burn the house of commons to the ground

Hull or Hell

Of larks trains windows and brooks
The poet he writes it all down in his book
Won’t meet your eye but he wants you to look
In Hull or hell he lies

Lambs in the winter and swans in the spring
Children at play they’re like birds on the wing
And the poet he writes that the sun seems to swing
In Hull or hell he lies

Away from the world and away from the page
Hidden in corners the gathering of age
Retreats to the wings where he once held the stage
In Hull or hell he lies

The dirt and the filth that we don’t get to see
That’s eating his language away
This yellow-eyed nastiness hides from the light of the day

Resenting the everyday growing so old
Where winter once pictured as flowers in fold
Turned frosty and bitter and weathered and cold
In Hull or hell he lies

His housemaid she tried but the dirt grew so fast
The darkest of colours he nailed to the mast
Stuck in his ways like he’s stuck in the past

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