I don’t usually write political songs, or lyrics that directly express my own thoughts and feels.
But given what’s been happening in London I felt moved to. Here’s a rough draft of my first, and probably last protest song.
It isn’t an essay, it doesn’t express things perfectly. If anything I would hope it gets across my own mixed feelings and my belief that merely dismissing the looters and thugs as ‘mindless’ and shouting down anyone who wants an explanation is won’t stop these happening again.
Riots on the Streets of my Home by Tom Slatter
They call it anarchy
Well that ain’t what it is
Call it revolution,
That ain’t what it is.
but they took away the last little things that gave hope
And they thought that nothing would happen
They were wrong
There’re riots on the streets of my home
Children breaking windows, madmen starting fires
Call them thugs call them animals it’ll happen again,
All your meaningless words that mean ‘them not us’
Won’t save us
Away in Tuscany
You won’t have to care
Don’t live in these cities
You won’t have to care
Decades ago when they took to streets
They’d a cause, they’d something to say
Not this time
There’re riots on the streets of my home
Politicians saying shoot the loot
Saying bring the army in,
Call them mindless call them savage and you won’t solve a thing
All your meaningless words that mean ‘them not us’
Theresa’s got nothing to say
Edward and David are staying away
The journalist ask what does this acheive
Well your talking about Tottenham now
There’re riots on the streets of my home
Children breaking windows, adults shouting scum
If you try to ask questions they’ll just shout you down
All your meaningless words that say them not us
All your meaningless phrases like ‘squeezed middle’
All your empty words like the big society
Well how’dya like society now?
Well how’dya like society now?
They call it anarchy
Well that ain’t what it is
Call it revolution,
That ain’t what it is.
Don’t know the answers
But I know what we should ask
Don’t know the answers
But I know what we should ask.
Musically it isn’t anything to write home about – simple a minor chords, common chord progressions. But it is a raw recording of me expressing myself without thinking too much.
Inspired by this: http://www.hannahnicklin.com/2011/08/i-can-understand-them/
this: http://pennyred.blogspot.com/2011/08/panic-on-streets-of-london.html
and this violence inciting moron: http://twitter.com/#!/RogerHelmerMEP
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