Dane County is a county in the U.S. state of Wisconsin. Its population was 488,073 at the 2010 census. The county seat is Madison, which is also the capital of the state. The U.S. Census Bureau's Madison Metropolitan Statistical Area includes all of Dane County (as well as neighboring Iowa and Columbia counties). Dane County is made up of more than 60 cities, towns, and villages.
Dane County is the second most populous county in Wisconsin behind Milwaukee County.
Dane County was formed in 1836 as a territorial county. It was named after Nathan Dane, a Massachusetts delegate to the Congress of the Confederation who helped carve Wisconsin out of the Northwest Territory.
As of the census of 2000, there were 426,526 people, 173,484 households, and 100,794 families residing in the county. The population density was 355 people per square mile (137/km²). There were 180,398 housing units at an average density of 150 per square mile (58/km²). The racial makeup of the county was 88.96% White, 4.00% Black or African American, 0.33% Native American, 3.45% Asian, 0.03% Pacific Islander, 1.43% from other races, and 1.79% from two or more races. 3.37% of the population were Hispanic or Latino of any race. 34.4% were of German, 11.5% Norwegian, 8.9% Irish and 6.0% English ancestry according to Census 2000.
Bruce Frederick Joseph Springsteen (born September 23, 1949), nicknamed "The Boss," is an American singer-songwriter-performer who records and tours with the E Street Band. Springsteen is widely known for his brand of heartland rock, poetic lyrics, and Americana sentiments centered on his native New Jersey.
Springsteen's recordings have included both commercially accessible rock albums and more somber folk-oriented works. His most successful studio albums, Born in the U.S.A. and Born to Run, showcase a talent for finding grandeur in the struggles of daily American life; he has sold more than 65 million albums in the United States and more than 120 million worldwide and he has earned numerous awards for his work, including 21 Grammy Awards, two Golden Globes and an Academy Award. He is widely regarded by many as one of the most influential songwriters of the 20th century, and in 2004, Rolling Stone ranked him as the 23rd Greatest Artist of all time.
Springsteen was born in Long Branch, New Jersey, and spent his childhood and high school years in Freehold Borough. He lived on South Street in Freehold Borough and attended Freehold Borough High School. His father, Douglas Frederick Springsteen, was of Dutch and Irish ancestry and worked, among other vocations, as a bus driver, although he was frequently unemployed; his surname is Dutch for jump stone. His mother, Adele Ann (née Zerilli), was a legal secretary and was of Italian ancestry. His maternal grandfather was born in Vico Equense, a city near Naples. He has two younger sisters, Virginia and Pamela. Pamela had a brief film career, but left acting to pursue still photography full time; she took photos for the Human Touch and Lucky Town albums.
David Bowie ( /ˈboʊ.i/ BOH-ee; born David Robert Jones on 8 January 1947) is an English musician, actor, record producer and arranger. A major figure for over four decades in the world of popular music, Bowie is widely regarded as an innovator, particularly for his work in the 1970s. He is known for his distinctive voice and the intellectual depth and eclecticism of his work.
Bowie first caught the eye and ear of the public in July 1969, when his song "Space Oddity" reached the top five of the UK Singles Chart. After a three-year period of experimentation he re-emerged in 1972 during the glam rock era with the flamboyant, androgynous alter ego Ziggy Stardust, spearheaded by the hit single "Starman" and the album The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars. Bowie's impact at that time, as described by biographer David Buckley, "challenged the core belief of the rock music of its day" and "created perhaps the biggest cult in popular culture." The relatively short-lived Ziggy persona proved merely one facet of a career marked by continual reinvention, musical innovation and striking visual presentation.
The crimes of dying nations equimedia
Hustles to raid agains the brain
With cameraman refractorous recommendations
on humidity
Some forgotten back water conflict
And after it for the hunting lands
Knifes are sharper in a total blackout
(asshole) no coming back
(ref.)
And in the meantime somebody fucks up grammar
And in the meantime somebody fucks up vermin
The heavy strapped everyman reporter
Last in the Sunday night jungle
Makes three pages in the observer
Forgot my day
(ref.)
And in the meantime somebody fucks up your mom
And in the meantime somebody fucks up your mom
Some forgotten back water conflict
With no air strip for the hunting lands
Knifes are sharper when a total blackout
has rolled no coming back
(ref.)
And in the meantime somebody fucks up burbon
(In Darkest Dreams Part II)
For Neal who found what he searched,
From one who searched and found something entirely different
I. Ante-Room
And in the REM movement, reality restores,
A harsh-edged ambiance moves in,
Kicks me out the bedroom door
Adventuring in the real world,
Of substance, time and change
Turn off the gap!
Forget the gap!
II. Time For You
[instrumental]
III. Troubled Awakenings
Where is this place that I see here?
What is is this place? From whence this fear?
This is not my world
Whose is this room that I sit in?
Whose is the light that shines so dim?
This is not my world
What am I doing here at all?
If I look down will I fall?
These thoughts cross my mind as...
I burn the midnight lamp
As I sit in my tiny room
IV. The Inanimate Object Conspiracy
Something's wrong with the inanimate!
The furniture is crowding in...
The ceiling swins on a pendulum,
Opens up onto a world that lies within
Buildings that rise up and claw at the sky,
Shatter the blue and cry out in the night
Sucking me upwards into the fright and hell of this dream
The labyrinth is oh, so personal,
I'm caught up in my own esteem,
Questioning the real environment,
As though I were the only object in its beam
Falling through space in a gap in the night
My body is torn through a sleep in the heights
Of oblivion and intrigue,
And a consuming passion to know who I am
V. The Street Light Watershed
Here in the half light the orange streetbulbs cast,
Through the curtains of my room,
I wait for the morning,
As if somehow that will change all my negative thoughts
But this is not me, this is not who I am
It's just an echo of my former self,
Escaping through the log-jam
Caught by the upsurge,
I feel self-pity crawl my body like a fever,
I'm stuck here at square one,
The all-time-loser who never fills the coupon in
This is not me
This is not how I am
It's just an echo of my former self
Escaping through the log-jam
When I feel the power,
I know that it's time to start
The pen runs before me
Leads me deep to the heart
VI. This Is Not The End Of The World
(But You Can See It From Here)
If I wait for an eternity will I ever find the truth?
If I search a hundred years or more
Will I ever solve the questions of my youth?
Won't someone believe me?
Won't somebody take away the pain from this frame?
It's no game, you can see the end of the world on a clear day
VII. The Gap Yawns, The Orchestra Goes Doo-Lally
[instrumental]
VIII. The Ante-Room (Part II)
And in the REM movement, reality restores,
A harsh-edged ambiance moves in,
Kicks me out the bedroom door
Adventuring in the real world,
Of substance, time and change
Turn off the gap!
Forget the gap!
I am fugitive in the waking world
A nomad caught under ice,
With all the buzzing lines around me,
Where each second has its price,
And the seconds turn to hours
The hours turn to lives
And I live through a thousand each night
Before the daylight finally arrives
And I know that the daytime is just a gap in the night
I'm tired and not ready for the fight
Turn off the gap!
And nobody says who I'm living, or
Whose eyes I'm seeing through,
The actions so unforgiving and
I can't crawl back to you
I'm tired of fighting an unrelenting force
I'm tired and searching for a course to steer,
In my flimsy boat of reeds
Trying in vain to cross a surging, stormy sea,
Of self-conscious analysis
IX. The Gap In The Night
Lost In London. A true story from 198?
Words - Andy Tillison
Music - Andy Tillison & Guy Manning
I ended up in London several hours ahead of time,
In the small hours of the morning and they'd even closed the Circle Line,
I'd hitch-hiked it in one lift! The kind of trip of which you dream -
Until one day you don't need it, then you get it!... so it seems.
I wandered in from Acton, even passed the BBC,
Imagining that one day they'd all be interviewing me,
I've got a rendezvouz this morning with Virgin A & R
I'm a hopeful with a bag of tapes, and Shank's Pony for a car...
I'm a Yorkshire Kid in London - and I need lots of space
Winding roads and open fields you don't have in this place,
I'm here to see your empire, is it true what I have heard?
You've got more people here than Sweden,
But it's the loneliest place in the world.
Found an "all-night-cafe" but I didn't stay too long,
I didn't have much money (besides, this was someone else's song)
I saw the aisles of Knightsbridge. I even gigged the Albert Hall!
But in all the hours of wandering, talked to nobody at all.
McEnroe was losing, for the first time which seemed - wrong!
And the Virgin guy was watching while he listened to my songs,
I don't know if he heard them with so much drama on the screen,
But I didn't sign a contract, - it was Andy: "Love-Fifteen!"
I was a Yorkshire Kid in London, I didn't understand,
All the chaos and the "MIND THE GAP!" in your gold-paved business land,
I was so small you could have eaten and never sensed the taste,
I was David, you - Goliath
But my stones just went to waste.
Instrumental...
At Brent Cross Shopping Centre, thumb pointing back up home,
A wiser man is waiting for some kindly soul to pull over,
I end up with protesters, who tried to stop a war,
But they went ahead and fought it, and I guess to me that matters more.
We're all Yorkshire Folk in London when it comes to being heard,
We give our all but no-one hears or notices one word,
And thought a million voices tell us not to go and take Iraq,
We still went in, and we still haven't come back.
Some days it almost seems as if I could operate on myself
Nurse! The screens!
I could scrape barnacles from connective tissue
Open up, clear off the muck
In a trice I could slice myself back to health
Reach in to shave blisters off aching muscles
Breathe life into anaemic corpuscles
Smooth out crevices, no waiting lists, no fuss
(Ahhh.) Releasing ail the tension on which cluster headaches play
Soothe creaking joints, just anoint with gentle balm
Police the flashpoints, keep them from harm
And wipe the pain away
Pop back keystone vertebrae
With my very own keyhole surgery
A quick Op, then dancing - all day
Dancing all day, dancing all! day
Do it yourself, do it yourself
Do it yourself, do it yourself
There's a low and distant moonlit plain
Where you and I will walk again,
Looking up, as the light shines through the water to our hearts.
Standing stones and distant shores
Beckon us to seek out more than what is real,
Discover how to feel, this endless day.
As the city simmers softly,
We're not even there,
We got lost - somewhere
As twilight shifts to semi-dark,
There's traffic caught round East End Park
The journey home with life's catalogue of groans
Is going on - all night
But the fish still swim around those stones
In their eternal home in the minds of those,
Who never could suppose that they weren't real
Let me push you in the picture!
We can swim with the pyramids and stars,
They're right there in the world that we drive through
And if I find a way, to get there some day
I'll let you know
And I think it's strange, it seems so real,
Strange, the way I feel I know this!
Strange, the more we grow, the more our minds will close
So we miss so much of what we were always searching.
These two halves of the problem
Are joined like the sides of a coin
We feel them, we see them, but do nothing
On the Flyover it's hard to blend,
Waterfalls that never end into this world,
It's as though we'd never heard those songs at all
And each morning at a given time,
So many sign that dotted line that leads them where
They seems to waste their days and thoughts
I want to leap into the oceans
Swim with the pyramids and stars
They're right there in the world that we drive through
and if i find a way, to get there some day
I'll let you know
It's there in the world that we drive through
It's there when we look at the screen
It's not in our imagination
Not part of some wild crazy dream
Feeling the sway of the bridge beneath me
I watch the windsock strain
Stepping with care as though there's nothing beneath me,
And I'm alone again
Taking the strain of the lateral movement
My escape is clear;
Follow the road to one of two directions
Can I control my fear?
And I can feel it pulling, the paranoia's rife!
There's nothing like a crisis in mid-life!
Feeling the weight of my divided passions
Coming and going like rain
Taking my chances in my predictable fashion
As all my plans go down the drain
And I can feel it pulling, the paranoia's rife!
Look in both directions, I'm balanced on the knife
There's nothing like a crisis in mid-life!
The burble of canned music finds its way into my heart
The soundtrack to the E.P.G., but I don't know where to start
And all the people and all the humour
And all the culture, all the music, all the things that we once knew
Are wrapped in packets, twelve by twelve, on the shelves
When we were young we had songs for our problems
We had the money to pay...
Kids like us to write anthems for our teen years
And blow our problems away
But now we're in the middle
Our heroes bought houseboats with their wives
There's no-one left to sing along with
As we make the crossing of our middle lives
Ten million people who all want to see the same movies,
Ten million more who buy the same brand of shampoo,
A whole generation just follows its leaders,
Wearing the logos and pledging allegiance,
To a culture that's spiralling into (and out of) control
As its leaders take hold.
With Oscars and Nobels we hand out our thanks to the famous
With Pulitzers, Grammys we give our plaudits to our peers,
Make governments from a few distinct choices,
Create new methods to silence our voices,
Hand over our own thoughts to systems we cannot control,
And it's time to take hold.
Billions of people with faith in some power almighty,
Billions of others who call the same thing a different name,
Then everlasting wars to follow the leaders,
To satisfy their whims and the lies that they feed us,
On a planet where there's enough wrong,
He's travelling the road that others have shown him
He's following the lies that orhers have told him
His Future's on the brink...
And nothing's ever going to sink... the ship
Grabs a working lunch, keeping one eye on the NASDAQ
Driving through the Blackwall on his way to some knock-back
There's no room in his soul
For the prople he controls... but never knows
An in his life there's an empty space
He fills with doubt and shame
Then seals it up and destroys the key
And ploughs himself right back into the winning game
She's struggling with the problems that our hero has shown her,
(A few thousands miles away, in a luxury Land Rover)
Her children in the cold
While her life is bought and sold... On tiny screens
And as her value drops, well another one is rising
More fashionable crops for the ever enterprising
The West plays betting games
On the fortunes of its slaves... but never knows
And in her heart there's an empty space.
We take more from, every day.
But we close our eyes and pay no more hees
And plough ourselves right back into the winning game
These Two halvees of the problem,
Are Joined like the sides of a coin
We see them, we feel them but do nothing
People live in the world that we drive through
It's hard to even know what they're there
We see them, we feel them but do nothing
Still treading the road our education's shown us
Still following the lies that the media has told us
We're chalking up success
While our planet's in a mess... But never know
The campaigners on TV are all just raving \"lefties\"
With pullovers so dodgy and haircuts from the seventies
So why should we take note
When we can simply cast our vote for status quo?
And in our hearts there's an empty space,
We feel its nagging pain
But we take the drugs and damp it down
And plough ourselves right back into the winning game
Life, it seems not much more,
Than a race for an un-named prize
That we accept in some tear-stained ceremony
From the people that we despise
And in our hearts we want nothing more,
Than greed and lust and pain
We buy and sell
And we crawl away
Waiting in the afterglow.
An aurora fading quickly in the sky
Bearing magnetic north
As the idistance unfold and time ticks by
Nut my heading remains constant,
As the Tropics and the latitudes spin round.
Not held down by gravity,
Surfing radio waves like breakers on the tide,
I'm in touch with my A.M. pulse,
Long after all the rest of me expires,
And I become new modulation
As the skip distance grows wilder on every bound
Yes it's some life I'm living!
A hundred miles up there!
Through aerials, on the tired ground
It's a modest life here tied down to the Earth
But i'm thinking head up in the clouds,
Forgetting where I came from in rebirth
And I'm scot-free, in the atmosphere,
There's no-one who can ever hold me down
And it's some life we're living!
A hundred miles up there!
The pull's already caught us,
He's only as old as his helmet and no one can see his grey hair
Through the dark tinted perspex sun visor as he breathes in the open freeway air
There's a two hour queue out of Stansted and an age on the M25
A line of artics that stretches to Yorkshire but this guy's still glad to be alive
Half his world in his topcase the other half in his sack
As he overtakes the juggernauts of his past, this guy's never looking back
He lives his life on the white lines, he's the spirit of old “66”
Three hundred kilos of man and machine still getting their kicks
He's still dreaming of summers on the open road
The path that he's chosen is no more than he's owed
And his freedom comes in horsepower it seems
The apehanger bars seem to suit him so well
He's an Easy Rider, he's a Bat Out of Hell
He's the Leader of the Pack, he's an Angel in the Raw
But no-one writes those biker songs no more
Basildon glows on the distant horizon like he's coming down to L.A.
The rain's sheeting in from imagined mountains but while the traffic works he plays
He's only as old as his helmet and he only got it last week
And the exhaust sounds like a fucking rock band and the cops only see a silver streak
He's got Born to Be Wild on the Walkman and the Devil tattoo doesn't show
But the guy from the chip shop down your street is a Heavy Metal God of the Road
And the sun has just set behind the Rockies tonight
On the roads by the Med the water shines bright
There's chrome by the roadhouses and dark-eyed chicks at the bar
There's camp fires burning and there's bands on the stage
And something good's smokin'
But he's never been his age
And the world is his oyster like it never was before
I: Ours
(leadvocals by Julie King & Andy Tillison)
After our wars we feel a moment's inspiration as we rebuild our cities
With visions anew and the architects and artists sound our glory
In a monument to freedom
Scraping the sky with steel and stone and a deep pride in our new-built homes
People are the focus once again, in the wide, wide streets of a town for today's men
And after a time we become immune to all the images
That war brings to our front rooms, so far away
Decisions to be made do not seem relevant to anything that's happening now
But six feet under lies the charred earth, the buried memories of the last time
It's there in the eyes of the survivors, and our peace walks
On an all too finite line
II: Theirs
including "Ours Reprise"
(leadvocals by Andy Tillison)
The world is awash with dictators and moguls, between them we don't stand a chance
Caught between egos and cold economics we all know the steps to the dance
We can watch it all on TV while we're sitting eating tea
We can watch the bombs start falling to "set the people free"
And it's raining down on me, through the atmosphere, from the satellites
The battlefields the way the media sees them
The press always get there in time for the flag-burns in every demonstration report
The bombs always go off in the centre of the picture in an area the size of New York
And we don't see this as funny just give awards to the TV crews
'Cos it's them fighting the wars, not the armies, for the Generals of the news
And it's raining down on me, through the atmosphere, from the satellites
The battlefields the way the media sees them
Ours Reprise
(leadvocals by Julie King & Andy Tillison)
After our wars we switch off, tune in, drop out and evaluate our reasons
But when battle calls, we're there, like moths approaching their destruction
In fast oncoming headlights
Like rivers need the rain, the hate runs through our veins
Bursting the banks with death and pain and on my TV set tonight, it's pissing down again
III: His
(leadvocals by Guy Manning)
Give me a moment to assess the facts, I'll make my decision on how we act
If anyone can help me just let me know, I'm writing the script for a prime-time show
If my friends say it's OK I can attack, support from my own is all I lack
I only need approval for what I do, from the ones who beg my approval too
Running round in circles from the cradle to the grave
Searching for security or anything that we can save
Back in the real world where sky meets land, the missles succeed in the task at hand
We don't see amputations on the screen, just enjoy the bangs, ignore the screams
Running round in circles from the cradle to the grave
Searching for security or anything that we can save
Throwing metal at the sky, seeing where it lands and try
To convince the ones who put us here, that this is what we planned for all the time
IV: Mine
(leadvocals by Jakko M. Jakszyk)
With all the weapons of the modern world around me all I'm left with is my guitar
It's not as if a generation's gonna sit down and listen, it's been tried before and only got so far
But it feels all right, and I won't hurt anyone tonight
Just want to put things in perspective yeah, take a chance and learn another point of view
Learn to make myself selective yeah, with the truth, 'cos nothing else will do
With all the armies of the modern world on my side, fighting for "my right to speak"
It seems the ammunition's falling in the wrong place, 'cos no-one's ever listened to me
But it feels all right, and there's every chance that I'll survive the night
They like to sit back and ignore me yeah, like a billion other different points of view
They sent a weapon to destroy me yeah, and its next target looks an awful lot like you
Running round in circles from the cradle to the grave
Searching for security or anything that we can save
It takes four egos to start one war, throw in some weapons, devise a cause
The media reports it, the politicians lead, I write songs about it, so all of us can feed
Throwing metal at the sky, seeing where it lands and try
It's all up-hill from here
I can see for miles, I can see the miles
On faces I used to know.
It feels like the world is collapsing
And I keep on falling down
And I can't find a way to stop this.
It's what you want to be,
It's easy can't you see.
The way ahead seems to be so easy,
But when you reach the hilltops
You'll be freezing
And as I stand up here,
I build myself a wall, I have no fear of falling
From my pinnacle.
II. Two For The Queue (part one)
You'd been alive for thirty minutes when you filled in your first form,
With blood taken from your left heel just to prove that you were born,
And they filed away the papers and you took your place in the queue.
Through the years of quiet childhood they plotted out your fate,
They had you on their system, there was no hurry, they could wait!
So by the time you'd finished schooling,
You'd learned your place In the queue.
Shaping the line into order, filtering the ones who will rule,
Positioning their appointed marshalls,
In the churches, the youth clubs and schools......
They were there when you got busted and they now have prints to say,
That you spent three weeks in the U.S. and you stole a coat from C&A;
They can look you up at any time,
And gauge your place in the queue.
I walk this world as a number,
No face, no name, no character, no point of view,
And they tick me off and file me and save me to their drives,
But never know completely why or who....
[Spectacular Saxophone Solo]
I walk this world as a number,
A statistic in the spreadsheet on the pile,
I interact with others who they let cross my path,
We entertain each other for a while,
II. Shaping The Line
[instrumental]
III. Heirarchies
In every situation there's a heirarchy, Someone IN CHARGE, some ladder to climb,
From collecting stamps to national government,
there's always a front and a back of the line.
You may say that you're immune,
The world dances to your tune,
But be honest, is that your name on the score?
The mastermind "dons" of the East-End gangsters,
The president of your local Round Table Club,
The man who represents you on the local council,
The technician who controls your local network hub. (No offence Adam)
And you may try to "break on through",
- It's sometimes good, but when you do.
You just find yourself moving one place up in the queue.
IV. The Escher Staircase
You could walk that Escher Staircase,
Or push the Sysyphean Stone,
You could stand on bridges, screaming,
For a place to call your own,
or you could call it "fiction",
(feel the roughness of the sands of time in your hands again)
Give no heed to false position,
(Stand and observe all the colours and the feelings in these lands again)
You might never find the goal that: you were hoping for,
You might search for rites of passage but never see the door,
Outside the world is waiting, bated breath, for any words that you have to say
While you sit contemplating the queue and the problems that face your world today.
And far away in a land we built when we were younger,
Our dreams stand tall and our hopes still flare with youth,
But we sold them, we sold them all for the price of a B.M.W,
Adding our names to the spreadsheet and
Taking our place in the queue.
Take on board the lying commercials, the promises of kings,
We're inviting the very virii that hold our feelings, in.
Or we could take the high road, look down on the cheating and the con-men,
Who've held our lives so long,
or we could "Do As We're Told".
Wait in line forever, until the end of our life's little song.
V. An 'elping hand
[instrumental]
VI. Two For The Queue (part two)
Fools and politicians, paupers, Kings and Popes,
All guided to their futures by the eternal purple ropes,
Taking castoffs from the man in front and
Passing them back down the queue
I walk this world as a number
A statistic in the spreadsheet on the pile,
I interact with others who they let cross my path,
We entertain each other for a while.
VII. The Escher Staircase
The sun is hanging low now and the nights are drawing in
Everywhere I go are signs of autumn — the air seems thin
A new ache in a muscle, a new crack in some bone
Another word that just enters the new language on its own... innit?
And I fail, every time I lose the trail, every time the paper-chase of this new race
Leads me into some darkened place, I flap my hands in effort to keep up
A new band on the TV, with, oh-so familiar sound!
That echoes things and sentiments I liked before, — first time around
And I fail, every time I touch the braille, every time I run my fingers 'cross the words
I cannot read, the dots are blurred, there's nothing you can write that I can feel
Age! — creeping on me like rampage, carving lines upon my face
The fast distorting youth, the sunken eyes, the broken tooth,
The shadows of reflections I once knew
Old? — Not quite yet there, but I'm told days get shorter as you
Mould them to your respective needs, shrinking as your life blood bleeds
Into someone else's system, or their veins.
HOLD ON! for a moment! — the sky's as blue as when I was young!
And I've as much right to play there as the young guys
Beneath a billion-year-old sun.
And I still have my fingers, and they still push the keys
'Cos everyone I know got older... at the same rate as me
There are only two of me
One's lost in 1973, with faded loons and pom-pom hat, an afghan, C.N.D. and all that
The Light falls so softly on the village's roofs
Spreads indistinctly over valleys and plains
The last grasps of daylight hand onto the trees
The branches retracting... becoming one with the night
In their secret places the late birds bed down
In steeples and pylons their life carries on
And in TV-lit windows we all find our home
On the great star-lit landscape we see from the air
We need no more fear of the dark than the morning
For light needs a place it can play
Shadows eclipsing the light that remains
As ten million hot suns beat down on they prey
While one half is blinded the other watches in awe
The universe turning on its infinite way
Watch as the night sky revolves into daybreak
Wait for the first rays of light
Think of new lives, think of new days
Here as the sunlight goes under
Hope our new hopes, dream our new dreams
Think of new worlds without number
And all we can do is imagine the morning
On worlds that we reach in our dreams
The sun is still shining where the eagle set down
And on the people 'neath the westerly sky
But keep our eyes skyward with hope in our hearts
The square's a picture postcard
And it's just like on TV
The brasseries and sprawling pavement cafés
Casting lumiere onto the streets of Gay Paris
And the searchlight from the great tower hits the evening
As the white buildings sauté in the oil of the setting sun...
The doorway of the Gare Du Nord is a festival
Of commuters and tourists all on their beat
The hive of cars and trams and taxis
Leaving time-lapse ribbons hanging there, all down the street
And the Sacre-Coeur lights, they stay on 'til midnight
While the ghosts of the great artists still do their rounds
As the night comes around the city settles down,
From this hotel room I've found, there's two cities in this town, and two paths to go down
There's a line of sleeping bags now, where the souvenir stands stood,
Taking the last begrudging Euros from the hands of the tourists
- for the pockets of the hoods
The station canopy's a doss house now, and every city street's a lounge
Toa thousand homeless lost souls on the late shift,
On a late night litter scrounge
Pulling pizzas from the bins on the Champs Elysées
Forming huddled groups down by the Siene at Notre Dame
And as the city settles down, you don't wanna be around
'Cos from this hotel room I've found, theres two cities in this town,
And I'm living in one, but I could be in the other tomorrow,
Oh tomorrow!
Breathing in the morning air on the balcony some hours later
It all seems like a dream
And I wonder if those people gathered by the Metro,
Are the ones who slept beneath me
And the city and its monuments, will they reach the horizon now,
As night comes to the city, she's working hard on her computer
She takes her work and bundles it up now, and then she shrugs her shoulders
Slowly plods her way downstairs, drops the key off, starts the motor,
Saves her life on tiny disks, they're not backed up, but she'll take that risk.
Give or take an hour or two, he'll be heading in the same direction
Swapping one desktop for another in the search for his reflection
Figures dance before their eyes, but keep the world outside at distance
Help to keep outside — the night.
Four floors up he knows she's gone, he felt the movement in the ether
With the city spread below, he calls to her across suburbia,
The city will not carry his voice tonight.
Back at home the keys still click to the rhythm of their isolation
The flicker on the VDU's got the same old shade of grey frustration
Both the desktops look the same in the quiet of their bedrooms
Help to keep outside — the night.
Four floors up he knows she's gone, he felt the movement in the ether
With the city spread below, he calls to her across suburbia,
Though the tiny icon lights up green in an empty room but goes unseen,
She can't hear his hi-fi — Joni singing:
“everything comes and goes,
pleasure moves on too early, trouble leaves too slow” — not tonight
He never knows if he'll be found, running for the underground
But she looks for him in there
Scanners trace him through the park, a red dot moving through the dark
She waits for him in there,
All the anger, all the pain, surfaces inside again
All the passion, all the sex, all the heat of being...
cyber — ex
The Full Gamut
1. The D599 - Dusk
Lying on our backs,
On the cooling tarmac of a country road, we watched the stars,
We watched them fall.
And you made 36, I got as far as 49, before we laughed aloud
Raced back to the house again,
With no idea at all...
... of our own position in infinity
Beware of the promises of songs
When you know the road ahead can be so long,
As we watched the stars that night
We had no more idea of our plight,
Than an earthworm beneath the tripod
Of the surveyor's theodolite
2. Gothenburg
I'm standing on a stage in Sweden in the rain
But only see the sunlight from your face
It illuminates the faces that smile back from the crowd
We create the time, but you create the place
And the curtains are closing on this act of the play
Tomorrow it seems will be a different kind of day
Stay with me a while! - let me live this moment once or twice
Freeze Frame! - Magnify! - Do I see trouble in your eyes?
Have I just borne witness to the scars that you bear,
From my own pursuit of dreams that perhaps we don't share?
"Talk to me a while", I'd plead, knowing all was said and done,
And that words alone can't change things, Not when the fighting's already begun,
We had a Utopian postcode and a Nirvanan phone,
But no-one was calling and we were left alone
Lying on our backs,
On the cooling tarmac of a country road, we watched the stars,
We watched them fall.
Lying to ourselves
In the quiet slumber of a foreign town
We let it slide
With no idea at all...
... of our own position in infinity
Oh beware of the promises of songs
When the road ahead can be so long
For constructed poetic verse,
No matter how well-rehearsed
Can't fill in all the cavities
In the mouth that formed the curse
3. Last Tango (instrumental)
4. Studio Tan
There's a kind of comfort in the whirring of a fan,
The dimmed studio lights and turning counters.
The soundproofing a barrier to the hostile world outside,
It can carry on without us
But out there it's changing by the instant
And I'm in here on my own.
I kid myself that you are in here with me,
And you're speaking through me now,
That evrything I do in here's for "US" not just for me
but I never could quite explain how
The room is empty, or, the room is full
Inspiration comes and goes... but
In the end we became each others tea-break
Togetherness was just supposed.
And inside I just never could see that
But out here it just seems so clear.
5. Not A Drill - A storm in the mountains of Cantal
We've had so much of trading insults
Oaths and vows are useless, like before
Petty thoughts and skeletons in closets
Are lying all across our wooden floor
And nothing we believe is sacred in our massive quest to hurt.
Everything we're good at is in question
Everything we've achieved is in the mire
And all we have is bile and sick, the ending just can't come too quick
All that we've created has to die
We rip ourselves apart and fall asleep exhausted by the strain
This is not a rehearsal
This is not a drill
Madness rides tonight, banners flying
And it's for real
They get stronger, while we get weaker... and no-one cares
6. Southend On Sea
I'm standing on a stage in England, blinded by the lights
Hard to even know you're there,
But inside I know the switches have been thrown in your mind
just a question of when and where
And all of these years I took for granted,
come on back now and whisper in my ears...
"I never thought twice...
as blind as three mice"
But I never thought I'd be alone
7. The A1 North of Paris
It's time to bring the curtain down,
Time to say our final words,
I can feel it in my bones
I can feel it in my water
Traffic jams and French landscape flash by
Lost in a blur of deja vu
Still, I can't keep my fingers off
the self destruction buttons
And suddenly . it's happening!
I'm sliding into the void I built with you
My lifetime ahead is slipping away
My fingers are clawing but nothing seems any use
What we set in gear has meshed at last
Question marks hover over our past
like barrage balloons that wait over some
defended... terrified city
But through it all, I Love You still,
Yet only find spiteful, hurtful things to say,
We take the vow, we make the dive
and head for the exit without even knowing the way
8. Four Last Days
And the water turns to wine
And the wine turns into pills
And the pills turn into games
But the games are just cheap thrills
Beware of the promises of songs
When you know the road ahead can be so long,
And all my anger cannot move
Or even seek to disprove,
The need I have inside me,
For the love I lost, which can never be removed
9. The D599 and the A61 (Dusk)
Lying on our backs
A Thousand miles apart
At whatever moment
With synchronised hearts
We'll watch the stars
we'll watch them fall
And from whatever country it's still the same milky way
And I only can dream that maybe some day
Another soul dies in a tenement in England
Takes his first ride in a company car
His family will pay all their lives for this service
Dictated to them by economics and the law
oh England! My heart goes out to you tonight
Hanging around in the shopping blocks and precincts
Some kid from school is on his way home
he sees his dreams in a mobile phone shop window
And builds a microcosm of his own
oh England! My heart goes out to you tonight
Can this be real, can this be true?
Is this really all there is to life?
Is this the vision that we had in the past?
A country built from sellotape and glue?
And as the rain slants down and washes the colour from the streets
We hide in pubs and houses in front of old TVs
With the colour set to maximum in the hope that it can reach
Called into life comes a man knuckled down, broken in, but already working
Slightly bemused by the new world he finds himself in
Adapting his thoughts to environments strange and bizarre,
He never thought to encounter,
Running his fingers through things he once read of in books
And all of it seems so unclear
It's not the future he once held so dear
But there's always tomorrow, always today
There's always something in the way
He grew up with Eagle — computers that plotted his courses to far distant planets
But ended up in a grey office suite, with Excel
Now he finds routes to the goals of his peers
And the vast empty space of their pockets
Crossing the vacuum that lies between sci-fi and hell
And all of it just seems so drear
It's not the future we once held so dear
But there's always tomorrow, always today
(The future never looks
There's always something in the way
(Like It reads in the books)
And is this the dream I had as a child?
To see moons from whatever side...
Exploring space with flashing lights
To ride in the pod at Virgil's right
To boldly go where no man went before
To take chicks along just to settle the score
I smile and press the key
And see Uncle Microsoft smiling right back at me
If I could take on those adventures
Have I reached the point where I'd rather stay at home?
And is the comfort of the slippers worth trading
For an evening in the Federation Neutral Zone?
It's half past nine on Tuesday morning
And still nobody's landed yet on Mars
But if I get my quota finished there might be time
For a swift half in the bar
What happened to me?
Was it a turning that I took?
What happened to the future?
It's not as good as the book.
They went to space in an old tin of beans haphazardly strapped to a firework,
With less than a ZX81 to direct them back home...
We sit here with Gigs (abytes) and just twiddle our thumbs,
While personalising our desktops
Raising the firewalls and hoping the heatshields can hold
I watched Buzz Aldrin step out of the tin, to the Moon and start his adventure
That seems to end here with a nice coloured “skin” for my phone
I see those steps through a digital stream and a mass of hot burning plasma
Neatly wrapped up on a 50 inch screen in my home
And though the pictures aren't clear
There's so much more there than I'm wanting here
And there's always tomorrow, always today
(The future never looks
There's always something in the way.
In Earnest
Words & Music: Andy Tillson
I. The Radio Amateur
Keying his mic' as he searches for life,
A gentle old man sits alone in the dark,
He's scanning the waves,
Looking for memories he can share.
His correspondents collect him like stamps,
Adding his callsign to their trophies and maps,
And none of them wonder just who it is they're talking to,
None of them think to ask the kind of man he was...
"I was a pilot, in a war long ago
and it all seemed to matter way back then..."
And now and then he feels the ground-rush,
As his plane hits the air,
Or feels his ground crew rally round him once again.
II. Worthy of Memory part 1
He remembers everything about flying Spitfires, sending Morse,
The crackle of the radio, the tension of the news reports,
He flew to save his people!
His people do not want to know him now.
He remembers every detail about those sand-bagged days,
But every chapter that came after, vanishes in blurry haze,
He has no great love story, just medals and a glory, gone for good.
He gave his youth - just like he should.
III. Demobilized
He demobbed in 1945 as the world he'd fought for came alive,
He looked for his friends to find that most of them had gone.
He scanned the radio the next few years, until the last ones disappeared,
When no-one was left, our Earnest looked to pastures new, from his viewpoint,
A mile above the ground,
He looked down on his oyster, green and blue.
IV. Dehumanized
He sits in a hundred countries, counting off his latter years, while...
Leaders sit in panelled War-Rooms, fuelled by their peoples' fears,
They'll find so many willing,
So many, ready to do what he has done
V. Flights of Fancy
He remembers smoky jazz bars in the years after war,
The feeling of nostalgia was creeping up and taking over
And after that it all just seemed the same,
How could he ever equal it again?
And in his flights of fancy he's still the captain of his crew
His navigator on the double bass?
Is that Lofty up there with him too?
But it all came down so fast,
And this be-bop won't last
And in his flights of fancy he never even left the R.A.F.
It all came down so fast, and
Earnest only has the past,
He's a hero in November
But all year long he's last in the Queue
VI. Worthy of Memory part 2
He remembers something - about a motorbike in Lincolnshire?
A rally -- for Ham Radio?, his kids on a trip?, to Brighton Pier?
His heart is in the 40's
His roaming engines still sport his name...
In Earnest, we all had a friend.
VII. The Silent Key (instrumental)
VIII. Earnest Dreams of 617
Lifelong memories as he hits the dam
of Bouncing Bombs and slide rules,
Radio cans...
It's Earnest in the cockpit and he'll never know
A moment to compare to this one,
On the Earth... below
IX. Some Crazy Old Guy
Sipping his pint as he sits at the bar
A lonely old man sits alone with his thoughts
Around him we buzz, and never notice that he's there.
He's in the way when we order our drinks,
He's there every night of the week,
Some Crazy Old Guy who tells those stories all the time...
...But he's not with us, he's miles away from here,
In the only past we gave him worth his thoughts.
So we'll never see his Spitfire as it makes its final roll,
And we'll never learn the lessons he was taught.
X. In Earnest
Don't leave me nostalgic for the wrong things in my life,
I don't want adventures among your grand designs of war!
I'll take a clear morning with the wind in my hair,