Inspired by Strummerville

Performing at Strummerville didn't only induce me to write about evil spaniels, it also got me writing some more political fare, a follow-up to this one. Audio version here.

Social surgery II

I’ve got a criminal mind but not criminal intent
and the sorts of convictions that’ll never be spent
on sucking up to bosses just to pay the rent
‘cos my sharply worded mockery’s sincerely meant.

When the law becomes a gag it’s our duty to defy,
shout out official secrets, broadcast far and wide,
expose the Selfservatives, the ConDems’ lies,
they only represent themselves, we’ve no reason to comply.

So, I fought the law and the lawman threatened,
winked at a crony and then a second,
there was no-one watching they must have reckoned
but their truncheons went limp when YouTube beckoned.

The powers-that-be, they like to throttle
out the life from dissent until they’ve got all
of us cowed, so whack ‘em with a champagne bottle,
a posh cosh to show that not all

Magnums are the same – ice creams, Dirty Harry,
Guy Fawkes in the Bullingdon, clubbing all the barri-
caded toffs, Moet on cranium,
crowds gather round, mushrooming like uranium

clouds – dark skies over Eton,
larval future ministers lie buggered up and beaten
by a black-masked man like Michael Keaton,
but not the sort of batman they expected to be meeting,

doesn’t care about the Joker, the Penguin, the Riddler
when there’s bricks to be lobbed at smarmy cufflink-fiddlers
like Hugo Boss ads made flesh in the middle of
Whitehall, soul-less suits who should consider a

change of career, break their drone-programming
like Red Dwarf’s Kryten, Ed Snowden, Bradley Manning,
pick up a spray-can, get culture-jamming,
give the world something more than fake orange tanning

and TV – reality’s much better
than game-shows and Noel Edmonds’ sweaters,
so don’t worry about whether ‘they’ will let us,
permission’s not required, and they are not our betters.

New Year, new stylings, old enemies

The third of my first three forays into the world of rap lyrics. The subject matter is one I like to explore, and it's recorded here.

Social surgery

I watched a John Cooper Clarke documentary,
it filled me with something incendiary,
an urge to rip the piss with wit and verbosity,
fight back with words at any animosity
that comes my way from fascists, trolls and haters,
Hitler-lickers and keyboard-masturbators,
it rolls off me like I’ve got a duck’s back,
armoured against it like a jacket of flak.

I was fifteen, and watching the news,
hippies being beaten like Kristallnacht and Jews,
I asked ‘Why? They’re just travelling and staying
at Stonehenge for a summer solstice lay-in,’
I was told ‘They’re not meant to be there’
but that’s no fucking answer, doesn’t anybody care,
now I know it as the Beanfield Battle
and the moment that I realised we’re treated just like cattle.

So Thatcher’s ghost, you made me what I am,
a thinker and a writer seeing through your money scam,
there’s no justice at the end of a baton,
or stealing from the poor and their benefits to fatten
up the rich, already too wealthy
while the 99% get National Unhealthy,
so tax like Tobin and maximum wage,
no more Tory viral parasite bacteriophage.

They might watch me down their fibreoptic cables,
tagged ‘domestic extremist’ or some other pointless label,
but it’s the business-suits you really need to watch,
they’ve got the same school-tie as your chief-inspector-cops,
Earth-rapists, exploiters and leeches,
seeing their selfish, greedy faces teaches
us dissent, to resist should be the default,
ignore the bread and circuses, don’t let yourself be bought

off by promises of better,
they’ll take all that you are and turn you into debtors,
then blame it on the unemployed and migrants,
keep the questioners down with state-sponsored violence,
and no liberty, so take action whatever,
together we are strong, shelter each other like umbrellas,
from whatever’s rained down by warmongers and bankers
then occupy and cut them out like cankers.

UKRAP-rap

Following on from UKIP-mockery Chaucer-style, here's something a bit more 21st century performed for the first time at Punkmas in the Global Cafe, RISC, Reading just before Christmas, and it's recorded too for your listening pleasure...

UKRAP

UKIP, U’re KRAP, you stink like kippers,
packed in a minibus like dead day-trippers
scared of Bulgaria, the Eurozone, Romania,
purple-blazered xenophobes with Anglo-monomania,
the last idiots dancing to Enoch Powell’s tune,
scratched out on violins in a zombie ballroom,
no rivers of blood, just the trickles of piss
that run down your leg when two races kiss.

Nigel Farage, top of all the bottom-feeders,
leading an asylum-break of Daily Mail believers
and Godfrey Bloom their hate-filled preacher,
swivel-eyed loon like the house-elf Kreacher,
he says all women are sluts and all foreigners are criminal
in his tiny-minded world where intelligence is minimal,
the English Channel’s the National Moat
and anyone brown’s off the last banana-boat.

Racists, misogynists, homophobes and bigots,
you wanna get in government you’re gonna have to rig it,
obsessed with Diana and Bongo-Bongo Land,
you worship Churchill like the Pope with a tissue in your hand,
you say you’re common-sensical not wingnuts full of bile
but I’ve trod in piles of dogshit with more cunning and more guile,
so fuck off with your leaflets and your stupid rosettes
and shuffle off to Dignitas, one-way ticket to the vet.

Listened to with rapped attention

I don't rap, or at least I didn't, but I'm open to trying new things and decided to attempt some light-hearted piratical pre-Yule jollity at an open mic night a few days ago. It seemed to go down well, and a few people asked to read it, so here it is complete with nods to the Beastie Boys, Eminem and Cap'n Jack Sparrow - and you can hear a recording here.

The Hip Hop Company of Privateers

We are the Hip Hop Company of Privateers,
rapscallions with hats and fuse-match beards
rhyming and stealing Spanish galleons,
sailing ‘em away through white-foam stallions,
faster ‘cross the Channel than David Walliams,
we kiss the gunner’s daughters but we never marry ‘em.

Flintlock, stock, and one smoking barrel,
we’ll keel-haul Robin Thicke and Pharrell
press-ganged in Southampton, on the run from Stonehenge,
a crew of dub-loons on the Queen Anne’s Revenge
flying the Jolly Roger McGough,
we welcome all the ladies with our tricorns doffed.

Now you’ve heard of women pirates disguised as guys,
down in the hammock-room a big surprise,
but on this ship our opps are equal,
X-chromosomes run thicker than treacle,
when we make port, when we drop anchor,
your sons will quiver like lily-livered… one, two, three, four…

Scowl and cross-words, monochromatic,
swinging on ropes we’re acrobatic,
we climb your rigging, you jump in the water,
all brown in the trousers like Luke Plank-walker,
the Navy chased us from Trinidad to Thailand,
but we’d buried all our treasure on a desert island.

Yo-ho-home is the place where the rum-cask is,
'a gottle o’ grog’ said the drunken ventriloquist,
Cadizzy rascals in the Bay of Biscay,
smoking sixty Silk Cutlass a day,
some fat, some slim, but all are shady,
give an undead monkey to the voodoo lady.

Never marooned or short of gold,
our timbers are shivered, our course is bold,
we’ve got a magic map, so pay attention,
a cross marks the spot where we hid our pensions –
three paces north and fifty west
but you’ve got to join us to hear the rest.

[Repeat] We are the…