20th Century Inertia

Twentieth Century Inertia (Cut up lyric by Trev Teasdel Coventry 1975)

In Romania the divorce rate dropped

20thCInertia2

If you don't push then you'll get shoved
Having fun in the tunnel of love
One is one's own enemy and friend
Van Gough cried "Misery will never end"

Bridge 1
Today someone started another new trend
Cos some of the old ones, they came to an end
Mankind your slaves are rising against you now.
You treat your women like skivvies
and your workers like slaves.
Now your coloureds and colonies
won't bless your myths with Kow Tow.

Everything you see could be a clue
To some unsolved mystery
Newsmen in Trinidad said they'd hung Malcolm X
Have the prophets really had a glimpse of the text?

Twentieth Century Inertia 89

Abandon baby found in a litter bin
In the backstreets someone threatened to do me in
Football team didn't win; goal disallowed.
But then we're all part of that football crowd.

The censors gave life a certificate X
Supermarkets sell their beans with sex
The sheer violence that assaults your head
Whatever would have Chaucer's pilgrims have said.

Bridge 2

Can u imagine Shakespeare's three weird sister
Shopping for Tampax in Marks and Blisters.
Ruthless Macbeth and an American Senator.
Bow down to the latest Charismatic Kings
Tourists tell us that 'England Swings
Can't afford to oil the pendulum swings.

She mixes cold intellectuality
with red-hot sexuality
You should have seen her body move
Still made sure her mind improved.

Pondering Weber's theories of Beaurocracy
Wondering what life would have been like under the Chinese literatti
Don't mind me I'm just expounding ideas
that caused some 20th Century tears.

**********************************************************

This song is a sort of Da da cut up. Bowie spoke of using the technique with songs like Drive in Saturday / Life on Mars. In Coventry Kevin Harrison of Zoastra / Whistler and later Urge - was experimenting with the technique when I interviewed them in Coventry 1974.

William Burroughs said that all art was 'Cut up'  - we all take bits from here and there and weave it into a creative whole - a work of fiction. Cut up is just a more concsious way of doing it.

I tried not to do it in the same way as the Da daists - I tried to let all the different things that compete for one's attention during the day come through rather than simply cut up various texts.

I was revising for my A Levels at the time - Sociology and literature and had all my notes out - hence lines like  - Divorce rate dropped / Marriage still in vogue / Weber's theories of Bearuocracy / Chinese Literatti etc. I had also been reading the Outsider and Beyond the Outsider by Colin Wilson - lines about Nijinsky / Van Gough / came from that. The radio was on - lines about abandon babies / Malcolm X / football came from overheard news bulletins / other things came from people passing by  - fragments of conversations / literature revision notes  - Chaucer etc.

Instead of creating a linear lyric  - I wanted something that reflected the moment and the state of the century. A collage effect. it is one of two songe I wrote at the time experimenting with a form of cut-up. Nothing To Add will be added after this!

Audio wise the vocal version was recorded on mono cassette player in 1975 in Coventry and the more punkish version was recorded on a portastudio in Saltburn by the Sea in 1989. On that version - the backing track - I play electric guitar - keyboard bass and lead and synth effects. While recording a a friend - John McGowan came by - he used to be a punk guitarist offered to do lead guitar - turned the sound volumes up full. Half way through whe was throwing my guitar around, bouncing it off the floor, using it as percussion and generally smashing hell out of it!! he said it was a joke and would do it again properly! No way - that was brilliant - just the sort of musical sound collage I wanted behind  it! However we never finished the track.