18 posts tagged “lyric”
In 1983 as an undergraduate in Middlesbrough, I hosted Sunday music sessions with musician friend Steve Gillgallon
Steve Gillgallon - flanged bass, Colin Walker - keyboards Trev Teasdel - acoustic guitar / Vocals.
LADY OF DARKNESS (By Colin Walker)
Walking along a lonely shore
Lapped by waters of illusion
out of the mist she came to me
The timeless daughter of the ocean.
Where she came from, I don't know
Like magic out of nowhere
Here eyes glittered like diamonds
The moon shone in her hair.
Chorus -
Lady of Darkness
With Stars in her eyes
She can never love you
So don't believe her lies.
Lady of Darksness
You'll never find the key
To unlock her secrets
She blongs to the sea.
In silence we made love
Then she stood and took my hand
At midnight she said goodbye
and left me alone up on the sand.
At night I return to the shore
hoping to find her waiting there
but I'm certain deep in my heart
we'll never meet again this way.
Coda -
LADY OF DARKNESS
SHE CAN NEVER LOVE YOU
LADY OF DARKNESS
TO UNLOCK HER SECRETS.
DANCE & R n B -
The SURROUND SOUND
(Cut-up Performance poem by Trev Teasdel 2005 - Teesside) (To be read extremely fast!)
This also appears in Trev's book - Nightfall in Sorrento
One-stop - hip hop
Coming soon
Club classics
From the attic
Acid jazz and retro blast.
Brass with balls
Passion freaks
Bad asses
Bad in bed
Live your passion
Get your ration
On the slate
Tongue and groove.
The cadging coppers cap in hand
Jing and Jang orang-utans
Make the difference
Make your mark
Make a notch with your crotch
Coming soon
Trance that tune!
You’re the single of the week
Party proof, hair that’s sleek
Retro-clothes half antique
Pratt your hair and show a cheek.
Daft, Defected, unsuspected
Erections resurrected
Home goal, Hard soul
Soil the action
With dank distractions
Fuck hard because you’re worth it
Never dampen your down your style
Kitsch bar
dynamite
Box office smash
Born in a brewery
On organic beer
It’s game on – Edgy
Passport sunset
After-thought condom
The Kings of Leoness
Seek the fallen goddess.
But Your grail’s in the ale
Where you leave your vapour trails
It’s R&B stunning
Sponsored by Loreal
It’s Mingus, Cunnilingus
Unforgettable,
Nat King Coled,
Way good, way good,
Hip-hop, one stop,
Acid Jazz.
Ah! The dancing gambler
The warbling breeze
Can’t stop to freeze or unzip his knees
On a local scene with choice cut capers
He’s in the papers with thieves and rapers
It’s a downtown beat,
A dawn flotilla
Of academic epidemics who think with their dicks
A one stop promo
Game on - edgy
Passport sunset
In golf as in life
Perfectly aligned
With on line tickets
For fat Boy slim,
Fat Boy Slim.
Fat Boy Slim
It’s a must-see-drama
Wholly expresso
In a Mocha malaise
You piss on your passion
As your soul goes flashin’
You got sonnets in attic
And raps in the gutter
You’re life’s like a clutter
Of tranced R&B
Ah! But you’re the single of the week,
Party proof, hair that’s sleek
Retro-clothes half unique
A wig for hair and bare of cheek.
Fast food,
Fast fuck,
Urban Guerrilla
Your mind works like Mozilla
A firefox hedonist
Of misinformation
A Dreamweaver diva
Microsoft in the head
You shatter the windows of the dead.
You dance like a geek
Look sleek
But your girl comes clean
Unzips your genes
Feels for your rod
Alters your DNA
But steals your I-pod
Ah! You’re sick as a carrot
You fuck like a parrot
What ho!
What can anyone say?
...........................
As below The Crack magazine (NE What's On freebie) was a good source for the cut-up performance poem and the title from too much hearing Radio Galaxy (for Dance and R & B) - somekind of reflection of modern culture going on there. It went through various drafts, parring it down and developing the theme, re-cutting and re-juxtaposing the images until it was something I could read extremely fast! This has gone down well at spoken word gigs around the country. The trick is to have fun witht he images and word plays but to try and say something at the same time - either tangible or impressionistically.
They say that the media feeds on the media so that poets and artists may be inspired by TV, Radio, Magazines and novels and ad men by songs, poetry films.
STEREOPHONIC LONDON
(Cut-up performance poem by Trev Teasdel - Teesside 2006)
A trance version of this poems was produced by Coventry drummer / producer Jim Pryal and can be heard on Culture Fusion My Space with some other collaborations with me Link to Culture Fusion My Space
There is another also another downloadable version on Lulu by Jim Pryal (Culture Fusion)
http://www.lulu.com/content/multimedia/stereophonic-london/5237255
It also appears in Trev's book Nightfall in Sorrento
STEREOPHONIC LONDON
Sleazy inner city sounds
Skateboarding compounds with stereo surrounds
Swishbar
stances - gravitating
gangsters
Sidewinder glances.
.
Razorlight floodgates
Redlight night flights
Tempting the Thames to take off its shawl
For the urban sprawl.
Budvar rattlesnakes
A screech of brakes in the circle of spheres
Where the past appears
In the passion plays of parliament
Where the harlots are bent to pay the rent
Their rosebud lips, their tight-rope slips
Their clips and bits
inspire
the phallacies of policies
but money never grows on trees.
Cos The world’s in a mess
The truth’s been undressed
Has a lie to confess
But were walking the dog back to happiness.
It’s an absurd world where the third world
Have no food in the larder
It gets harder and harder
While the groove armada
Play the music harder
Keep it solid but the world is squalid
They sell the world with sex
Free air time and texts
So politically correct
Paranoid and indirect
Their bad decisions
tunnel visions - revisions and isms
Did they
plan it to be off the planet?
But we’re walking the dog back to happiness
There’s a lie to confess, the truth to undress
This world’s in a mess, uptight with the stress.
Cheapdate bed-ins & Hotsnake weddings
Women seeking women in the cocktail inns
We are sat by the fire in the house of desire
Ignoring the Karma and the claims of Nirvana
Wide-eyed promoters sat on a lotus
Under the spell of San Miguel
The filament looters on fly-by scooters
Seek the meaning of life in their gel
Reality bites
On midwinter nights
Chill out
And go with the flow.
Cause we have to confess, the worlds in a mess
We’re walking the dog back to happiness
There’s a lie to digest and all the rest
We’re walking the dog back to happiness.
......................
It's looking for evocative juxtapositions with the cut ups, playing with words, re-cutting phrases and also looking for a theme, idea to bring them together, give some kind of meaning - linear or surreal or both. Sometimes the poems takes off on its own and the cuts outs are only drawn on for inputs. There was various reworkings with this one - it also had to be something I could read out loud / perform effectivly without tripping over my alliteration on stage, especially after a bevy or two.
Again this one because of a Coventry interest. The Broadgate Gnome Vox blog mentioned 5am calls and Sanies (Sandwiches). I wrote this one circ 1977. I was a volunteer Welfare Rights Worker at the time at the Coventry Unemployed Workers Centre. It was a time when the Coventry car industry, that had survived many a slump, was going through a crisis with so many workers being made redundant. I was was working part time for a Staff agency being sent here there and every where. A catalogue warehouse in Hinckley, Cashes, Green Shield Stamps in Daventry and many more. I hated it but it paid me some money. The longest stay was at Green Shield stamps. Quite a few Coventry musicians used the agency to supplement their income. Neol Davies was one. He was with Hardtop 22 at the time - a forerunner of the Two Tone bands that would break a year or two down the line. Neol would pick us up in his van at some unearthly hour and drive us to Daventry - to go out on the wagons delivering, work in the office sorting Green Sheild Stamp books out or work in the warehouse. It was 77 and things were becoming more political, more aggressive. Punk was just breaking and many Cov bands were into Jazz-rock still - Reluctant Stereotypes, Bung. I'd been jamming with Andy Cairns a lot - he'd been in a Jazz rock outfit with Horace - later of the Specials. Andy had been trading his rock guitar licks for Jazz ones at the Earlsdon Cottage and when we jammed he got me to play all kinds of Jazz chord sequences while he practied his lead licks. It was good for me as I was beginning to learn Jazz chords and use them in my songs. This was an early one and the audio is a rough take on a mono cassette player at the time. There was a lot of racism in the factories I worked and opinions were informed mostly by the tabloids. The song reflects that and the alienation we all felt working in these places. Not totally auto-biographical - I don't smoke for instance! In the warehouse job, there were boxes of Action man and Action Women. One bright spark decided that Action man and Action women should be getting some - er - action! So he placed them in a strategic position and hung action woman's knickers on action man's rifle! Incidents like inspired some of the characters that appear in the song!
I THINK OF YOU - by Trev Teasdel – Coventry 1977
In the morning I leave my bed
Throw cold water at my head
Breakfast ate and paper read
Catch the bus, then I just
Slip into that old routine.
When it’s seven in the morning and I’m late
And I face another factory day.
Take a drag on my fag, then I turn and I curse my fate.
Chorus
I think of you – I really do
I think of you – whatever I do
I think of you –oo..
Teabreak come and teabreak go
Time really knows how to go slow
Working like a clock-work toy
In better ways my time I could employ.
Sanies ate and tea is drank
Hands they itch, my mind is blank
The foreman’s eye on us is bent
And looks as if he’s coming for the rent.
When it’s early in the morning and it’s break
And its hard to get through the day
Take a drag on my fag then I turn and I curse my fate.
Chorus
On my left is Jeremy Pike
Who tells you all about his motorbike
And the leathers he wears skintight
In his helmet he looks a freaky sight
Gives old ladies a terrible fright
They banned him from the Dog that Bites..
On my right is Arnold Dick
The Daily Fun’s what makes him tick
Bores you with his gossip column politics
Blames the blacks for everything
From his earache to bad housing
Picks on all the scapegoats he can find – hind…
Then there is old Albert Babel
Who tells you what he did with Mabel
Finally got her into bed
Were doing nicely when it came to a head
Albert went and fell out of bed
Same thing happened again and again
Wrote to the problem page
They told him they thought it was his age
Just a phase he was going through
Sent him a book on How to Screw
This was an attempt at a kind of Streets of London time song but probably with a heavier - keyboard based feel. Never finished or revised it - it remains a first and discarded draft. It's more in a stream of concsciousness form. Included here more because of the Coventry interest and references.
Can't remember the exact circumstances - it was back in 1970, I was at the Coventry Arts Umbrella teatime - ish on a Saturday. Was waiting around to go to the Lanch Poly gig later in the evening.
I think there was a young lady involved who I felt something for but who walked in with someone else. I decided to walk off the blues and left Queen Victoria Rd. and followed the inner ring road to the turn off for the Hope and Achor pub and Colin Campbell (Village Disco).
As I walked words and images were forming. Streets of London was popular at the time, often sung at the Umbrella Club. That was in my head and I saw plenty of things to make me feel less down as I walked along the ring road which are mentioned in the lyric. I saw Charlie along the way who I think is the Ivan in the press cutting. He used to sit on the wall outside the Golden Cross (where the Diggers Hole (an open art gallery located in a Coventry bomb hole) and shyly ask if we had a 'penny'. Everyone talked to him. There were others lying in the doorways. Evening was breaking - inky clouds of night were creeping across the sky. Things always feel worse then as the world seems to close in on you.
Half way along the ringroad, a white minibus pulled up full of long haired, bearded musicians. Seeing my long hair and trench coat, they figured I'd know where the Lanch Poly was. I looked at the side of the van - It said Blodwyn Pig - the 70's blues band. I was planning to go and see them later on. Meanwhile I had my own blues to write not that it was written in a blues form. I directed them and continued on to the Hope and Anchor and Village. Listening to a local band until the Lanch opened.
MY SORROW HID IN SHAME by Trev Teasdel Coventry 1970
And darkness flowed in like flood waters, the sun went to bed with the sea.
The moon now on nightwatch threw stars in the sky for to see.
I walked along the ring road footpath where vagrants and down and outs often pass
And imagined myself to be one in the low state I was in.
I passed the wreck of a car to which I likened myself
Passed gravestones in the yard, gazed over at the Church of God
I stopped by a sign which read Salvation Army Hostels
And thought of hitching a ride But there was no traffic was in sight.
Til I saw the ghastly figure of a man who had been cast aside
Passed a couple in the doorway, ignored their request for a light.
I continued down a side road to a pub called the Hope and Anchor
Where beer smells make the wind unstable but found no hope nor anchor.
I passed houses now demolished, like my dreams lay in ruins on the ground
I thought of the face of the one I loved, and tears ran away from my eyes
I took a deep breath, the air tasted of meths, Oh to see the poor site of two city tramps
Lying like sacks on the ground, one begged a coin and the other a fag
My heart felt pity but pride held me back from giving my sympathy away.
As I entered the hall of a bright discotheque, my sorrow hid in shame
To think of all the friends and things I possess, compared to the men whose souls are lost
In the doorways of no consequence.
Much has been made on the Hobo site about Coventry's post war traffic free shopping centre. This was an early song when I was 18 intended to have a psychedelic feel with keyboard phasing al la Small Faces Itchycoo Park. It was a concept song which had various changes of pace. Never really worked it out musically althugh there was an attempt to work the music as I heard it out on guitar - the audio of which is included here - very much at the composing stage with false starts and tryouts - so don't expect a polished performance - this is 'process' stuff - bootleg album stuff! It wasn't written entirely about the Coventry shopping precinct - we had one (now knocked down) in Willenhall too - I think the church there was St. Mary's and it had a very anti-consumerism theme! Although the audio doens't reflect that - the opening verse (as I heard it at the time) would start slow with sustained Hammond organ chords and echoed voice - sort of God Only Knows by the Beach Boys is the nearest I can describe it. A bit juvenile now maybe but an early lyric.
THE PRECINCT OF ST MARY’S
(The Modern Traffic Free Shopping Centre)
by Trev Teasdel Coventry Feb 1969
On a windy Saturday Afternoon
They sky isn’t grey but it’s getting that way.
Housewives are rushing by
They all have groceries to buy.
The shops all display their full range of goods
Dairy butter to raincoat hoods
Marmalade to Appleade
Pints of milk to wool and silk
Magazine and window leans
Budgie seed – in fact all you need.
Chorus
In the Precinct of Mary’s
In the Precinct of Mary’s
The Modern traffic free shopping centre.
There’s a barber in the end row, you know
A recommended place to go
An adjacent hardware store is far superior
To their central branch.
Signs that con you and cast spells upon you
Appealing to emotions
In aid of commercial promotions.
Pricy sales and pan scales
Mind arresting windows
People treading on your toes
Passing through anxious crowds
Minds full of household clouds
Emptying purses and worried curses.
Neon displays always pays
In the midst of a commercial haze
Over-burdened shopping bags
Eye straining price tags
St. Mary’s bells are ringing
Children run around singing
To chorus……….
Another (like Runaway Train below) inspired while at Coventry (Butts) Technical College but written up a year later. During the summer of 1970 I was living in a shared house in Brunswick Rd. Near the Tech College along with Al Docker and others from Coventry Arts Umbrella Club (members of the Executive Committee). I was watching the rain bounce of the huts at the back of the tech where I had many a Electro-technology lecture and found some jottings done in one of the lectures. The song fromed from those jotttings and a line in a Paul Simon song - Homeward Bound - I need someone to comfort me. It had a kind of Simon and Garfunkle feel to it. I was reading Roger McGough at the time - and experimenting with personification in my lyrics (giving inanimate objects human qualities) - ' the buildings shiver and stamp their feet etc.' in the lyric.
I NEED SOME COMFORT NOW
By Trev Teasdel, Coventry August 1970
The rain falls upon the corrugated rooftops
Rebounds in a new lease of life
Dies in the gutter, flows down the drain.
I’m sittin’ alone
Hands on my chin
Thinking of how
I need some comfort now.
Is that the sun I see
Peeping from behind a cloud?
Come into my room
Lie on my bed, swim in my mind
I’m sittin’ alone
Hands on my chin
Thinking of how
I need some comfort now.
Watching from my window
I see the buildings shiver
Stamping their feet
Shake and look to the sky.
I’m sittin’ alone
Hands on my chin
Thinking of how
I need some comfort now.
The tears fall on the paper on my lap
Reflecting my inner strife.
The sighs and the mutter
Grow with the pain.
I’m sittin’ alone
Hands on my chin
Thinking of how
I need some comfort now.
Is that her
face I see
Peeping from behind the gate?
Come into my room, lie on my bed
Let’s both unwind.
I’m sittin’ at home
Arms round her tight
Smiling at how
She needs my comfort now.
No audio with this. Song began the year before at Coventry Technical College (The Butts Tech as it was known). I was on day release there as an apprentice electrician. My mind was more on music and songwriting and the Electro-technology lecturer soon sussed that when he caught me jotting song ideas down during his lectures. My hair was gettin longish around then and probabbly thinking satrically of Donavan and flower power suddenly appeared behind me a quipped "Writing poems to a flower are we Teasdel?". Of course I had to use that somewhere and in March 1970 I wrote this - also influenced by reading Pete Brown's lyrics to Jack Bruce's Songs to a Tailor and Cream lyrics ("Station doesn't comfort me") was probably influened by a line in Cream's White Room. I'd just seen Jack Bruce at the Lanch Poly. I think there was a Jigsaw single out (a Coventry band that made the charts with Sky High) may have inclenced the chorus. A lost -love song that seemed to thrive on mixed metaphors in its imagery. 'fixings come unscrewed' is the only direct reference to the electrical work - sockets that have come away from the wall used metaphorically - the fixings of a stable relationship etc.
RUNAWAY TRAIN
By Trev Teasdel Coventry March 1970
Runaway train – you ran away
You left my heart an empty tray
Now I wander aimlessly
But the station doesn’t comfort me.
So I’m singing poems to the flowers
To pass away those empty hours
Singing poems to the sky hi higher, higher…
Runaway plane – You took off
Left my soul an empty trough
Now I wander hastelessly
But the airport doesn’t comfort me.
So I’m singing poems to the flowers
To pass away those empty hours
Singing poems to the sky hi higher, higher…
Runaway rain you caused me pain
You trickled down a pavement drain
Left my thoughts in disharmony
But the rain clouds do not comfort me.
So I’m singing poems to the flowers
To pass away those empty hours
Hurling curses to the sky hi higher, higher…
BRIDGE
Kicking fallen beech tree leaves
As my poem gently weaves
Its way into an autumn breeze
Convey my message please
Convey my message please.
Runaway Jane – You disappeared
Yu left my heart a cold deep fjord
Now I swim in solitude
My fixings have come unscrewed
So I whisper poems to her afar
She left my heart ajar.
Whisper poems to the sky hi higher higher…etc..
Runaway ship – you sailed alone
You left my heart a cobwebbed throne
I treated you so thoughtlessly
Now the harbour doesn’t comfort me.
So I feed my poems to the flowers
Take me back to your sacred bower
Just slinging poems to the sky hi higher, higher
LOVE SONG
By Trev Teasdel 1981 Middlesbrough.
Began as guitar exercise - Coventry guitarist Andy Cairns ( who played in a band with Horace of the Specials prior to Two Tone - came up to see me and lent me a lead guitar book. I'd worked out a bass riff from an exercise in the book and some chords. The book was based around blues riffs but this turned into more of a folkie thing. My bass and lead player on the audio developed the bass line into a more melodic structure that fitted with his acoustic lead part, he also arranged it so that the song modulated to Bm after the bridge instead of going back to Am.. Recorded on a Sharps stereo cassette player. Lyrically I was trying to write a different kind of love song - that maybe tried to get closer to it. The lyric appeared in my book Poet Reprobate in 1985. My lyric inspired a poem by my Teesside friend Ann Wainwright in 1981 - Ann was editor of Poetic Licence played flute on my song Teardrop on the Tees. The violin player on that song - Colin Wlaker follow through with a cynical version! the poems follows on from the lyric. Also -in terms of the 'process' is a 1985 version with me on keyboard and Steve Gillgallon on bass and a melodic analog syth. Steve was basically a bass player but when I got keyboards and syths - he just took off on them with no
prior experience or training! We never finished the syth version but it illustrates the musical development from acoustic to keyboard / syth.
Am G
Close your eyes and let them rest now
Am G
Dark days they will go past
Am G
Close your eyes and let them rest now
Am G
Oh the shadows they won’t last.
When you feel the tears swelling
And they’re not the tears of pain
And your lips begin to quiver
And it’s not with fear or strain.
When it’s hearts that speak not tongues
In a language queer to pens
When its souls that think not minds
With a logic that transcends
BRIDGE
Bm Em
It’s love yes its love
Bm Em
It’s love yes it’s love
Bm C#m A
It’s love and love has got to you..oo (Repeat)
Bm A
Take my hand and let me hold you
Bm A
Close as flesh can get
Bm A
Take my soul and let me show you
Bm A
That sacred place within
When flesh has done what flesh must do
And our hearts they are at peace
And we lay in sweet contentment
As if the troubled world had ceased.
To coda – as in bridge.
.......................................
LOVE SONG (Part2)
Please tell me you're as gentle
as a summer's breeze,
sailing gently towards my face.
Please tell me you're as gentle
as a daisy on its own in a field,
waving gently to and fro.
Please tell me you're as gentle
as a child
with the strength of a man
and the grace of a daisy
and the power of the breeze.
Please tell me.
Please.
Ann Wainwright 1982
................................
Love Song 3 by Trev Teasdel 1982
LOVE SONG – Trev Teasdel (Middlesbrough 82)
With skin on skin 
Warmth on warmth
Sliding up sliding down
Smoothing the furrows of yesterday’s frown
Easing the splinters of hurt from the heart.
My love is a gentle song
Breezing through the trees of your senses
Spreading the seeds of contentment
In the garden of your soul
Listen now
The breathy wind of love whispers
Can you hear it?
It tells you, tells you
Feel it gently now
Gliding gliding
Onward to your face
To your heart
Published in Open Heart Book - Poetic Licence 1983 Teesside
............................................
the locked door
we can lie naked,
skin on skin,
body in body,
but there's still the barrier -
a point we cannot pass -
we are bound by what we are,
man and women,
separate and eternally lonely
even at the moment of climax
we clutch at each other
pressing hard together
as if to melt our difference
into one whole,
dissolving the distance
between the souls
we sob in desperation
at the vacuum within
that can never be filled
for she is she
and I am he
and not even love
brings two to one.
Published in Open Heart Book - Poetic Licence 1983 Teesside
......
CAPTAIN SWING
(By Trev Teasdel 1976 - inspired by reading Hobsbawn / Rude book Captain Swing about the agricultural riots in the 19thc. while on an Economic History A' level course). There are traditional songs called that and one at least that came later and was more famous. This is mine for 1976 which I played in some folk clubs in Coventry but otherwise unpublished.)
Audio - Trev on guitar and vocals recorded on a sharps stereo cassette player)
CHORUS 1..
Light light your torches bright
Burn the hayricks burn
Light light your torches bright
burn the hayricks burn
The landlord is replacing our labour
With labour saving machines
Whilst we're in a living ditch
Under the Speenhamland scheme
With high rents and taxes and clergy tithes
We're robbed of decent lives.
Wages low and the prices so high
Families’ whole might die
(To Chorus..)
We'll unite in collective action
Sworn to secrecy
If they ask who is this Captain Swing
You've never heard of him.
We'll fight fight for the right to eat
To feed our families
Fight fight for the right to work
To earn our daily bread.
Chorus 2..
Thrash thrash the threshing machine
Smash the threshing machine
Thrash thrash the threshing machine
Smash the threshing machine.
We'll send send a warning letter
To the offending gent
"Revenge for thee is on the wing"
From thy determined Swing.
You can read read the riot act
We'll riot till we win
Here comes comes the Royal Dragoons
To shoot poor Captain Swing
(Chorus 1)
Though we bravely stood our ground'
and tried to put our case
The dragoons they fired their deathly shot
into our hungry face.
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