This was a concept for an EP way back in 2010 ... and it took me until 2017 to actually finish it!
Scroll down the page for the lyrics.
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Genghis Khan, I don’t like what you said about my wife
I’m disaffected and annoyed
‘Got my rebel hordes deployed
Your every yurt will be destroyed
And I’ll give you the pasting of your life.
Crazy Horse, you should have given Custer just a shave
Now you’re gonna get what for
I’ve got cavalry guns galore
Your birthright won’t exist no more
I’ll dispossess your nation
To teach you your obligation to behave.
If you’re playing the victim card
Nobody judges you too hard
Just take it easy on that higher ground
Funny how the land slides in our favour
Now that you do us down…
Star and Crescent, you’ve been locking horns since God knows when
Never mind who started it
Nobody cares, just wish you’d quit
Your endless tit for tat for tit
If you were Stan and Ollie
We’d be laughing at the folly of grown men.
We just want you all to quit
Your tat for tit for tat for tit
For tat for tit for tat for tit for tat for tit for tat for tit
For tat for tit for tat for tit for tat for tit for tat for tit
Fortatfortitfortatfortitfortatfortitfortatfortitfortatfortitfortatfortit
fortatfortitfortatfortitfor…..
You trim your candle, turn down your lamp
And your embers glow
You search their flicker for faint reminders
Of those you know
I wait for you, and when you turn in I’ll be there too
With you enfolded in me, the regular saints won’t do
Messrs Matthew and Mark
Will be left in the dark
Messrs Luke and John
Won’t know what’s going on
There may be people who work tonight
Or who sleep in peace
There may be people who weep, or sicken,
Or crave release
From all four corners beyond your room I know they call
But with you enfolded in me, I’d let every man jack fall
Messrs Matthew and Mark
Will be left in the dark
Messrs Luke and John
Won’t know what’s going on
Messrs Matthew and Mark
Will be left in the dark
Messrs Luke and John
Won’t know what’s going on
Messrs Matthew and Mark
Leave us be in the dark
Messrs Luke and John
It’s high time you were gone
I was barely weaned when my dad said to me
“I’m going to train you, young man;
You’ll learn all that’s good of the shaping of wood
‘Cause a carpenter, a carpenter, that’s what I am.
So said my father but time after time
Mother said “I disagree:
He’s gentle and fey, his hands pale as whey
I fear a carpenter, a carpenter he’ll never be.”
I was bound apprentice at 13 years old
Followed my dad like a lamb
As he seasoned and sawed and he planed and be bored
And said “A carpenter, a carpenter, that’s what I am”.
A breadboard I made for my ma’s cousin Liz
And used up a whole cedar tree
Mama booked bereft at the chippings that I’d left
And said “A carpenter, a carpenter he’ll never be”.
Late every evening you’d find me engrossed
Bathing the holes in my hands;
I’d bandage them tight, and my prayer for the night
Was “A carpenter, a carpenter, that’s what I am”.
I’d made good the roof for the girl of my dreams,
It fell down spectacularly;
That girl was heard to sneer as they carried her clear
“A carpenter, a carpenter he’ll never be”.
But I made no change
Till the voices in my head said:
“Anointed is something to be....”
Let the tough nuts in my stream
Do me down for living in my dream, it’s all the same to me
Let the gymslip mothers’ clique
Satirise my other-worldly streak, it’s all the same to me
‘Cause nothing can hit me where I live
You’ll hear no hoot that I could give
It’s no skin off my nose
Always I’m staring into space, always finding a better place
It’s no skin off my nose
My flippancies galore
May captivate or irritate or bore, it’s all the same to me
While the breadth of my estate
Provokes them all to jibe or deprecate, it’s all the same to me
‘Cause nothing can hit me where I live
You’ll hear no hoot that I could give
It’s no skin off my nose
Always I’m staring into space, always finding a better place
It’s no skin off my nose
It’s no skin off my nose
It’s no skin off my nose
Let the businesses that hire
Kid themselves I share their zealous fire, it’s all the same to me
Let the registrars collate
The papers that reduce us all to dates, it’s all the same to me
‘Cause nothing can hit me where I live
You’ll hear no hoot that I could give
It’s no skin off my nose
Always I’m staring into space, always finding a better place
It’s no skin off my nose
It’s no skin off my nose
It’s no skin off my nose