Friday, November 26, 2004

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I'm Alright Jack, Keep Your Hands Off Of My Stack

The harmonious school kids who sang back up on Pink Floyd's The Wall album grew older and litigious:

A group of former pupils at a London comprehensive school are poised to win thousands of pounds in unpaid royalties for singing on Pink Floyd's classic Another Brick In The Wall 25 years ago.
The pupils from the 1979 fourthform music class at Islington Green School secretly recorded vocals after their teacher was approached by the band's management.
Now the 23 ex-pupils are suing for overdue session musician royalties, taking advantage of the Copyright Act 1997 to claim a percentage of the money from broadcasts.

Music teacher Alun Renshaw took the 13- to 14-year-old pupils out of lessons by to the nearby Britannia Recording Studios in Islington to record - without the head's permission.
With its chorus of "We don't need no education, we don't need no thought control, no dark sarcasm in the classroom - teachers leave them kids alone," the song was an anthem for teenagers. The album The Wall sold over 12 million copies.


I know that Money is on the Dark Side album BTW. Roger Waters, the real heart of Pink Floyd has new songs on his website and this one excoriates Bush and Tony Blair:

Are these the people that we should bomb
Are we so sure they mean us harmIs this our pleasure, punishment or crime
Is this a mountain that we really want to climb
The road is hard, hard and long
Put down that two by four
This man would never turn you from his door
Oh George! Oh George!That Texas education must have fucked you up when you were very small.

...When I was 17 my mother, bless her heart, fulfilled my summer dream
She handed me the keys to the car
We motored down to Paris, fuelled with Dexedrine and booze
Got bust in Antibes by the cops
And fleeced in Naples by the wops
But everyone was kind to us, we were the English dudes
Our dads had helped them win the war
When we all knew what we were fighting for
But now an Englishman abroad is just a US stooge
The bulldog is a poodle snapping round the scoundrel's last refuge.

...Is gentleness too much for us
Should gentleness be filed along with empathy
We feel for someone else's child
Every time a smart bomb does its sums and gets it wrong
Someone else's child dies and equities in defence rise
America, America, please hear us when we call
You got hip-hop, be-bop, hustle and bustle
You got Atticus Finch
You got Jane RussellYou got freedom of speech
You got great beaches, wildernesses and malls
Don't let the might, the Christian right, fuck it all up
For you and the rest of the world.

...Not in my name, Tony, you great war leader you
Terror is still terror, whosoever gets to frame the rules
History's not written by the vanquished or the damned
Now we are Genghis Khan, Lucretia Borghia, Son of Sam
In 1961 they took this child into their home
I wonder what became of them
In the cauldron that was LebanonIf
I could find them now, could I make amends?
How does the story end?

I don't agree with Waters but the dude is a great musician and lyricist and this site is open to all opinions, no matter how misguided. Waters is by most accounts a Communist. He hates capitalism (except perhaps when it comes to money from the Pink Floyd name), which is made abundantly clear on Dogs off of the Animals album, and anything remotely right-wing. Boy, it sure is hard to enjoy a great songwriter when you really enjoy how he writes but disagree with what he writes. As an aside, my son asked me for several CD's he can listen to. I had to think hard about what I have in my collection that would be okay for his young ears. I gave him The Wall, Pearl Jam Vs. and a Lynyrd Skynyrd CD so that he could experience differing types of music and choose what he likes. I also gave him Bob Marley's Natty Dread because it is an excellent intro to an eclectic sound.

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