It seems more appropriate to post these lyrics now than when I wrote them, oddly. Not only has the music kind of come together – hopefully a sign that we’re gelling ever more surely as musicians – but also some of the topics herein have become more topical. Tonight, I notice, there’s a documentary airing that expresses some concern that our nation’s youth are obtaining their sex education from porn movies. Hmmm… I don’t see any problem there: we’ll just have a nation of young people who think that turning up to fix a washing machine is considered foreplay (an improvement on a lot of men, am I right, sisters? {whooping from studio audience}) and moustaches may come back into fashion. And perhaps there will be a funk revival.
At the same time, as we’ve gone from credit crunch to slowdown, to recession, climatologists have offered their bleakest warnings yet about the state that our rapacious pursuit of profit is getting us into whilst their voices are silenced beneath the weight of banality, ill-informed opinion and thinly-veiled racism that constitutes the vast majority of news in this once green and pleasant land.
So, as a savoury relish to this smorgasbord of despair, I present the lyrics to IHNMYIMS, as it appears on setlists. Enjoy.
I wish I had the strength of character to tell you how I feel,
wish you had the sense to look behind the censor on your screen,
when all I ask for is that we reach out for the things we see in dreams
but this machine is just too big: I have no mouth yet I must scream
Catch the stink of something rotten here-
Don’t you think you deserve more?
Can’t you read the writing on the wall?
Don’t you see that this means war?
I see your vacant stare at bodies locked together on your screen;
desensitised and listless – paralysed by your pornnui,
deafened by the sound of moaning – missed the tolling of the bell
while all this crap they’re selling you will drag you straight down into hell!
Catch the stink…
When every headline that you read is breeding something to abhor-
they’ve sold their principles, they’re not invincible, they are just whores.
Ignore the consequences? – Let them stretch the long reach of their hate?
How many innocents must bleed to feed the jackals at your gate?
Catch the stink…