The Republic

Do not adjust your set.
This has been correctly recorded.

1. Surfing With The Grommet
(Lowell)

Instrumental

2. The Beast Must Burn
(Wolfgramm/Lowell)

Burn the beast, the Beast must burn

Drag your heels my people
It feels like patricide
Arm yourselves with weapons
And come to face the tribe
Bear me up you good folk
As we climb this hill
To build a pyre to the sky
For the beast we've come to kill

We've come to kill and eat it
This is a sorry feast
All have traveled far and wide
For the killing of the beast
This magnificent
Handsome stinking thing
Who ruled with death and hate
This Beast we made our king

If you’re ashamed or frightened
If your heart is less than stone
If you have any mercy
You’re best to stay at home
The beast pretends he’s gentle
Now that we have the edge
Don’t you be swayed, remember
His tyranny and sacrilege

He took the holy master
Up this very hill
He slit his throat and drank his blood
The Beast we’ve come to kill
So stand with me my tribe
Let me see your knives
We’ll kill the Beast and burn him
And so win back our lives

We build a pyre ten feet tall
We drag him to the top
We tie him down, I’m scared
But I will never stop
I’m ready for the stabbing
This is a sorry feast
The fires have touching the kindling
At the burning of the beast

Burn the beast, the Beast must burn
Burn the beast, the Beast must burn

Burn the beast, the Beast must burn
Burn the beast, the Beast must burn

3. Communist Girls
(Wolfgramm/Lowell)

My mother said that I never should
Play with the Communist Girls in the wood
But I’m not kidding, listen to me
Communist Girls are the girls for me

I like left feet and I like left hands
The right hand side isn’t half as grand
I like left toes and I’ll suck a left thumb
The right hand side isn’t half the fun

I was sent to school in the part of town
Where Communist Girls could not be found
But I ran from the playgrounds and into the parks
And sat with the girls who read Karl Marx

I like red cheeks and a red red nose
Deep red lips and red underclothes
Red hair and freckles, listen here Mum
Darker places ain't half the fun

I don't like girls who dance and twist
But marching girls I can’t resist
I dream all night from dusk til dawn
About Communist Girls in uniform

4. Cancer
(Lowell)

Every time you stick a cigarette in your face
And breathe your dirty air all over the place
There’s only two things I can do
Try not to breathe or cough all over you

Cancer, cancer
It’s the only feasible answer
To keep the smoking population down
And to keep on hearing that coughing sound

There’s 27 poisons every time you inhale
When you release it, I turn pale
Cos you breathe out, when I breathe in
I’m breathing your poisons, you’re doing me in

With cancer, cancer
It’s the only feasible answer
To keep the smoking population down
And to keep on hearing that coughing sound

5. Republic
(Reid/Lowell)

Don’t start me talking bout Royalty
They don’t mean a thing to me
I can’t see how logically
That whole system came to be
In Australia

British rejects, convict slaves
Sailing through eventful waves
Asian, Celtic, Latin braves
Plenty Koori Maori graves
In Australia

Time for republic
Time for a change
Self-assertion
Time to arrange
Our republic

Don’t talk to me about national pride
That kinda stuff comes from inside
Everyone who’s lived and died
And everyone who’s ever tried
For Australia

Land rights, yes, for everyone
Underneath the southern sun
We are new and fresh and young
Republic now must be won
For Australia

6. Fat Girls
(Wolfgramm/Lowell)

I love the way they walk
I love the way they hyper-ventilate
I love the way they dance
It makes me want to demonstrate
Conviction, affliction
And my addiction to fat girls

I love the tiny smiles
I love the open-hearted beckoning
I love the way they move
I’m leaning back and reckoning
Obeying, betraying
And weighing up those fat girls

I love the monstrous hips
I dream about obesity
Red rosy cheeks
I’m tortured bout complicity
And I’m needing, and feeding
And greedy greedy for fat girls

I love the way they walk
I love the way they hyper-ventilate
I love the way they dance
It makes me want to demonstrate
Conviction, affliction
And my addiction to fat girls

7. Whispering Grass
(Fisher/Fisher)

8. Reading from ‘1967 – This Is It!’
(Lowell)
Pages 89 and 104

Desolation Row

I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by maths and science, mowing lawns every Sunday and shining the chrome bits on their cars;
Drugging themselves with the Ed Sullivan Show and Engelbert Humperdink with never a good word for the Grateful Dead;
Never asking obvious questions like why were we taught to respect Menzies?
Never asking why did Stevie Winwood really leave the Spencer Davis Group to form Traffic?
Never asking why Frank & Nancy Sinatra are top of the pops with something stupid?
Never asking who is the real passenger in the Beatles?
Never asking why dad, like every other dad, hates the word marijuana but spends every Friday night at the Greengate getting blind;
Never asking why Jimi Hendrix was the support act for the Monkees; stop the hoax.
Never asking about Lennie Bruce, whose name keeps popping up, but we don’t know who he is, except that he’s important and dead;
Never asking anything about Woody Guthrie.
Never asking why – when said about a longhair – ‘Is it a boy or a girl?’ is thought to be cut-throat wit in this suburb.
Never asking why parents who don’t believe in god think that we should go to the local St Andrews Church.
Never asking why Allen Ginsberg’s howl is all we need to know about poetry. For godssakes hold your tongue and let me love. Love lie with me. Lie down with me. Without you they’d forget to change the weather. I want you sooo bad. I love you like I love an enemy. Cut my thoughts. With your sad dark eyes. I saw the best voices of my generation watching the Man from Uncle.
I heard the best minds of my generation vietnamming against their parents and shrieking mindless empty protests from the heart never knowing why or why not. I heard every nuisance kid in town arguing with frightened parents about drugs. They sent around brochures of a person slowly disintegrating under the influence of drugs and the last photo of the vanished person saying that looks like you on drugs. And every parent panicked. Ransacked bedrooms. Backpockets of jeans in the wash. Checking arms while we’re asleep. Under mattresses saying ‘it’s got to be here somewhere’ but mostly it wasn’t.

i saw the best minds of my generation vanish compared to the value of the ugly frisked blonde who is so beautiful to me with dead carnations muttering owen owen where are you tonight owen. who said she had a lesbian lady in pentridge and sucked her thumb like a baby saying i told my mother i was working as a check-out chick not doing this. who said she loved di like a sister both having fucked so many men that they can’t remember numbers faces or names and all the sex they know is drysex or small pleasure inbetween a fix, having a human body like mine putting arms about her shoulder or like old george saying you’re pretty. christ! can’t somebody see that love and respect is enough to get you off any jabbed needle but when i say it it’s like some suburban answer, when in truth there might be no answer at all, just smack. smack. me alone with her in a cab thinking shane i love you, you belong to me i believe. witnesses, witness this, my heart going out like i’ve never seen in a hard year. why do i want to eat her like poison. nothing’s a joke any more. faggot ballet dancer can bloody-up his wrists so i can tell my friends and joke and laugh on monday, not you please shane. mother. mother in bed asleep wondering where your son is.

mother, i won’t ever take smack.

9. Tricks
(Lowell)

Thank you girl for all those games
Blur of faces, the christian names
Thank you, for this heat
In a crowd I can see you there
It’s never you but it’s still my prayer
Two halves can be complete

Thank you girl for all the fun
You set me free to love anyone
Anyone, anyone, who’ll dance this beat
I try so hard but without a doubt
You’re a frustrated angel I could do without
Midnight, midnight, I run through your streets

I’m coming at your from all directions
I’m in a mood for tricks
You said I was full of obsessions
Can you hear the guitar player calling you
Calling you

Love me just a little more
Let me even up the score
I lost you in the very last round
I left you in a crowded place
In a crowd I can see your face
Just like, just like you’re all around me

10. Strangelove
(Lowell)

Tie me to your Strangelove
Cast the perfect spell
You have touched my shoulder
I adore your smell
Seen your pointed finger
Stabbing at my heart
I’m just waiting
For your small but very sudden start
I’m pretty strange

Tie me to your strangelove
Hide me in your place
Costumes and disguises
Make-up on my face
They won’t recognise us
When they search the town
We can hide from everyone
When we go underground
I’m pretty strange

And emerge at midnight
When desire grows
Sharing well kept secrets
Ripping up our clothes
We will rock with laughter
I am hidden well
Tie my to your strangelove
Baby I adore your smell
I’m pretty strange

11. King Of Hell
(Lowell)

Come on all you crazy midnight dancers
Nothing in this world can matter now
I can sense the dance floor slowly sinking
This is Hell’s own Mardi Gras somehow
All around the rapture, all around the room
There's a face
A face of gloom
There's a face, I know it well
This is the face
Of the King of Hell

Everybody I know says they hate him
They still use his strength when they can
Fifty years ago he was created
You know the King of Hell is not a man
He’ll destroy an atoll, he’ll upturn the sea
He will trample on your trust
With acts of bastardry
There’s a face, I know it well
The mushroom shape
Of the King of Hell

Soon even the seas will start rebelling
At a cost that all of us will pay
And the tender balance will be broken
I don’t want to see that dreadful day

All around the rapture, all around the room
There’s a face
A face of gloom
There’s a face, I know it well
This is the face
Of the King of Hell

12. The Gods
(Reid/Lowell)

The gods are in their heavens
They don’t touch us at all
We’ve pushed them further and further
Gods die when we don’t call
We overran them with Jesus
Who should not stand alone
What about all of the others
Who call Valhalla their home

Possess me with your goodness
You are the God of Trees
You are the meaning of nature
You are the one we displease
We’re praying one world prayer
Please please oh please
Possess me with your goodness
You are the God of the Trees

The gods are in all nature
Look around and see
The Moon in its glorious stillness
The Sun’s sheer potency
Yet we cut down all of the Great Trees
The ancient groves destroyed
But the Stones, the silent statues
Are witness to the void

Possess me with your goodness
You are the God of Trees
I see the urban jungle
God, whose children are these?
There’s bankers, teachers, churchmen
Still worshipping Hercules
Possess us with your goodness
You are the God of the Trees

Possess us with your goodness
You are the God of the Trees
You are the meaning of nature
You are the one we displease
We’re praying one world prayer
Please please oh please
Possess me with your goodness
You are the God of the Trees

13. Maria
(Lowell)

Come on Maria
Don’t take it bad
There’s wine on the table
And food to be had
Too many whispers
Not enough noise
Come on Maria
And dance with the boys

Maria Maria
It’s something to be
Alone on the dance floor
Just you and me
The music is louder
And I’m in a trance
So jump up Maria
Just get up and dance

Forget all the kitchen
There’s adequate wine
Dance please Maria – oh!
Now is the time
Wait til I signal
The casual glance
Then stand up Maria
Oh stand up and dance

14. Two Of Me Walking In One Man’s Blues
(Wolfgramm/Lowell)

Some people say I’m stupid
Some people say I’m sane
Some people say I’m super-straight
But I am off my brain
Some people say I work too hard
Other’s say I’m thick
Some people say I’m super-smug
Others say I’m sick
I got two of me walking
Two of me walking in one man blues

I go to sleazy places
I wind up feeling great
Sometimes I even pick a fight
With friends I hate
And when I see the full moon
I guess I get a charge
I change my name and number
And come on very large
I’ve got three of me walking
Three of me walking in one man blues

I’m crazy as an eagle
I’m often overthrown
I don’t know where my passport is
Please leave me alone
Sometimes I don’t know what to play
I don’t know my note
Sometimes I think I talk too much
Sometimes it’s just a rush
I got four of me walking
Four of me walking in one man blues

Sometimes I like the wide road
And then I like it thin
And then I don’t know what to choose
Confusion just begins
Sometimes I want to go to Hell
Then I’m not sure
Sometimes I want to die, Lord
And then I want the cure
I got two of me walking
Two of me walking in one man blues

15. The Cult
(Wolfgramm/Lowell)

Mother unlock the door
Father you won’t see me no more
I want life
To make some sense
You both spend your life
Upon the fence

I want to join the cult, I want to join the cult
I want to join the cult

Mother
I was once your son
Eternity – it has now begun
Now I watch you die
In your suburban dreams
Perish in the end
With earthquakes and screams

I want to join the cult, I want to join the cult
I want to join the cult

Mountains will move into the sea
The end is 1993
You laugh, why are you laughing at me?
Sackcloth and ashes for me
The prophet will teach us to see
You’re the fools, too blind to see

Krishna, Krishna, Krishna
Hare, hare rama

I want life
To make some sense
You both spend your life
Upon the fence

I want to join the cult, I want to join the cult
I want to join the cult

Krishna, Krishna, Krishna
Hare, hare rama

16. Hannah (An Angel In Our Midst)
(Lowell)

Well it was raining you played the hitchhiker
On the roadside you flagged me down
And I was falling just like a sky-glider
And I needed someone to bring me round

Ain’t it easy when you fall
To say you need nobody at all
But Hannah, I needed you
And it’s easy to forget
The road gets rougher yet
And any trip, won’t get your through

Well you pulled my strings, I was a marionette
And I tried, I tried so hard to please
And then you told me, the road gets rougher yet
You only make it further on your knees

Ain’t it easy when you fall
To say you need no one at all
But Hannah, I needed you
And it’s easy to forget
The road gets rougher yet
And any trip, won’t get you through

I tried to play by the same old rules
That men and women play all over town
You laughed at me and said, ‘Boy, you’re such a fool,
You’re trying hard to loose what you’ve not even found’.

Then you gave me a Black Book
And a disappointed look
And you asked me, to act on what is true
Me I wanted her so much
But I only wanted to touch
Hannah, I still remember you

17. Killing Me Loudly With My Song
(Lowell)

I don’t want to live like this
I don’t want to live like that
I don’t want to live like this
Any more

18. The Good Man
(Lowell)

If you call in the morning
Don’t be afraid to wake me
I've been up way since dawning
Thinking just wherever my thoughts take me
I have tried to read my way into paradise
And I have tried really tried to understand
The ingredients that are needed
In a man to really make him a man

I will not plead confusion
I will never ever say hope has gone
I am under no delusion
I’m not lost, never lost, but often wrong
There’s a child, he says he’s my child, on the pavement
There’s a girl, looks like my wife, smiling at me
The reflection of salvation
Lives in every person that I meet

I’m a coward for crucifixion
In this body there's no drop of martyr’s blood
If I’m bound for annihilation
I’m afraid you gotta send the bill to God
I have read every single kind of Bible
And I have tried, really tried to understand
The ingredients that are needed
In my life to really make a good man