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the 80's • the 00's • the 10's
• unreleased lyrics

Descendants of Cain

In the beginning there was the word,
but it seems that not everyone heard
The priests they were pious, voracious and vain.
They grew fat on the rich and profane

They built churches and cathedrals of stone
and charged admission to those who'd atone
For sins of the flesh there was penance to pay
or there would be hell to come on Judgement Day

The prophets whose visions foretold of a time
when a merciless God would bring them into line
but those who had strayed from the way of the Lord
were touched by the sun and out of their gourds

The meek would inherit the kingdom of God,
He who had ruled them with the scourge and the rod

If there’s a God let me look on his face
I’ll say he’s mean, put him right in his place
What did he think when he left us alone
With that Moses and two tablets of stone?
In the darkest of nights there’s a glimmer of light
But it’s not the way, though you think it’s in sight
Life’s a bitch and she’s got a big stick
So knuckle down son, or you’ll catch on real quick
Goddam it, I’ll tell him straight, father to son
This wasn’t the best day’s work that he’s done

Tortured By The Daughter of Fu Manchu

I’m not the kind of man who can take much pain
I get the heebie jeebies going out in the rain
So imagine what kind of state I was in
When I fell into the clutches of Su Long Min.

She sure satisfies a deep-seated need
I don’t suppose it would do any good to plead
I’m having too much fun, I can’t take no more
My veins are poppin’, my tongue mopping the floor.

She’s a real wild child.

Red pincers and black leather gloves
I must confess, it’s not my idea of love,
But I’ll admit I had a hell of a time
Pain and pleasure both at the same time.

She walked all over me in stiletto heels
I never knew how good bad love could feel
She said to scream if she went too far
I guess that’s just the way that some girls are.

I Was A Teenage Zombie

I’m dead beat all day, I party hard at night
I like red meat on the bone when I’ve worked up an appetite

I can’t go to the prom, I ain’t got a dime
I can’t get a date with a face like mine.

It’s true I’ve lost my looks, I guess I’m kinda gross
And I don’t smell too good, so don’t you get close

Once rock was boss, but now the King has gone
I think I’ll crawl right back, I’ve been gone too long.

The girls I used to know, the good times I had
And all my friends are older than my dad.

They’re gonna bury me.

 

Visited By Spirits

Each night I’m visited by spirits urging me to mend my ways
But I don’t take kindly to do-gooders so I send them on their way
They’re certainly persistent sorts. I have to give them that
Which is not to say I’ll mend my ways or anything like that.

As with the ghosts of Christmas past, present and to come
They urge me to get a new life, they don’t care for the current one
It’s very flattering really, to know that someone cares,
but I’ve no objection to the way I am and regard it as entirely my affair.

I dare say I’ve made my share of mistakes and not pleased everyone
There’s sure to be some part of me that regrets much of what I’ve done
But I won’t indulge in grievances, remorse, guilt or shame
For it’s not whether you win or lose, but how you play the game.

If Marley himself materialised this very night accompanied by a cacophony of screams
He would not change me, oh dear no, I’m not so readily redeemed
So ye spirits of that other world where everything’s just divine
Away! Be gone! And leave me be to live this life of mine.

 

The Measure of a Man

Tell me you fine people, tell me if you can, how do you take the measure of a man?
If he picks himself up after he’s knocked down. Is that how you judge the measure of a man?

Do you up and measure him by the blows he takes, the wealth that he acquires or the friends he makes?
Or the fact that he profits from his own mistakes? Is that how you weigh the worth of a man?

Well some men can stand so much, just so much and no more, for some wrongs must be righted, those that cannot be ignored.
And that’s when you gotta step outside the law for you can’t ride around every snake that’s for sure

Well Blind Willie Calhoun he was such a man though he weren’t much for learning as I understand
But I heard he stood proud when they came for his land with two loaded revolvers, one in each hand

He gave them a-hearing, ‘twas only polite, no one can say that he weren’t raised right
Then he gave them both barrels one each to the chest now six feet of earth is all they possess

He sits on the back porch and he takes a chaw of Virgina tobacco and waits for the law
But I don’t see them coming round any time soon for you don’t cross a man like Blind Willie Calhoun

So I guess it’s ‘bout something that’s hard to define, something that can’t be measured or mined,
The stand that you take and the respect you command, yes I reckon that’s how you ought to measure a man

Unruly Child (home demo)

He was an unruly child, wore an uncertain smile and so volatile
Oh he was peevish and perverse. And what is decidedly worse he was much given to verse

It’s just too beastly what they say that he is inclined in that way
Such disquieting eyes, you could mistake him for shy, such an unruly child

He seemed so sweet you would weep. Made himself promises that he couldn’t keep
All his pity spent on himself leaving none for nobody else
If you asked me I’d say he is flawed in so many ways, such an unruly child
Oh the things that I would do if I could only be like you

A View From A Hill

“He lived ‘with neither chick nor child,’ as the saying goes,
and as for how he passed his time, well no one seemed to know.
He kept very much to himself and was peculiar in his habits
Always rooting around in the woods though he weren’t setting no traps for rabbits.
Yes, old man Baxter was regarded hereabouts as a queer sort of fellow
And no one mourned his passing for he was mean right to the marrow.
Saying that, when he was in the mood and had the time to spare
He’d buy a round for those who’d listen to him tell of what he’d found up there.”

This much I’d been told by one who’d lived around these parts
And though it wasn’t much to go on, at least it was a start.
For I was more than a little eager to learn all I could and to form some impression
of the man who’d made a most remarkable instrument that had come into my possession.

A pair of binoculars they were with a most peculiar property
For showing things as they were and not as they are in actuality/reality.
Specifically the priory tower and nearby Gallows Hill
on which the acts from which it took its name were being enacted still.
It was a most odd effect and one that defied a rational explanation
Until I met with Dr Lawrence who offered some salient information.

He’d attended Baxter two years back after some sort of (unfortunate) mishap
He’d upturned something he’d been boiling and there was a hell of a flap.
The stuff burnt Baxter awful bad and he was cursing (fit to burst) chapter and verse
The doctor caught a tongue lashing but the neighbour’s took the worst.
They went to set the spilt pot right but he’d have none of it
Just some old bones were stewing there but he nearly threw a fit.
And the stench was something else again, so foul like rotten meat
So they just threw something over it, a towel, cloth or sheet.

The doctor did the best he could but didn’t think to ask
when he was about to leave and picked up what looked like a queer kind of a mask.
Baxter upped and screamed at him, really let it fly/the poor man was mortified
“Don’t touch that you damn fool! Do you want to look through dead men’s eyes?”
Quite what he meant by that remark only became evident to me
When he talked of filling up and sealing the glasses that now belong to me.