Their star-light shone bright in the blackout
Like the beams of the usherette
But when the Big Bear bit deep after Yalta
There were those that came to forget.
They went out West for the screening
And they carried a sharp-tooth comb
In search of the double meaning
They were making the fur fly at home.

So get up! Go on! Grip that stand!
And press your hand to your heart
Big Mac is asking the questions
And this is only the start.

Now Mac came on hot and noisy
In his search for aid Uncle Joe
As he tracked him down to Tinsel Town
For Boise, Idaho.
And the folks that queued up for Coogan
Now queued up for the end of a myth
To sit open-mouthed at the newsreel
The night that Chaplin took the Fifth.

And the offers packed up for so many
Dropped like a Wurlitzer into the pit
And what we got for the pain was more John Wayne
And anything else that they saw fit.
Because when they needed to break resistance
And they could not go on using a fist
They took the cameras into the court-house
They circulated a list.
 

 
Blood on a Burberry Jacket
Streaked but it won't soak through
There's a young man praying
For a passing patrol car.
On a street that they don't go to.

This is no ordinary return
The day turned lethal
This is no ordinary return
Should have taken the "special"
This is no ordinary return.

Grip on a stolen cheque-card
He was going to sign it there
There's a diesel stopping for the snappiest shopper
All dressed to kill in his leisure wear.

A blue, blue sky
Goes rolling over and over
Till the smoke comes pouring
From a stolen Rover.

Crowd at the ticket turnstile
Set for a seat in the stand
And they all pass running
Till there's one of them stretched out
Marked by more than the makers brand.
 

I'm hearing only bad news from Radio Africa.
I'm hearing only bad news from Radio Africa

They've still got trouble with a monster in the South.
Heads buried deep in that lion's mouth
Like a jaw snapped shut, it keeps them apart
If that jaw got broke it would be a start

The West still complains about the foreign aid
They'd do better to change the terms of trade
More tanks than food in the Ogaden
It looks like Moscow got it wrong again

Mozambique and Mugabe
Still got Frelimo I hear them say
But 'Exchange' means…
'Recession' means…
It all means 'Harder to take'
Tanzania should be moving up a gear
Instead they've got to step on the brake

Can't stop a movement that's come this far
But 'Lending' means…
'Interest' means…
'Harder to Fight'
Independence has a hidden expense
When the hands on the purse strings are white
 

 
It's a life-time from the leather stalls
The Berbers and bazaars
Down through every measured movement
In the making of the cars.
And it doesn't pay much
And it doesn't leave scars - on the outside

And they give you the impression
It's all Monet and Braque
But the oil they squeeze on their palettes
They never use on this track.
And every extra filter
Is a fissure, is a crack - on the inside

All this way - Toulouse
Another day - Toulouse
You've come too far - Toulouse

And he walks in right behind you
As you both go punching in
And you both pick up your rivets
From an aluminium bin.
And he thinks what makes him different
Is the colour of his skin - it's on the outside

All this way - Toulouse
Another day - Toulouse
You've come too far - Toulouse.

You've had their OAS
You've had their CGT
And no-one will be working here
When they bring in CNC
 

Looking at the water
Through the spaces of an iron-ore train
The water eddies round the rushes
And Eddies round at my house, insane.

The breakers in the distance
Cut the air like the crackle of a CB rig.
They found a crack in Eddie
And they tore it down, and snapped him like a twig.

His head is full of Goose Green
Tastes the smoke from the damp grass, well alight
And Eddie's waiting for the choppers
And he goes on waiting long into the night.

And I thought I heard a voice
Didn't someone here just whisper, "Rejoice".

The harbour's filled with newsmen,
Little boats go bobbing, like a Dunkirk repeat
To a train ride and a welcome
And "Well done, Eddie" right across the street.

The water's grey and choppy
On the Lake out by the fairground big wheel.
We could circle it forever
But we'd never guess the way that Eddie feels.
 

Old Afrikaner farmer on the terrace of his home
Sits gently in his rocking chair, gazing at this land he owns.
There he sees his memories and there his past
There he smiles his grim smile, strokes his gun, swears he'll make it last.

Someone brings the whisky, someone serves the meal
Like the someone in the township, in the mine and in the fields.
Someone at the graveyard, someone with their tears
Someone who can't forget the freedom lost these 100 years.

Old man, you can boost about the gun that's by your bed
Old man, you can tell me how you're good for all your kaffirs yet
And your guns can fire, and your prisons fill
And you've yards of rope for hanging still
But your guns can shoot and never hit the sky
And there's no rope as long as time.

Mandela in the prison, Biko in the ground
Sharpeville and Soweto voices silenced till the end of time.
Freedom don't come easy, don't come bloodless, don't come fast
But in the hearts of the countless people
No pass law's gonna stop us pass.

Sometimes he'll talk of reasons, economy and cause
Sometimes he'll even talk of changes
Though he clasps the gun and talks of laws.
But power ain't this old man's gift
And freedom's no reform
The old man made the history and the history's made of wars.
 

Feel that wet concrete through the seat of your jeans
No cab-fare, just the cold air
You're a man without means.
A bank roll lighter and light years older
Someone's hand was in your pocket
While they cried on your shoulder.

Don't stare at that man in the tropic white suit, ah!
He may mop his brow but he's liable to shoot yah!
He's no Peter Lorre, he's no merry prankster,
He'll help you to find out
Why they put "angst" into "ganster".

Seaport September, a night to remember
Bad Luck is no exclusive club
They just make you a member.

Sometimes it's easy to forget where you are
When Marseilles seems just a day away
Before this Singapore bar.
Asking a Joe, does he know somewhere finer
Then a blow up and your show up
On a slower boat to China.

And a head that might be yours
Is aching on a lower bunk
Did you really set to sea
To be a sailor on this junk?
 

You know for every one way to sit up
There must be five hundred ways to beg.
And how can you ever be a man of standing
With a chain wrapped around your legs.

Just like Arbogast on the top two stairs
You're waiting for a carver to come cutting through your cares.
Living on your savings, saving up your prayers
Come on down, the new millionaires.

The famous say walk in their footsteps
But don't you go tread on their toes.
And if you wait for luck to open up
You'll be waiting there to see it close.

Well I think it was viscount
Or it might have been a prince
When he said enjoy your leisure
 

Cos now he's going to tell us all
The truth about John
Tho' he needs a little help
To speed up the prose.
He was taken on trust
But that wasn't enough
You lose some friends this way
But that's how it goes.

Here she comes to trail the cameras
In her wake, and sable
She wears the scent that only comes with success.
She says it was love
But she wasn't above
Selling her secrets
To the national press.

And now she's going to tell us all
The truth about John
Tho' she needs a little help
To speed up the prose.
He counted on you
And who cares if it's true?
You're as bad as the man
Who landed the blows.

And they're all going to tell us now
The truth about John
Again and again on the interview shows.
And if the truth isn't nice
Well that just adds to the price
Oh, make sure those wounds never close.

Get your cut, you cut-price writer
Get your cut in this cut-throat game
The more the cut, the more he grab, yeah
He's just a someone out to stab you.
 

It's a snow-wind
She's felt it blow for sixty years or more.
Cora and the snow-wind
Like the row-lock and the oar
Cutting through these icy waters
To find shelter and perfection and the shore.

Cora's lived a kind of life
From downstairs maid to miner's wife
Making sure she shined a floor
In Surrey homes before the war
She feels that snow-wind blowing.
She's not sure where we're going anymore.

For years past 1926
They dug the hill-sides out with picks
While still behind the iron gate
Those winding-wheels she'd come to hate
She feels that snow-wind blowing.
She thinks we might be getting there too late.

It's a snow-wind
It blows so hard it cuts her to the bones.
Cora and the snow-wind
A women's life is not her own
As she dives in icy waters
To find passion and survival, all alone.

Cora and the sisterhood
Less sisters now in Prims.
And it doesn't sound the same
Without the voices for the hymns.