Wednesday, April 27, 2011

We live to tread on Kings

O gentlemen, the time of life is short!
To spend that shortness basely were too long,
If life did ride upon a dial's point,
Still ending at the arrival of an hour.
An if we live, we live to tread on kings

William Shakespeare - Henry IV, Part I (1597)



Charles Windsor, who's at the door?
At such an hour, who's at the door?
In the back of an old green cortina
You're on your way to the guillotine

Here the rabble comes
The kind you hoped were dead
They've come to chop, to chop off your head

Hundreds of bound big business men
Hacks from The Sun, military men
So many rich men weep in despair
On and on into Trafalgar Square

Here the rabble comes
The kind you hoped were dead
They've come to chop, to chop off your head

These once peaceful streets
The scenes of revenge you had not wished to see
Revenge is so sweet to those who have never known anything sweet

McCarthy - Charles Windsor (1987)



God save the Queen
the fascist regime,
they made you a moron
a potential H-bomb.

God save the Queen
she ain't no human being.
There is no future
in England's dreaming

Don't be told what you want
Don't be told what you need.
There's no future
there's no future
there's no future for you

God save the Queen
we mean it man
we love our queen
God saves

God save the Queen
'cos tourists are money
and our figurehead
is not what she seems

Oh God save history
God save your mad parade
Oh Lord God have mercy
all crimes are paid.

When there's no future
how can there be sin
we're the flowers
in the dustbin
we're the poison
in your human machine
we're the future
you're future

God save the Queen
we mean it man
we love our queen
God saves

God save the Queen
we mean it man
there is no future
in England's dreaming

No future
no future for you
no fufure for me

Sex Pistols - God Save the Queen (1977)




Tear me apart and boil my bones
I'll not rest till she's lost her throne
My aim is true my message is clear
It's curtains for you, Elizabeth my dear

The Stone Roses - Elizabeth my Dear (1989)



Jewels drip red and I don't sound proud
Treason is ambition, I want dead procession
All we got unholy left-overs of a compromise
Leaving us like butterflies trapped in frost

Ceremony rape machine
Love wont corrode you
Ceremony rape machine
Love wont corrode you

England's glory lives on in world wide genocide
So celebrate buchenwald as her majesty's heir
Now an obsolete face on a currency of illusion
No matter what we own we can't buy freedom

Throw myself against you cos you ain't frail
Underneath silk riches sixty six million giving slaves
This needle of religion's gonna rust my skin
Tear out and exit obeyance of created sin

Faces pressed at gates of anniversary torture
Without these fake images we'd never bow down
Don't need this history but we still accept
Conscripted into a past that invents our guilt

Manic Street Preachers - We Her Majesty's Prisoners (1992)

(see also the Manic Street Preachers' song song Repeat -'Repeat after me, f*ck Queen and Country... Death sentence heritage, Repeat after me, Death camp palace, Useless generations, Dumb flag scum')



Class War - Better Dead than Wed (1986)

A few suggestions for your anti-Royal wedding party - other suggestions welcome!

See also: Funk the Wedding 1981
; Repeat After Me, F*ck Queen and Country. K-Punk has a great 1983 quote from William Burroughs: 'What hope for a country where people will camp out for three days to glimpse the Royal Couple? Where one store clerk refers another as his 'colleague'? ... God save the Queen and a fascist regime ... a flabby, toothless fascism to be sure. Never go too far in any direction is the basic law on which Limey-Land is built. The Queen stabilizes the whole stinking shithouse and keeps a small elite of wealth and privilege on top...' (more here)

3 comments:

  1. 'Corgi Crap' by the Drones! Hardly ever gets a mention, baffingly, but it's ace, and it's not even that rare. The '77 EP version's better than the later LP cut. Can't recall the full lyrics off the top of my head, but with a chorus that goes 'No monarchy for you, no monarchy for you / Destroy the Union Jack and what it stands for!' you can guess. Actually quite scathing considering they veered a bit towards powerpop (though 'Bone Idol' was a top tune).

    Too many Irish folk tunes to list here...'Follow Me Up To Carlow' is a good starting point...

    'Show No Pity' by Academy 23 has them serenading the royals with 'I swear to Pan we'll see thae bastards hangin' fae a rope!'

    And, er, hate to say it, but 'The Queen is Dead' is one of only two Smiths songs I can stand...

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  2. Good call on The Drones, which I note you have now uploaded at http://seagullscreamingkillherkillher.blogspot.com/

    A few Scottish and Irish songs come to mind - there are some that are anti-English Royal Family songs but which aren't strictly republican. For instance all those Scottish songs which denounce 'proud Edward' but celebrate Scottish King Robert the Bruce.

    I love Planxty's version of Follow me up to Carlow, though again it is celebrating a Lord and clan leader. Still would be good to hear it sung in Westminster Abbey today, would send a shudder of fear through the assembled Saxons.

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  3. Should have also put in Manic Street Preachers 'Repeat', which I mentioned in an earlier post, which starts off 'Repeat after me, F*ck Queen and Country'.

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