SONG: The Trouble With Normal (3:35) Strikes across the frontier and strikes for higher wage Planet lurches to the right as ideologies engage Suddenly it's repression, moratorium on rights What did they think the politics of panic would invite? Person in the street shrugs -- "Security comes first" But the trouble with normal is it always gets worse Callous men in business costume speak computerese Play pinball with the 3rd world trying to keep it on its knees Their single crop starvation plans put sugar in your tea And the local 3rd world's kept on reservations you don't see "It'll all go back to normal if we put our nation first" But the trouble with normal is it always gets worse Fashionable fascism dominates the scene When ends don't meet it's easier to justify the means Tenants get the dregs and landlords get the cream As the grinding devolution of the democratic dream Brings us men in gas masks dancing while the shells burst The trouble with normal is it always gets worse (Toronto 30/6/81) SONG: Candy Man's Gone (4:00) Sun climbs toward high noon, Glints metallic off the bowl of the spoon Sliding through the air toward parted lips Watch the expression when the straight taste hits Face crumples, tongue's quickly withdrawn I hate to tell you but the candy man's gone Oh sweet fantasia of the safe home Where nobody has to scrape for honey at the bottom of the comb Where every actor understands the scene And nobody ever means to be mean Catch it in a dream, catch it in a song Seek it on the street, you find the candy man's gone I hate to tell you but the candy man's gone In the bar, in the senate, in the alley, in the study Pimping dreams of riches for everybody "Something for nothing, new lamps for old And the streets will be platinum, never mind gold" Well, hey, pass it on Misplaced your faith and the candy man's gone I hate to tell you but the candy man's gone (NYC, Boston 3/12/81) SONG: Hoop Dancer (7:48) Tokyo Jetlag Evening Walking Out of my throat appears this chuckle A true 20th Century sound A little crazed and having no tonal centre The echoes of this laugh fade for a long time Snaking among those jumbled pedestrians Following that struggling Cedric taxicab Sliding over the seeming infinity of white light and neon With no warning, mind's eye winks like a lifespan And opens again on memory flash of prairie Indian Dancers -- they're on a stage, all jigging motion And flare of bright feathers, surrounded by white faces Floating on a sea of mind Hoop dancer struts in front -- drum and voices blend with endless rain There's a time line Something like vertical, like perpendicular Cutting through figures shuffling on horizontal plane Cutting through the survival pride of the dancers Through the guilty, sentimental warmth of the crowd; Through to some essence common to us, to original man To perhaps descendants numberless ... or few Where it intersects the space at hand This shaman with the hoops stands Aligned like living magnetic needle between deep past and looming future Butterfly pierced on each drum beat, wing beat, static spark, storm front, energy circle delineated by leaping limbs 1st man last man dancing man man dancing Hoops in hand trampled grass circle spreading Voices flame above crazy coyote heartbeat drum I see sunrise on the plains big river at dusk Perpetual pillar of dust on prairie rim and always overhead those wings -- circling, turning He's the earth he's the egg he's the eagle always circling Always turning -- always comes back to the centre Hoops whirling, now transparent feet touch down on anaconda Streets and on the next leap dissolve slowly into the moving lights Rainbow steps, jerking universe Goodbye, Man-in-time And just beyond the clatter and cars the last long notes of wild voices ring Like Roland's horn (Tokyo 5/9/79) SONG: Waiting For the Moon (4:22) Body lines fluid in static heat Thoughts buzzing like flies around meat land here -- land there -- Quick circles in the air I'm riding smooth but just a little slow Waiting for the moon to show Leather-faced old men by the cafe wall Kids in the surf splashing with a soccer ball I gaze through curved lens Trying to identify the sky's end Little spots on the horizon into gunboats grow Waiting for the moon to show Might be a party -- might be a war When those faceless sailors come ashore Speculation is a waste of time You want to go have a glass of wine? Whatever's coming, there's no place else to go Waiting for the moon to show (Lauzarote 12/9/81) SONG: Cala Luna (5:03) (Instrumental on German pressing of CD) SONG: Tropic Moon (4:38) Away from the river Away from the smoke of the burning Fearful survivors Subject of government directives One sad guitar note Echoes of the wall of the jungle Seen from the air they're just targets with nowhere to run to Children of rape Raised on malnutrition Men in camouflage Filled with a sense of mission Light through the wire mesh Plays on the president's pistol Like the gleam of a bead of sweat in the flow of a candle Hear the cry in the tropic night Should be the cry of love but it's a cry of fright Some people never see the light Till it shines through bullet holes The tropic moon Bathing a beach fringed with palms Glitters on shells And beach tar and coke cans And on the night-coloured boat And on the barrels of guns In the rage in the hearts of these men is the seed of a wind they call Kingdom Come Hear the cry... (Sardegna 4/6/82) SONG: Going Up Against Chaos (5:31) Moon across the valley Squatting on the roof Of the dirty gray bank Like a cop with no proof We were lying in bliss Love was cooling into sleep There was a dream on the horizon And a punch-up in the street We were lying on the mountain by the satellite dish Humming with the tremors of Every envy, rage and wish Orchids and radar In the dazzling night The stars were all racing like satellites Going up against chaos Going up against chaos Two hearts full of tough love We were bodies of light Like we'll be someday The sirens and the curses Were light years away We were Lot on the mountain We were Noah on the Ark Flying hand in hand From the doghowl dark Going up against chaos... (Toronto 8/8/81) SONG: Put Our Hearts Together (4:25) Don't need the everlasting trade expansion Don't need the cold white heroin breath Don't need Pizzarro or the Inquisition No berserk worship of a hero's death Don't need reactionary politicians Don't need the gunfight at the O.K. Don't need no Reverend Paisley hate-masturbation Don't need no Jihad or no IRA We need to put our hearts together Set up a rhythm in combination And if we put our hearts together We get a rhythm that will shake creation Who needs supremacy of pink people There's no such thing as a pure racial strain It takes all colours to make a rainbow Takes every part to make a working brain The whole of history is a growing together If you want pure, you're gonna have caves again Anyway who needs a geek like the Grand Dragon So full of shit his breath makes acid rain We need to... Woman-in-kitchen, man-in-palace Worshipping the performance of the phallus Gaming for power till their hearts grow callous As if a human's just an animal with malice Limp lance, phallocrat, finger on the trigger God ahead and stay small while everything gets bigger It's a bully's game and I don't want to play Why don't you think about the better way We need to... (St. Vincent 3/1/83) SONG: Civilization And Its Discontents (4:16) I need a helmet to protect my head I need earphones to hear what gets said I need a miracle to keep this little thread from snapping I know a lot about alienated man But we've all heard as much about that as we can stand It's just what happens when you let the time span catch you napping Two forward and one back Blind fingers groping for the right track What's to do when a stab and a pat on the back look like the same thing? Civilization and its discontents When all's been said and all the money spent Trying to beat the system of the world's events Gets you nowhere. Tired faces with the bus stop blues Man on a bench with a blanket of news The young Jamaican joking with the old Jew about women So many people so lost you feel sorry But too much pathos just makes you angry And even though I know who loves me I'm not that much less lost Black outline, sliding gray scale Subtle variations of dark to pale Pearl sky raining light like hail, come on and pierce me Raining light like a vision of the holy grail, come on and pierce me Civilization and its... (Toronto 2/7/81) SONG: Planet Of The Clowns (3:47) Stare into the moonlight Silver fingers press my eyes Probing in my heart with longing These footprints by the sea's edge Disappearing grain by grain Lose their form but keep their substance As the waves roar on the beach like a squadron of F16's Ebb and flow like the better days they say this world has seen Government by outrage Hunger camps and shanty towns Dignity and love still holding This bluegreen ball in black space Filled with beauty even now battered and abused and lovely And the waves roar on the beach like a squadron of F16's Ebb and flow like the better days they say this world has seen Each one in our own heart Desperate to know where we stand Planet of the clowns in wet shoes (Tenerife 9/9/81)