CD1


1. SLAINTE MHATH

A hand held over a candle in angst fuelled bravado
A carbon trail scores a moist stretched palm
Trapped in the indecision of another fine menu
And you sit there and ask me to tell you the story so far
This is the story so far

Shuffling your memories dealing your doodles in margins
You scrawl out your poems across a beermat or two
And when you declare the point of grave creation
They turn round and you to tell them the story so far
This is the story so far

And you listen with a tear in you eye
To their hopes and betrayals and your only reply
Is Slainte Mhath

Princes in exile raising the standard Drambuie
Parading their anecdotes tired from old campaigns
Holding their own last orders commanding attention
We sit here and listen to all of the story so far
This is the story so far

Take it away, take it away, take it away
Take me away, take me away, take me away

From the dream on the barbed wire at Flanders and Bilston Glen
From a Clydeside that rusts from the tears of its broken men
From the realisation that we've been left behind
Is to stand like our fathers before us in the firing line

Waiting on the whistle to blow
We stand here waiting on the whistle to blow
They promised us miracles, and the whistle still blows
Broken promises but the whistle still blows
Waiting on the whistle to blow
We stand here waiting on the whistle to blow



2. ASSASSING


I am the assassin, with tongue forged from eloquence
I am the assassin, providing your nemesis
On the sacrificial altar to success, my friend
Unleash a stranger from a kiss, my friend
No incantations of remorse, my friend
Unsheathe the blade within the voice, my friend

Who decorates the scarf with the fugi knot
Who camouflaged emotion in a thousand yard stare
Who gouged the notches from the family tree
Who hypnotised the guilt in career rhythm trance

Assassing, assassing, assassing, assassing

Listen as the syllables of slaughter cat with calm precision
Patterned frosty phrases rape your ears and sow the ice incision
Apocalyptic alphabet casting spell the creed of tempered diction
Adjectives of annihilation bury the point beyond redemption
Venomous verbs of ruthless candour plagiarise assassins fervour
A friend in need is a friend that bleeds
Let bitter silence infect the wound

You were a sentimental mercenary in a free fire zone
Parading a Hollywood conscience
You were a fashionable objector with a uniform fetish
Pavlovian slaver at the cash till ring of success
A non com observer - I assassin the collector - defector

So you resigned yourself to failure, my friend
And I emerged the chilling stranger, my friend
To eradicate the problem, my friend
Unsheathe the blade within the voice

I am the assassin
I am the assassin

And what do you call assassins who accuse assassins anyway, my friend?



3. SCRIPT FOR A JESTER'S TEAR

So here I am once more in the playground of the broken hearts
One more experience, one more entry in a diary, self-penned
Yet another emotional suicide overdosed on sentiment and pride
Too late to say I love you, too late to re-stage the play
Abandoning the relics in my playground of yesterday
I'm losing on the swings, I'm losing on the roundabouts
I'm losing on the swings, I'm losing on the roundabouts
Too much, too soon, too far to go, too late to play, the game is over
The game is over

So here I am once more in the playground of the broken heart
I'm losing on the swings, losing on the roundabouts, the game is over, over
Yet another emotional suicide overdosed on sentiment and pride
I'm losing on the swings, losing on the roundabouts, the game is over
Too late to say I love you, too late to re-stage the play
The game is over

I act the role in classic style of a martyr carved with twisted smile
To bleed the lyric for this song to write the rites to right my wrongs
An epitaph to a broken dream to exorcise this silent scream
A scream that's borne from sorrow

I never did write that love song, the words just never seemed to flow
Now sad in reflection did I gaze through perfection
And examine the shadows on the other side of the morning
And examine the shadows on the other side of mourning
Promised wedding now a wake

The fool escaped from paradise will look over his shoulder and cry
Sit and chew on daffodils and struggle to answer why?
As you grow up and leave the playground
Where you kissed your prince and found your frog
Remember the jester that showed you tears, the script for tears

So I'll hold our peace forever when you wear your bridal gown
In the silence of my shame the mute that sang the sirens' song
Has gone solo in the game, I've gone solo in the game
But the game is over
Can you still say you love me



4. WHITE RUSSIAN


Where do we go from here?
Where do we go from here, where do we go from here
Where do we go from here, where do we go from here

They boarded up the synagogues, Uzis on a street corner
You can't take a photograph of Uzis on a street corner
The DJ resigned today they wouldn't let him have his say
Surface scratched where the needles play, Uzis on a street corner

Where do we go from here

Terror in Rue de St. Denis, murder on the periphery
Someone else in someone else's pocket
Christ knows I don't know how to stop it
Poppies at the cenotaph, the cynics can't afford to laugh
I heard in on the telegraph there's Uzis on a street corner

Where do we go from here, where do we go from here

The more I see, the more I hear, the more I find fewer answers
I close my mind, I shout it out but you know it's getting harder

To calm down, to reason out, to come to terms with what it's all about
I'm uptight, can't sleep at night, I can't pretend everything's all right

My ideals, my sanity, they seem to be deserting me
But to stand up and fight I know we have six million reasons

They're burning down the synagogues, Uzis on a street corner
The heralds of the holocaust, Uzis on a street corner
The silence never louder than now, how quickly we forgot our vows
This resurrection we can't allow, Uzis on a street corner

Where do we go from here, where do we go from here

We buy fresh bagels from the corner store
Where swastikas are spat from aerosols
I sit in the bar sipping iced White Russian
Trying to score but nobody's pushing

And everyone looks at everyone's faces
Searching for signs and praying for traces of a conscience in residence
Are we sitting on a barbed wire fence
Racing the clouds home, racing the clouds home

We place our faith in human rights
In the paper wars that tie the red tape tight
I know that I would rather be out of this conspiracy
In the gulags and internment camps frozen faces in nameless ranks

I know that they would rather be standing here besides me
Racing the clouds home, racing the clouds home

You can shut your eyes, you can hide it away it's gonna come back another day
Racing the clouds home, are we racing the clouds home
Racing the clouds home



5. INCUBUS


When footlights dim in reverence to prescient passion forewarned
My audience leaves the stage, floating ahead perfumed shift
Within the stammering silence, the face that launched a thousand frames

Betrayed by a porcelain tear, a stained career
You played this scene before, you played this scene before

I the mote in your eye, I the mote in your eye
A misplaced reaction

The darkroom unleashes imagination in pornographic images
In which you will always be the star, always be the star, untouchable

Unapproachable, constant in the darkness
Nursing an erection, a misplaced reaction
With no flower to place before this gravestone
And the walls become enticingly newspaper thin
But that would be developing the negative view

And you have to be exposed in voyeuristic colour
The public act, let you model your shame
On the mannequin catwalk, catwalk
Let the cats walk, and the cat walks

I've played this scene before, I've played this scene before
I the mote in your eye, I the mote in your eye
A misplaced reaction, satisfaction

You can't brush me under the carpet, you can't hide me under the stairs
The custodian of your private fears, your leading actor of yesteryear

Who as you crawled out of the alleys of obscurity
Sentenced to rejection in the morass of anonymity
You who I directed with lovers will, you who I let hypnotise the lens

You who I let bathe in the spotlights glare
You who wiped me from your memory like a greasepaint mask
Just like a greasepaint mask

But now I'm the snake in the grass, the ghost of film reels past
I'm the producer of your nightmare and the performance has just begun
It's just begun

Your perimeter of courtiers jerk like celluloid puppets
As you stutter paralysed with rabbits eyes, searing the shadows

Flooding the wings, to pluck elusive salvation from the understudy's lips
Retrieve the soliloquy, maintain the obituary
My cue line in the last act and you wait in silent solitude

Waiting for the prompt, waiting for the prompt

You've played this scene before



6. SUGAR MICE


I was flicking through the channels on the TV
On a Sunday in Milwaukee in the rain
Trying to piece together conversations
Trying to find out where to lay the blame
But when it comes right down to it there's no use trying to pretend

For when it gets right down to it there's no one here that's left to blame
Blame it on me, you can blame it on me
We're just sugar mice in the rain

I heard Sinatra calling me through the floorboards
Where you pay a quarter for a partnership in rhyme
To the jukebox crying in the corner
While the waitress is counting out the time

For when it comes right down to it there's no use trying to pretend
For when it gets right down to it there's no one really left to blame
Blame it on me, you can blame it on me
We're just sugar mice in the rain

'Cos I know what I feel, know what I want I know what I am
Daddy took a raincheck
' Cos I know what I want, know what I feel I know what I need
Daddy took a raincheck, your daddy took a raincheck
Ain't no one in here that's left to blame but me
Blame it on me, blame it on me

Well the toughest thing that I ever did was talk to the kids on the phone
When I heard them asking questions I knew that you were all alone
Can't you understand that the government left me out of work
I just couldn't stand the looks on their faces saying, "What a jerk"

So if you want my address it's number one at the end of the bar
Where I sit with the broken angels clutching at straws and nursing our scars
Blame it on me, blame it on me,
Sugar mice in the rain, your daddy took a raincheck



7. FUGAZI


Vodka intimate, an affair with isolation in a Blackheath cell
Extinguishing the fires in a private hell
Provoking the heartache to renew the licence
Of a bleeding heart poet in a fragile capsule
Propping up the crust of the glitter conscience
Wrapped in the christening shawl of a hangover
Baptised in the tears from the real

Drowning in the liquid seize on the Piccadilly line, rat race

Scuttling through the damp electric labyrinth
Caress Ophelia's hand with breathstroke ambition
An albatross in the marrytime tradition
Sheathed within the Walkman wear the halo of distortion
Aural contraceptive aborting pregnant conversation
She turned the harpoon and it pierced my heart
She hung herself around my neck

From the Time-Life-Guardians in their conscience bubbles
Safe and dry in my sea of troubles
Nine to five with suitable ties
Cast adrift as their side-show, peepshow, stereo hero
Becalm bestill, bewitch, drowning in the real

The thief of Baghdad hides in Islington now
Praying deportation for his sacred cow
A legacy of romance from a twilight world
The dowry of a relative mystery girl

A Vietnamese flower, a Dockland union
A mistress of release from a magazine's thighs
Magdalenes contracts more than favours
The feeding hands of western promise hold her by the throat

A son of a swastika of '45 parading a peroxide standard
Graffiti disciples conjure testaments of hatred
Aerosol wands whisper where the searchlights trim the barbed wire hedges
This is Brixton chess

A knight for Embankment folds his newspaper castle
A creature of habit, begs the boatman's coin
He'll fade with old soldiers in the grease stained roll call
And linger with the heartburn of Good Friday's last supper

Son watches father scan obituary columns in search of absent school friends
While his generation digests high fibre ignorance
Cowering behind curtains and the taped up painted windows
Decriminalised genocide, provided door to door Belsens
Pandora's box of holocausts gracefully cruising satellite infested heavens

Waiting, the season of the button, the penultimate migration
Radioactive perfumes, for the fashionably, for the terminally insane, insane
Do you realise? Do you realise?
Do you realise, this world is totally fugazi

Where are the prophets, where are the visionaries, where are the poets
To breach the dawn of the sentimental mercenary



CD2


1. HOTEL HOBBIES


Hotel hobbies padding dawns hollow corridors
Bell boys checking out the hookers in the bar
Slug-like fingers trace the star-spangled clouds of cocaine on the mirror

The short straw took its bow
The tell tale tocking of the last cigarette
Marking time in the packet as the whisky sweat
Lies like discarded armour on an unmade bed
And a familiar craving is crawling in his head

And the only sign of life is the ticking of the pen
Introducing characters to memories like old friends
Frantic as a cardiograph scratching out the lines
A fever of confession a catalogue of crime in happy hour

Do you cry in happy hour, do you hide in happy hour
The pilgrimage to happy hour

New shadows tugging at the corner of his eye
Jostling for attention as the sunlight flares
Through a curtains tear, shuffling its beams
As if in nervous anticipation of another day



2. WARM WET CIRCLES


On promenades where drunks propose to lonely arcade mannequins
Where ceremonies pause at the jeweller's shop display
Feigning casual silence in strained romantic interludes
Till they commit themselves to the muted journey home
And the pool player rests on another cue
Last nights hero picking up his dues
A honeymoon gambled on a ricochet
She's staring at the brochures at the holidays

Chalking up a name in your hometown
Standing all your mates to another round
Laughing at the world till the barman wipes away the warm wet circles
The warm wet circles

I saw teenage girls like gaudy moths
A classroom's shabby butterflies
Flirt in the glow of stranded telephone boxes
Planning white lace weddings from smeared hearts and token proclamations
Rolled from stolen lipsticks across the razored webs of glass

Sharing cigarettes with experience with her giggling jealous confidantes
She faithfully traces his name with quick bitten fingernails
Through the tears of condensation that'll cry through the night

As the glancing headlights of the last bus kiss adolescence goodbye
In a warm wet circle

Like a mothers kiss on your first broken heart, a warm wet circle
Like a bullet hole in Central Park, a warm wet circle
And I'll always surrender to the warm wet circles

She nervously undressed in the dancing beams of the Fidra lighthouse

Giving it all away before it's too late
She'll let a lovers tongue move in a warm wet circle
Giving it all away and showing no shame
She'll take a mother's kiss on her first broken heart a warm wet circle

She'll realise that she played her part in a warm wet circle



3. THAT TIME OF THE NIGHT


At that time of the night
When streetlights throw crosses through window frames
Paranoia roams where the shadows reign
Oh, at that time of the night
At that time of the night
Your senses tangled in some new perfume
Criticism triggers of a loaded room
Oh, at that time of the night

So if you ask me
How do I feel inside
I could honestly tell you
We've been taken on a very long ride
And if my owners let me have some free time some day
With all good intention I would probably run away
Clutching the short straw

At that time of the night
When questions rally in an open mind
Summon all your answers with an ice cubes chime
At that time of the night

At that time of the night
Pretend you're off the hook with the telephone
Your confidence wounded in a free fire zone
Oh, at that time of the night

So if you ask me
Where do I go from here
My next destination even isn't really that clear
So if you join me and get on your knees and prey
I'll show you salvation
We'll take the alternative way
Clutching the short straw

If I had enough money I'd buy a round for that boy over there
A companion in my madness in the mirror the one with the silvery hair
And if some kind soul could please pick up my tab
And while they're at it if they could pick up my broken heart.



4.KAYLEIGHT


Do you remember chalk hearts melting on a playground wall
Do you remember dawn escapes from moon washed college halls

Do you remember the cherry blossom in the market square
Do you remember I thought it was confetti in our hair
By the way didn't I break your heart?
Please excuse me, I never meant to break your heart
So sorry, I never meant to break your heart
But you broke mine

Kayleigh is it too late to say I'm sorry?
And Kayleigh could we get it together again?
I just can't go on pretending that it came to a natural end

Kayleigh, oh I never thought I'd miss you
And Kayleigh I thought that we'd always be friends
We said our love would last forever
So how did it come to this bitter end?

Do you remember barefoot on the lawn with shooting stars
Do you remember loving on the floor in Belsize Park
Do you remember dancing in stilettoes in the snow
Do you remember you never understood I had to go

By the way, didn't I break your heart
Please excuse me, I never meant to break your heart
So sorry, I never meant to break your heart
But you broke mine

Kayleigh I just wanna say I'm sorry
But Kayleigh I'm too scared to pick up the phone
To hear you've found another lover to patch up our broken home

Kayleigh I'm still trying to write that love song
Kayleigh it's more important to me now you're gone
Maybe it will prove that we were right
Or ever prove that I was wrong



5. LAVENDER


I was walking in the park dreaming of a spark
When I heard the sprinklers whisper
Shimmer in the haze of summer lawns
Then I heard the children singing

They were running through the rainbows
They were singing a song for you
Well it seemed to be a song for you
The one I wanted to write for you, for you

Lavenders blue, dilly dilly, lavenders green
When I am King, dilly dilly, you will be Queen

A penny for your thoughts my dear
A penny for your thoughts my dear
I.O.U. for your love, IOU for your love

Lavenders green, dilly dilly, lavenders blue
When you love me, dilly dilly, I will love you

A penny for your thoughts my dear
A penny for your thoughts my dear
IOU for your love, IOU for your love

For your love



6. BITTER SUITE

[I. Brief Encounter]

A spider wanders aimlessly within the warmth of a shadow
Not the regal creature of border caves
But the poor, misguided, directionless familiar
Of some obscure Scottish poet

The mist crawls from the canal
Like some primordial phantom of romance
To curl, under a cascade of neon pollen
While I sit tied to the phone like an expectant father
Your carnation will rot in a vase.

[II. Lost Weekend]

A train sleeps in a siding
The driver guzzles another can of lager
To wash away the memories of a Friday night down at the club

She was a wallflower at sixteen
She'll be a wallflower at thirty four
Her mother called her beautiful
Her daddy said, "A whore".

[III. Blue Angel]

The sky was Bible black in Lyon
When I met the Magdalene
She was paralysed in a streetlight
She refused to give her name

And a ring of violet bruises
They were pinned upon her arm.
Two hundred francs for sanctuary and she led me by the hand
To a room of dancing shadows where all the heartache disappears
And from glowing tongues of candles I heard her whisper in my ear
"'J'entend ton coeur"
I can hear your heart

[IV. Misplaced Rendezvous]

It's getting late, for scribbling and scratching on the paper
Something's gonna give under this pressure
And the cracks are already beginning to show
It's too late
The weekend career girl never boarded the plane
They said this could never happen again
So wrong, so wrong

This time it seems to be another misplaced rendezvous
This time, it's looking like another misplaced rendezvous
With you
The parallel of you, you

[V. Windswept Thumb]

On the outskirts of nowhere
On the ringroad to somewhere
On the verge of indecision
I'll always take the roundabout way
Waiting on the rain
For I was born with a habit, from a sign
The habit of a windswept thumb
And the sign of the rain
It's started raining



7. HEART OF LOTHIAN


[I. Wide Boy]

Wide boys, wide boys, wide boys, born with hearts of Lothian
Wide boys, we were wide boys, born with hearts of Lothian
Wide boys, we were wide boys, these hearts of Lothian

It's six o'clock in the tower blocks
Stalagmites of culture shock
And the trippers of the light fantastic, bow down, hoe-down
Spray their pheromones on this perfume uniform

And anarchy smiles in the Royal Mile
And they're waiting on the slyboys, flyboys, wideboys
Rooting, tooting cowboys
Lucky little ladies at the watering holes
They'll score the Friday night goals

I was born with a heart of Lothian
I was born with a heart of Lothian
With a heart of Lothian

I was born with a heart of Lothian, with a heart of Lothian.

[II. Curtain Call]

And the man from the magazine, wants another shot of you all curled up
'Cos you look like an actor in a movie shot.
But you're feeling like a wino in a parking lot
How did I get in here anyway?
Do we really need a playback of the show?
'Cos the wideboys want to head for the watering holes
Let's go

And the man in the mirror has sad eyes



8. THE LAST STRAW (HAPPY ENDING)


Hotel hobbies padding dawns hollow corridors
A typewriter cackles out a stream of memories
Drying out a conscience, evicting a nightmare
Opening the doors for the dreams to come home
We live out lives in private shells
Ignore our senses and fool ourselves
To thinking that out there there's someone else cares
Someone to answer all our prayers

Are we too far gone, are we so irresponsible
Have we lost our balls, or do we just not care
We're terminal cases that keep talking medicine
Pretending the end isn't quite that near

We make futile gestures, act to the cameras
With our made up faces and PR smiles
And when the angel comes down, down to deliver us
We'll find out that after all, we're only men of straw

But everything is still the same
Passing the time passing the blame
We carry on in the same old way
We'll find out we left it too late one day to say what we meant to say

Just when you thought it was safe to go back to the water
Those problems seem to arise the ones you never really thought of
The feeling you get is similar to something like drowning
Out of your mind, you're out of your depth, you should have taken soundings
Clutching at straws, we're clutching at straws

And if you ever come across us don't give us your sympathy
You can buy us a drink and just shake our hands
And you'll recognise by the reflection in our eyes
That deep down inside we're all one and the same

We're clutching at straws
We're still drowning Clutching at straws



9. INCOMMUNICADO


I'd be really pleased to meet you if I could remember your name
But I got problems of the memory ever since I got a winner in the fame game
I'm a citizen of Legoland travellin' incommunicado
And I don't give a damn for the Fleet Street aficionados
But I don't want to be the back-page interview
I don't want launderette anonymity
I want my hand prints in the concrete on Sunset Boulevard
A dummy in Tussauds you'll see

Incommunicado, incommunicado

I'm a Marquee veteran, a multimedia bonafide celebrity
I've got an allergy to Perrier, daylight and responsibility
I'm a rootin'-tootin' cowboy, the Peter Pan, the street credibility
Always taking the point with the dawn patrol fraternity

Sometimes it seems like I've been here before
When I hear opportunity kicking in my door
Call it synchronicity call it deja vu
I just put my faith in destiny - it's the way that I choose

But I don't want to be a tin can tied
To the bumper of a wedding limousine
Or currently residing in the where are they now file
A toupee on the cabaret scene
I want to do adverts for American Express cards
Talk shows on prime time TV
A villa in France, my own cocktail bar
And that's where you're gonna find me

Incommunicado, incommunicado

Sometimes it seems like I've been here before
When I hear opportunity kicking in my door
Call it synchronicity call it deja vu
I just put my faith in destiny - it's the way that I choose

Incommunicado, incommunicado
It's the only way



10. GARDEN PARTY

Garden party held today
Invites call the debs to play
Social climbers polish ladders
Wayward sons again have fathers
Hello, Dad, hello, dad

Edgy eggs and queuing cumbers
Rudely wakened from their slumbers
Time has come again for slaughter
O on the lawns by still Cam waters
A slaughter, it's a slaughter

Champagne corks are firing at the sun again
Swooping swallows chased by violins again
Straafed by Strauss they sulk in crumbling eaves again
Oh God not again

Aperitifs consumed en masse
Display their owners on the grass
Couples loiter in the cloisters
social leeches quoting Chaucer

Doctor's son a parson's daughter
W where why not and should they oughta
Please don't lie upon the grass
Unless accompanied by a fellow
May I be so bold as to perhaps suggest Othello

Punting on the Cam is jolly fun they say
Beagling on the downs, oh please do come they say
Rugger is the tops, a game for men they say

I'm punting, I'm beagling, I'm wining, reclining, I'm rucking, I'm fucking
So welcome, it's a party

Angie chalks another blue
Mother smiles she did it too
Chitters chat and gossips lash
Posers pose, pressmen flash

Smiles polluted with false charm, locking on to Royal arms
Society columns now ensured, returns to mingle with the crowds
Oh what a crowd

Punting on the Cam, oh please do come they say
Beagling on the downs, oh please so come they say
Garden party held today they say
Oh please do come, oh please do come, they say.



11. MARKET SQUARE HEROES


I found smog at the end of my rainbow
I found my thoughts shift slowly into phase
Declared the constitution of the walkway

I realise it's time to plan the day
I'm a Market Square hero gathering the storms to troop
Cause I'm a Market Square hero speeding the beat of the street pulse
Are you following me, are you following me?
Well suffer my pretty warriors and follow me

I got a golden handshake that nearly broke my arm
I left the ranks of shuffling graveyard people
I got rust upon my hands from the padlocked factory gates
Silent chimneys provide the silent steeples

Cause I'm a Market Square hero gathering the storms to troop
Cause I'm a Market Square hero speeding the beat of the street pulse
Are you following me, are you following me?
Well suffer my pretty children and follow me, follow me

I am your Antichrist show me allegiance, Are you following me?
I am your Antichrist pledge to me defiance, Are you following me?

Suffer my pretty warriors, Suffer my fallen child, Are you following me?
The time has come to conquer and I'll provide your end
We march

I give peace signs when I wage war in the disco
I'm the warrior in the ultra violet haze
Armed with antisocial insecurity
I plan the path of destiny from this maze

Cause I'm a Market Square hero gathering the storms to troop
Cause I'm a Market Square hero speeding the beat of the street pulse

Are you following me, are you following me?
Well suffer my fallen angels and follow me
I'm the Market Square hero, I'm the Market Square hero
We are Market Square Heroes, to be Market Square Heroes