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The lead single from Martin & Bell's Spoken word collaboration "UTOPIA".
lyrics
AN ALTERNATIVE ULSTER 2018
There’s an alternative Ulster where there’s no security force.
A place without Arlene’s, RHI or Gerry’s twitter discourse.
There’s an alternative Ulster where the music is sweet.
They pogo away the days there because
Walden’s heaven is under their feet.
There’s the alternative Ulster of Terri and my brother Jake,
The love you take being equal to the love you make.
An alternative Ulster of sundry elations
Where we came together and felt good vibrations.
We would pogo till our feet got tired,
Then go down to Dublin and get totally wired,
Roar for them songs until our throats got sore,
And then cry out for more, more, more.
Characters they were, to soak up these bands.
Merve the Perve, Tara Winter and the late Freddie Hans.
Trouble sailed round every corner
And we were tied to the masts.
I feared bumping into those guys from The Outcasts.
In the backstreets of the empty city
There’s voices that still moan
Like the wingeing fucker
Attempting to call up Protex up on the phone.
The hangouts, the drug dens,
The greasy spoons, and that bar,
Not to mention the lifts we cadged in my dad’s car.
The eternal search for every sort of living thrill.
The music kept on rolling down through the years Though it couldn’t conquer death or banish all fears. The loss and the illnesses that come with time.
Sins thought to be yours turned out to be mine.
That was history, and those are the ways.
Grey was mixed with gold in those old days.
But that’s alright, and here’s the last line,
An alternative must be waiting. Now is the time.
They stoked punk fires on the Cregagh estate
Where Alwyn’s Private World lay in wait.
On Stracham Green in July they fanned up the flames.
Across the road came Geordie, he played football games.
He was a warrior in a shirt of green,
The best alternative Ulster we’d ever seen.
There was mushrooms growing. Magic from the ground.
Terri played the new tunes and the 60s psychedelic sounds.
Nothing peculiar, and nothing so strange,
Like Arthur Lee making that change.
Staying forever plus one more day.
And in 77 we also gave it up for Mr Marvin Gaye.
The music kept on rolling down through the years Though it couldn’t conquer death or banish all fears.
The loss and the illnesses that come with time.
Sins thought to be yours turned out to be mine.
That was history, and those are the ways.
Grey was mixed with gold in those old days.
But that’s alright, and here’s the last line,
An alternative must be waiting.
Now is the time.
credits
released January 8, 2019
Gavin Martin - Words, Martin Bell - Music
The Headstrong Mining Company is the latest incarnation of the creative partnership of Multi-Instrumentalist Martin Bell (
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