(1/11/12: cleaned up last verse)

Religion No Rite (In Your Face Again)

Once upon a time the fall from grace
The Father said get thee from my place
Became the Son, came down, died in your face
Cleared the way back to grace through faith
The blood of the Martyrs soaked the ground
Buried in rags they stayed down
The kings stepped in put in their claims
Forced their rules upon the game

So once upon a time later today
You sign up for the fire escape
Get rewarded with a clean slate
The Blood is strong it covers your hates
But verse upon verse upon verse upon verse
Aimed at you and not the cursed
Not being deceived and God not mocked
The weight of the cross for you to take up

Religion no rite
Gun you aim for the mind of Christ
Didn’t take long to lose sight
In the halls of the councils high

No fire doesn’t mean that higher
There won’t be a reason to cry, or
That you will not be standing trial
Watching tape of every mile
And so worship and worship to taste
One thing proves if you worship to waste
Windows dressed as you see fit
But the valley before you how do you cross it?

Moral dilemmas: prepare, they’re coming
And there’s no room left for running
No slippery slope temptations
But painted corners, no win situations
Just one chance, happiness at stake
A heart you love you must break
Choices consequences how do you withstand them
And still obey His commandments?

Time to get in your face again

Religion no rite
Gun you aim for the mind of Christ
Didn’t take long to lose sight
In the halls of the councils high

By popular request (and permission from Nina and Rob), the first of my two songs for the Lead’s upcoming 4-song EP is available for download at Area 1234. I actually wrote this in 2000, and even back then I thought I could eventually record it with the Lead since the lyric is based on something that happened to the Lead.

Back in 1985, shortly after we put out our first EP,  I sent a check and an ad to the yet-to-be-legendary #1 punk political rag Maximum RockNRoll along with a review copy of said EP. I got the ad and check back from already-infamous publisher Tim Yohannan along with a note declining to run the ad. Of course I wrote a letter back to Yohannon in a futile attempt to save his soul (and a successful attempt to dis Castro and the Sandinistas), and we traded a couple more letters. Old Warrior from The Past Behind was the first response to this.

As the years seasoned my perspective a bit, I realized that I had no reason to brand Yohannon’s rejection of the ad as censorship. In fact, as the nominal owner of his business (although I’m sure he’d bite, kick, scratch and scream saying it’s not a business), he was perfectly within his rights to refuse to deal with us. So I wrote this other tune basically calling him out on being a Stalinist Pharisee while saying (as he did in his letter to me) that he had no tolerance for people with other beliefs but the same intransigence. All well and good, except Yohannan was already dead and gone as of April 1998.

Lyrics- written in 1999 and revised in 2011:

What I Should Have Told Tim Yohannon in 1985

Good evening old warrior the muzzle fits just fine
Before you go back to the rag my I have a little of your time?
Your morality’s direction as you made me understand
Abhor every intolerant and dogmatic command
And you went on and described the zealots
And, so naively, yourself
The minds in your hands never did know
Shouting I think for myself but you – you will never know

Sheep of another color are sheep nonetheless
The way it will be will be the way that it is
Your worldview these days only seems to sport false teeth
The guns and the wars are tiring of propping your beliefs
You’re printing and we are moshing
Mommy’s got our bed for after the slogans
The system you decry is keeping you afloat
You are part of the machine but you – you will never know

You say no rules while you make rules yourself
Falling into your toilet with everything else
What is good to you you have the right to say
And the right to say that it is the only correct way
But my religion that you hated for its ways
Bore the precepts you so embrace
Erase it from the earth-your dream come true
Take Him away from this world – but you’ll never think it true
What hope left for you?

2000 March 2, 11, 17, 20
2011 June 2

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

I got my kids a new computer which means I can now sneak in and do some primitive editing and add tolerable amounts of some of my boring pre-song patter onto these vids. I’m really happy with this guitar sound for the harder-edged older punky stuff when I play it unaccompanied. It’s kind of a rootsy, clattering, chug-a-lugging Bo Diddley-ish bashing of the strings in drop-D tuning with some overdrive and delay and tremolo. The song itself is a vintage Lead moldy oldie based on a cliche that hadn’t been so overused back in ’85 when I wrote it. This is also the first of two musics that accompanied these lyrics. This version from Return Fire is garage punk. We rerecorded it a la speedcore punk-ay two years later. 21 years later, on July 19, 2009, this vid was filmed at the International Church of South Florida by Jon Doozan.

The last tune on Return Fire and I guess it was also my farewell to melodic hardcore circa late 1985. Metal and crossover beckoned after, for better or worse. The words are still actually pretty good. The military trappings and revolutionary metaphor made this appropriate to play on the Fourth of July weekend. Intl Church of SoFlo, July 5, 2009, Juan Pablo Camargo on the cam.

Sunday night I’ll be at Scruffy Murphy’s, which seems to be located in the vincinity of the legendary Long’s Christian Music, where the Lead’s old V.T.O. comrade Mark Eastman managed things. Wonder if they’ll be open on Sunday night….

Tuesday night I’ll be at Reilly’s on Vineland Road.

I confirmed both places, so hopefully I’ll get no nasty surprises. The ReverbNation gadget in the sidebar has all the formal info, as well as my new profile at openmikes.org

I got my kids a new computer which means I can now sneak in and do some primitive editing and add tolerable amounts of some of my boring pre-song patter onto these vids. I’m really happy with this guitar sound for the harder-edged older punky stuff when I play it unaccompanied. It’s kind of a rootsy, clattering, chug-a-lugging Bo Diddley-ish bashing of the strings in drop-D tuning with some overdrive and delay and tremolo. The song itself is a vintage Lead moldy oldie based on a cliche that hadn’t been so overused back in ’85 when I wrote it. This is also the first of two musics that accompanied these lyrics. This version from Return Fire is garage punk. We rerecorded it a la speedcore punk-ay two years later. 21 years later, on July 19, 2009, this vid was filmed at the International Church of South Florida by Jon Doozan.