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2. |
Xenophobe
05:31
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Not only have I provided the lyrics here, but I have also included my notes and alternative versus and working titles:
TO LINGER IS NOT TO REMAIN - Chet 6.3
The walk and talk differs this is evident
And action may not represent the sentiment
The petitions are an element
But far from what the movement meant
When boomers were at picket fence
The plot thickens when
The pot calls the kettle black
And that colour is the blinker
That can linger in the back
Of the mind of the partially privileged
Still casting some distance
Act like masters when piss hits
Still regardless of histories - DROP
That they never read about
Don’t contemplate the better route
Or compliment the men around
All continents have some mud in the well
And its up to individuals to get up and yell
But please don’t do it from the sofa
Or the confines of the Copa
Don’t be tokens with a poster
And keep knocking like Jehovah
Be the beacon of the coda
Resolve the movement
Call bullshit in the pulpit
Don’t gather with the cool kids
Pool the resource for the foolish
The face value tactic
Least done in practice
Leads to least done its cactus
No blossom revolution
Its as stagnant as pollution
Clutters up the real talk
Don’t get a gun and shoot it
I give no fucks for looting
But give less for putrid humans
And detest this messes fusion
White power white wash whitesplain
The whites plot white crops
Decimate tradition so efficient
That we pray to white gods
Whites doves meaning hope
Black gloves mean were broke
Black Pete wrap sheets
Black day black week
Black cats black dreams
Black pawns go last
This is no mistake
Black prisons on the take
Still 3rd world till this day - drum break
(sound bite)
We leave em all for dead
And then were blaming them
Cooking in the hot box
Children women men
(Sound bites and interviews)
(maybe scrap last verse and make instrumental to finish?)
(come in after horns)
Contagions replacing
A complacent cadence debating a nation
Of Ill health still dealt
With blatant replacement
From Eurasian to caymans
The statements lame and abrasive
To taint the name & give face lifts
Acquaint the brain with the same shit
Sick of everyday the heavens paved
A path to the ruins
With bullshit the foundation
Where’s ya fuckin god now - horns come in for a break - VOCAL FX
Wash your hands in the matrix
The after life’s a pantomime
The standard lie is handled fine
Passed from the top dog
Down the line in clandestine
Fashion
the pact lacks tact And out of rations
The benefactors Halifax &
proprietors of fracking
All inaction
Like when the fucking planet burns
It’s like the cannon turns to planet earth
To blow the axis spread it’s girth
For what it’s worth
(have other vocalists do this with me)
I don’t see that holding hands
And preaching unity
Herd immunity
And cursing poor community
Is any different
To all the talking heads impurity
And all of this new scrutiny
Is old hat for you & me
If you remember the past then
Draw on 1000
And if you don’t get my reference
Then get on the gram & start pouting
fascist governments need outing ...
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3. |
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Here is a scenario that may transcend from the subject matter illustrated, to all realms of inequality and injustice.
A black woman born in America in 1902, with a white aunt through marriage (this alone would have been controversial) as a child would have watched her aunt unable to vote until the woman was 18 years old. All throughout her schooling she may have had conversations at the dinner table about politics and recognised the fact that her aunt was unable to have a voice regarding political leaders and therefor political decisions. In her 18th year she would have seen womens suffrage and all its hostile resistance see her aunt finally able to vote in democratic elections. She herself would not have the same rights until she was 62 years old. Reflect on the social and psychological impact of this scenario.
This is modern history and this is America. Although I am in Australia, I use this American example because I feel we mimic in many ways the progress and ideals of America. For those that don’t agree, the 1902 Commonwealth Franchise Act removed Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people’s right to vote in federal elections. This right was reinstated in 1962, however First Nations people were not included in the census until 1967. So as you see not only are we the sister nation to Americas racism, we are also a little behind their progress.
It is also important to mention racisms psychological impacts on whites in America and Australia. You can do that in your own time. I will not waste one character sympathising here, the information is out there, the evidence clear and the time for seeing who built your country has well passed. Much like America, we ignore the systems of social cohesion, agriculture and land management of our original custodians.
Inequality is not a gender gap or a right to vote or police profiling, it is a deeply imbedded mental framework that inhibits us from making rational decisions based on what is right.
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4. |
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We met as young teen boys
Well at least I was
You were young enough to be amused
We gambled cards & dice on the bus heading home
You taught me things that grown ups never knew
We grew and all our games, they grew with us
But we still let our games keep us entertained till finished
Took you under my wing but now I set that
You - were holding me in flight
I thought that I was protecting you
From all the crooked crows at night
Time time time
Doesn’t always heal
Time time time
Doesn’t seem that long x 2
And then as men we walked on ancient roads
Followed the path of saxons, where romans withdrew
My flight got shakey but I knew you still held me underneath
Till I flew away not to know I was leaving
Truth
Now you’re bitter and I can’t find my way back up
The skies so far away
Seems I am needing you
And if you ever need to hide in my wings again
I’ll fly wherever just to be your friend
Time time time
Doesn’t always heal
Time time time
Doesn’t always seem that long
Time time time
Is all we have to gain
Because time time time
It’s all that we have lost
But time can be quite a cost
Look at our 20’s
Done plenty
Accolades hung plenty
Sailor songs sung plenty
Paid some costs and levies
And now the ocean spread between us
May as well be earth to Venus
Stars to cross just way too many
It’s time
Time
But then before I even got off the train
You were shot while going for your morning run by a retired police officer
Now we’ll never have last embrace
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5. |
No Justice. No Peace.
03:47
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Move like the morning ignores the dark in passing
Deplores the everlasting
Evolves and rolls no asking
Cause permission is a given
The day will coexist
With everybody that is living
The decision is the math
Do the division and subtract
& If the dead are still fresh
Then composition is the gimmick
No catch
It’s as literal as minerals
And longitudes to map
A common use for hats
It’s proper super Nats
Like coppers use binoculars called twitter
Noosing facts
It’s as obvious as black
When it’s not navy blue
But when the nights seems crack
A little impressive
Minimal pressing spiritual blessing
From Ra or Sheba
Or Vishnu or peter
For me probs neither
A ball of gas that heats up
Making sauce of poor Bonita
Keepin orphans warm like heaters
Like Keidis needs to keep it
Intravenous foetus breathes it
Let’s appease it
Grow crops
Swim when it’s not hot
Don’t stare for long
Cause there’s some cretins in the mosh
Even in the broad day I fear for broads
Across the board the boarders border
Bearing cross from here to abroad the cost is what
The days like night if your lost
Night is like day if the fiending don’t stop
Don’t stop X
Can’t stop
No chorus to bore us
Not smooth no its porous
Deplore us abhor us
The rapport is ignore us
To the core its enormous
The proportions distort us
Every morning is gorgeous
If you explore with poorest
See that more is before us
If in orders fedoras
Tippin jaws like I’m horus
And then contort to the gorges
Holding court for good causes
Making sport of portly porters
And horders of law and order
Making war on the borders
No more….
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6. |
White Fragility
04:55
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What is coloured?
What is colour?
Can something have no colour?
Can someone have no colour?
Is having no colour, as in not being coloured - normal?
If so, being coloured - is not . . . . Normal?
Generally the standard, the stock, the mainstream or the common is known as normal as it does not differ from the conventional, the customary, the wonted.
With this in mind Coloured is not normal, at least it is different to normal. - it is different
And what is coloured?
As far as modern rhetoric is concerned Coloured is black.
What is black?
Black is African, black is Non-European, black is indigenous.
These statements are quite arbitrary, but they are seen as natural, historical, geographical and sociopolitical facts.
These facts are the norm.
Based on these “facts”, if Normal is common and proper and coloured is not the standard and coloured is black, then is black different from normal therefore not normal?
I fail to see any other conclusion - its formal
This is clearly by design, this idea of colour or coloured.
It enables the divide to be clear and the conquer to have reason.
Colour takes away the responsibility of the normal and accepted.
It makes one divine and the other at the mercy of divinities gift.
The gift to join in on the normal, not to be normal - that just can not be.
Coloured is exotic at best, not normal, not of the decree
But an anomaly
At the behest of the monopoly
Not commonly accepted
But an obvious exception
Conception determines the shade
And coloured is the difference
That can predetermine fate
And its not up for debate
The clear and present danger
Makes our colour palate state what’s imperative
To living life in certain ways
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7. |
A Person of Colours
04:39
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This sad state of affairs continues
For the colonised it seems like forever
For me, it is forever - for I have no history
I have only the years I have been here
I live in a white world, so my whiteness has been supercharged to be the real me
My blackness has been denied, it has been the subject of laughter disbelief and ridicule
We blend in well, us from the island
With our dutch name and throwback light skinned cousins
They almost give pass to the darker ones
I am asked to leave the meeting or at least to not comment, too much
When I am amidst my black brothers and sisters
And I am told who I am when I am with my European brethren
My 3 passports mean nothing to 2 of those nations
3 continents have the name home to me, yet none are
If Africa is my father that ventured across the Indian Ocean to meet my mother Britain in the land she had stolen, who will take me in? Where am I to run? Who’s flag do I fly and whose battles do I fight?
Rhetorical questions are best left unanswered, I apologise for the deceit - I’m not waving any flag
My allegiance is to my love and my battle is one that has no enemy, if it did I would be in dire straits as they would be too many, everyone is much too many
I wrote a poem about my identity, to shed light on my own darkness
You who are someone
You who are no one in particular
You who have no home nor no vernacular
You whom seek nothing in search of everything
Tipping over dark green bottles to see if the liquid inside is red or white knowing very well the label will tell you right
You who can dance and can jump and racialise yourself like its ok but you hate it and know you should
You who can judge and manipulate and use privilege and be unkempt yet regal and know whats good
Good for all or good for the gander that you despise
You who’s affinity sways to the darker sections of your complexion because the lighter side has misplaced pride and a closet so very full of bones you are afraid of even the smells intention
Who could blame you
You who are white
You who are black
A person of colours
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8. |
Damned by policy
06:18
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I have sat down with this track several times
Trying to write honestly, earnestly
Aiming to express what I really feel about prejudice, about racial injustice
About class divide and misogyny
Trying to be poetic, then attempting to be literal, then as any attempt at some sort of narrative failed I tried to recount historical events and factualise brutality. Then I realised that isn’t even a word.
It is all so plain, yet so complex. If you do not know the why’s then how can you have so many opinions on solutions to the when’s? I know the why’s, at least I think I do. Yet I fail to describe it to do this song justice, I can not quite articulate these thoughts. I can not tell you how deeply I feel about how we all are and how we seem to have been for a very long time. My disgust is beyond my own recollection, it surprises me at times, it meanders around my tolerance and then I turn around and it is standing tall and braced right in front of me, mockingly smiling waiting for me to speak so it can say with confidence - I fucking told you.
I have always been so afraid to speak and my default response to this is to always speak, lucky for me there is research involved but that does not help to relinquish this hatred and disappointed in the form of poem and prose, I write without revision, I type like a madman and I have no idea who I am speaking to or why but I do know that I am tired, not physically or mentally but emotionally I am tired, I am not violent though I often wish I was so I could just destroy the space between the eyes that stare down on people that need the palm of an open hand to brush away their fringe and say I will help you see, rather than the back hand, the knuckled edge of intolerance and bigotry and indifference laced with stupidity and fear - fuck them, fuck those people, but I can not fuck those people, they need love and not the violent kind as vile as they are, they need love
So here is love
Here’s love
There once was a place
Free of all confines of a tight lipped race
Free of institutions that defined said race
Free of all pollution from a hurried rat race
Free of evolution dubbed by fitness of a race
Free of constitutions that debated bred race
Free of any mention of identifying race
And free of the conditions that have devastated race
Free to be perceived by the omission of the deeds
Is the way to feed at night on a stolen peeps seed
And a way to sleep at night on stolen land and have a dream
Convincing inner selves that the winners have the means
Free
Just a concept of those that are
Just appropriated coat of arms
Just a notion that is chosen last
First is the struggle then the freedom starts
Free
Janis said its nothing left to lose
Victor Frankl said its something we choose
But if youre born free, then need to gain freedom
At some point your oppressed need liberation for a reason
When do the shackles tighten when do the locks click
When if you the lucky one does freedom have a lost grip
Free
Whos free
(CHORUS)
Born with freedom
Die in chains
Born with freedom
Die in vein
Born with freedom
Don’t die the same
Born with freedom
Finish in restraints
Born with freedom X 4
From the moment we are born we are free
We walk and we talk before we have an understanding of this concept - free
White in Australia is normal
White in Australia can practice behaviours that black people can not
Drinking in a park when white is the great Aussie bbq
Drinking in a park when black is a threat to safety
Gathering to protest when white is politics
Gathering to protest when black is rebellion
Unemployed when white is struggle
Unemployed when black is advantageous
Sleeping outside when white is camping
Sleeping outside when black is primitive
Yelling when white is passion
Yelling when black is violence
Being white and poor is battling
Being black and poor is of their doing
White is the desired participant
Black is the detested belligerent
White is the cops passer by
Black is the opposite catching the eye
White is defined by the stature and the class
Black is defined by the colour of your arse
Whites given right before the facts are presented
Blacks are denied and the facts are resented
We had a white Australia policy
Before we have black sovereignty
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9. |
Stop Deaths In Custody
04:00
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Warning this contains names of the deceased
Remember John Peter pat?
Was the year I was born I think
The year that 4 w.a coppers killed a 16 year old kid
Little black fella beaten to death
Fractured skull torn aorta
No charges were met
Remember Kingsley Richard Dixon
They say he hung himself in prison
The case that sparked hawk
To begin royal commission
His mother Alice fought for decades
Was a leader in the fight
Felt she got nowhere till she killed herself one night
Remember David John Gundy
Well he was asleep in his bed
When the cops raided the wrong man that ended up dead
Blasted in his fucking room
No crime committed
Cops said it was an accident and all were acquitted
Remember Cameron Doomadgee
Murdered by sergeant Chris Hurley
That mother fucker went to trial
And then the prick went home early
The autopsy report claimed he probably fell that morning
Fell hard enough to bleed to death from ruptured fuckin organs
Remember Ms Dhu
She was only 22
Locked up for unpaid fines
Poor soul wouldn’t see it through
She was crying in pain
For 3 gruelling days
Called a junky by the cops
Shut up bitch we know it’s fake
She got to the hospital
Handcuffed to the bed
Had a heart attack and In an hour Ms Dhu
Pronounced dead
Remember Rebecca Maher
I’m sure the cops don’t
They didn’t follow the procedure
So she died and it’s a joke
Think you’re woke
This issues bigger than
The hatred cops provoke
Remember David Dungay
On his last earthly day
Was held down and sedated
By five screws at long bay
He said he couldn’t breathe
His misconduct eating biscuits
And yes I’m fucking serious
That’s the shit these people live with
Remember Tanya day
55 years of age
fell asleep on the train
and then was thrown in a cage
She died 5 hours later trauma led bleeding
On the brain
And 27 years earlier her uncle died the same way
Remember Veronica Walker
She too died in prison
She was in maximum security
For fucking shop lifting
And walker remember that case
At least remember the cop that shot him
Cause that mans a disgrace
I apologise for saying names
I respect indigenous customs
But it’s time we do something
More than nothing
I’m disgusted
I live in the land of genocide
On and offshore detention
I live in a place where cops kill
Our people with no sentence
Where peodophiles are pardoned
And blacks have no justice
Run over by cars or baked as the sun hits
It’s fucking gruesome
This whole place is putrid
Say their names
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10. |
Because I'm brown
04:02
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11. |
Abolish Australia
03:10
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12. |
White Privilege
04:03
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Alright your honour
This what we got thus far
A missing body cam
And some blood up in the car
Bullet holes in the floor and
Some superficial scars
A dead black Walpiri man
And a cop haled a star.
Over achieving Canberra bloke
Philanthropist parents
Military family
and they’re here to pose declarants
Bravery awards and accolades
Cleaner than he’s happy days
Strive for the community
And made a point of walking godly ways
I know this mans kind
Humility and servitude
Chose our great police force
So his life could find a purpose to
Better the people
Better as equals
Never as evil
In my hearts honest opinion
He’s the saint that paints the steeple
Now this victim
Died from acts of self defence
A criminal Unhinged
Without the will to see the sense
Now we all know the dangers
That the Territory’s rangers
See the violence in these strangers
And the crimes that are complacent
To me it’s blatant
Murder is a heinous charge
If we make this the example
Then we treat the force with disregard
Mr white knows that every night
We fight foes
And every kind of right can be denied
In light of fines though
Indigenous groups
Do not inherently coupe
But know this current state of youth
Behave belligerently crude
Indignant to prove
They feel there treatment is rude
And between me and you this
Simply is not true
And let’s be honest
They don’t care for our assistance
See our deeds as just a hindrance
Only heed to their resistance
And forever be persistent
For the handouts of our system
And they wonder why our prisons
Are full
Cause they’re indifferent
So how are we to judge this man
This civil serving patron
Of an Ill deserving nation
He’s showed us patience at the hands of the mob
And now he fights for reputation he fights liberty and fights for his job
it’s wrong
Well thanks for those anecdotal statements
Buzz words adjacent
To the rhetoric of a racist
Now the plaintiff
In good lights been painted
The media saw the jury praise this man
And victim blaming
So let’s stick to the facts
Start from the beginning
And highlight these callous acts
Not limelight the defendants tact
He was shot in his home
Cuffed after the fact
Taken into custody with bullets in his back
No medical assistance
Community ignored
Police sustained no injuries
And the evidence is poor
If I was charged with murder at the hands of a gun
Would I be free to live for 7 months with dad and mum
Should a routine warrant check
Lead to sudden death
And why would any minor suspects
Fear a fatal threat
The problems are systemic
Brutally pandemic
We protect every copper like a cleric
With all merit
It’s pathetic
We have over 400 victims
Not one perpetrator not one conviction
If this isn’t a tell tale sign of how we govern
Then I cease to understand how we imply that this is justice
Innocent men comment
Guilty parties hide
Truth is transparent
And the antonym are lies
3% population
jail house is 25
50 for the youth
No medication so they die
How on earth would you or I
See the torture of these people
Lead them to just believe
We see them as our equals
When we came from overseas
To change the fabric of their nation
When we've altered what was ancient
In a few generations
That we’re complacent
Is a gross understatement
Where the vagrants that patrol their land
With impatience and with hatred
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Joel Hunter-Craig Brisbane, Australia
Joel Hunter-Craig utilises the many mediums of art to find meaning and then to find reasons for not needing to know said meaning.
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