Open your eyes, open your imagination

Era il 1989 quando Matt Johnson e i suoi The The (un nome bellissimo per una band inglese e incazzata degli eighties, un po' meno lo sarebbe in italiano: pensate un po' a dei fantomatici "I I", oppure "Gli Gli", o ancora "Lo Lo", per non parlare de "Il Il"...) pubblicavano questo meraviglioso album:


Riascoltandolo stasera mi ha fatto pensare...


"The Armageddon Days Are Here (Again)"

They’re 5 miles high as the crow flies
Leavin’ vapour trails against a blood red sky
Movin’ in from the east toward the west
With balaclava helmets over their heads, yes!

But if you think that jesus christ is coming
Honey you’ve got another thing coming
If he ever finds out who’s hi-jacked his name
He’ll cut out his heart and turn in his grave

Islam is rising
The christians mobilising
The world is on it’s elbows and knees
It’s forgotten the message and worships the creeds

It’s war, she cried, it’s war, she cried, this is war
Drop your possessions, all you simple folk
You will fight them on the beaches in your underclothes
You will thank the good lord for raising the union jack
You’ll watch the ships out of harbour
And the bodies come floating back

If the real jesus christ were to stand up today
He’d be gunned down by the c.i.a.
Oh, the lights that now burn brightest behind stained glass
Will cast the darkest shadows upon the human heart
But God didn’t build himself that throne
God doesn’t live in israel or rome
God belong to the yankee dollar
God doesn’t plant the bombs for hezbollah
God doesn’t even go to church
And God won’t send us down to allah to burn
No, God will remind us what we already know
That the human race is about to reap what it’s sown

The world is on it’s elbows and knees
It’s forgotten the message and worships the creeds
Armageddon days are here again


"The Beat(en) Generation"

When you cast your eyes upon the skylines
Of this once proud nation
Can you sense the fear and the hatred
Growing in the hearts of its population

And our youth, oh youth, are being seduced
By the greedy hands of politics and half truths

The beaten generation, the beaten generation
Reared on a diet of prejudice and mis-information
The beaten generation, the beaten generation
Open your eyes, open your imagination

We're being sedated by the gasoline fumes
And hypnotised by the satellites
Into believing what is good and what is right

You may be worshipping the temples of mammon
Or lost in the prisons of religion
But can you still walk back to happiness
When you've nowhere left to run?

And if they send in the special police
To deliver us from liberty and keep us from peace

Then won't the words sit ill upon their tongues
When they tell us justice is being done
And that freedom lives in the barrels of a warm gun