Sandinista!

So you're on the floor, at 54
Think you can last - at the palace
Does your body go to the to and fro?
But tonight's the night - or didn't you know
That ivan meets g.i. joe

He tried his tricks- that ruskie bear
The united nations said it's all fair
He did the radiation - the chemical plague
But he could not win - with a cossack spin

The vostok bomb - the stalin strike
He tried every move - he tried to hitch hike
He drilled a hole - like a russian star
He made every move in his repertoire

When ivan meet g.i. joe

Now it was g.i. joe's turn to blow
He turned it on - cool and slow
He tried a payphone call to the pentagon
A radar scan - a leviathan

He wiped the earth - clean as a plate
What does it take to make a ruskie break?
But the crowd are bored and off they go
Over the road to watch china blow!

When ivan meets g.i. joe

They cried the tears, they shed the fears,
Up and down the land,
They stole guitars or used guitars
- so the tape would understand,
Without even the slightest hope of a 1000 sales
Just as if, as if there was, a hitsville in u.k.,
I know the boy was all alone, til the hitsville hit u.k.

They say true talent will allways emerge in time,
When lightening hits small wonder -
Its fast rough factory trade,
No expense accounts, or lunch discounts
Or hypeing up the charts,
The band went in, 'n knocked 'em dead, in 2 min. 59

- no slimy deals, with smarmy eels - in hitsville u.k.
Lets shake'n say, we'll operate - in hitsville u.k.
The mutants, creeps and musclemen,
Are shaking like a leaf,
It blows a hole in the radio,
When it hasnt sounded good all week,
A mike'n boom, in your living room - in hitsville u.k.
No consumer trials, or a.o.r., in hitsville u.k.,
Now the boys and girls are not alone,
Now the hitsville's hit u.k.

(the clash)

"it ain't my fault
It's 6 'o'clock in the morning"
He said
As he came up out of the night

When he found i had no coins to bum,
He began to testify
Born in a depression
Born out of good luck
Born into misery
- in the back of a truck..

I'm telling you this mister
Don't be put off by looks
I been in the ring and i took those right hooks

Oh the loneliness
Used to knock me out - harder than the rest

And i've worked for breakfast
'n i ain't had no lunch
I been on delivery and received every punch

Suddenly i noticed that it weren't quite the same
Feel different one morning maybe it was the rain

But everywhere i looked all over the city
They're runnin' in an out of the bars
Someone stopped for a pick-up driving one of those cars
Y'see i allways wanted one of those cars
Long black 'n shiny an' pull up to the bars
Honk your horn, put down your windows, push yer button,
Hear it coming in
You can say i can see the light... roll!
Forward! drive! green lights! green lights!
Intersection city coming a running comeback home i run back
Not that strong now
Yes who's there now, can i help you? calling intel station light

Did you put your money in? yes i put it in
It say go, i say go, she say go, so we say go
Cos i can see the light all night tonight this night right now
Coming on forward motion across the ocean
An' up the hills yeh boys let's strike for the hills
While that petrol tank is full
Gimme a push gimme a pull
Gimme a llama gimme a mule
Gimme a donkey or gimme a horse

Down the avenue
So fine
In style

I wasn't going that far
The junkie slip!
I said i wasn't doin' it
The junkie slip!
Yea thought i'd find a rhythm in the junkie town
Thought i'd find a rhythm when the junkies hang around

Thought i'd go out walking to the junkie kind of beat
Setting on those bars that the junkies meet
The junkie slip!
Nail it down
The junkie slip!
This side of town
The junkie slip!
And whatcha knowing before you's a doin
The things they's a-knowing
You pawn your coat and your car
Pawned your cigar and your old guitar
You pawned your guitar and your saxaphone
You're pawning everything in your mother's home

Cos it's a junkie slip!
Just like rock n' roll
A junkie slip!
Like johnnny did the stroll
And you know it feels alright
But what's that feeling on a saturday night?

You're itching itching itching in your pillow in the day
You're itching itching itching and you gave your coat away
Itching itching itching and then in your sleeping bag
There's a little packet that youthought you never had

It's a junkie slip!
Every night
Junkie slip!
Cold water fright
It's a junkie slip
And an old spoon cooky cooky cooky kooky afternoon
All afternoon and in the middle of the night

You're worse for the difference and it don't sleep tight
Don't pull the curtains fon't put on the light
C-c-c-cos it's a junkie slip!
What's goin' on?
Was early night
I lit the fire
Finish alright
Yeh edi-edi-edi-yeh edi-juan
Him going to live with indian
Come in the car, it's an old machine
Riding from brookway on a magazine
Be on that corner with a magazine

Do ya do ya do ya follow your friends?
Do i hear you saying that you're going back again?
It's a junkie slip!
Where? did it end?
But did it ah did it did it ever end?
When did it ever end?
Don't ask me when on a wednesday night
Don't ask me when on a thrusday night
I said oh? who the hell are you?
You said oh! well you met me
I said i can guess why

(the clash/dread)

*left channel*
Make sure!
Taking cover in the bunker tonight
Waiting for bo diddley's headlights
I feel alright
Gotta fender stratosphere
I can do anything tonight
It's in neon lights an' global rights
Frank? he's on the phone
There ain't no german girl outside
But who cares when its warm inside?
With music
Special mystery of music tragically
Exchanging slaves for majesties
Modern waves of tragedy
Packing a to pience colt pair of shoots
A shiny grey mexican suit
The blue eyed traffic can sashay by
'cos tonight the sailor boys have hit shanghai
The kick-out traffic goes creaking by
I smash my glass and shout shanghi
My drummer friend comes shooting by
He said errol flynn will never die
Oh no! who am i to question why?
And are you lonesome tonight
And do ya need a country cowboy
Who's just thin and tight in those
Brrrr bus depot jeans
With a squirt resistant stud stud
Hey stoner

Get over there in the spliffbunker one
Becos london bridge was sold somehow
But it was too old anyhow
When uncle sam has broken down
We'll make him down in old japan
Say yeee

Well there ain't no better blend
Than joe ely and his texas men
Where the wind blows
I ain't seen none like that scenery
You can see from a bus if you pay the price

Wave my arms around
Flag one of those taxi's maybe
I saw a girl somewhere somehow
Forever sticks in my mind somehow
I've just got three lines
And a pair of two's
Like a lucky roll of dice that you
You cast

*right channel*
If music could talk!
Which means
Whatever your mind can bring
Likethe apple fell off the tree
Pah! fell right on his head
Yeah many years ago

There was a man who said
I am a shaman
A voodoo shaman
Got in trouble so he's going out
Mixing up and haiti! oh!
And the crickets
Buddy holly said it was
Brrr brrr yiii!

If music could talk you know

I feel kinda lonely
Standing out on the floor
Of electric ladyland...
Cos this is a good question samson
Are you partly arabic?

Chi man! whatcho all about

I don't want to i can't hope to
Say it all in one go
Occasionally once or twice
A day i feel alive enough to say
Let's hear what the drummerman's
Got to say about
He said is it errol flynn's birthday or not?
Sept 12 until october
If they pack 2 piece
Colt pair of shoots
We got the shiny grey mexican suits
I'm just wasting a great big
Corporation and the entire fund
The girders of wall street
And thetemples of money
And the high priests
Of the expense account
And im wasting the whole thing
I come down in yamaha-ha
They make the best pianos-time to step-up

(the clash)

It's up to you not to heed the call-up
'n' you must not act the way you were brought up
Who knows the reasons why you have grown up?
Who knows the plans or why they were drawn up?

It's up to you not to heed the call-up
I don't wanna die!
It's up to you not to hear the call-up
I don't wanna kill!

For he who will die
Is he who will kill

Maybe i wanna see the wheatfields
Over kiev and down to the sea

All the young people down the ages
They gladly marched off to die
Proud city fathers used to watch them
Tears in their eyes

There is a rose that i want to live for
Although, god knows, i may not have met her
There is a dance an' i should be with her
There is a town - unlike any other

It's up to you not to hear the call-up
'n' you must not act the way you were brought up
Who give you work an' why should you do it?
At fifty five minutes past eleven
There is a rose...
Yeah!

(the clash)

Chorus
Charlie don't surf and we think he should
Charlie don't surf and you know that it ain't no good
Charlie don't surf for his hamburger momma
Charlie's gonna be a napalm star

Everybody wants to rule the world
Must be something we get from birth
One truth is we never learn
Satellites will make space burn

We've been told to keep the strangers out
We don't like them starting to hang around
We don't like them all over town
Across the world we are going to blow them down

Chorus

The reign of the super powers must be over
So many armies can't free the earth
Soon the rock will roll over
Africa is choking on their coca cola

It's a one a way street in a one horse town
One way people starting to brag around
You can laugh, put them down
These one way people gonna blow us down

Chorus

Charlie don't surf he'll never learn
Charlie don't surf though he's got a gun
Charlie don't surf think that he should
Charlie don't surf we really think he should
Charlie don't surf

Charlie don't surf and we think he should
Charlie don't surf and you know that it ain't no good
Charlie don't surf for his hamburger momma
Charlie don't surf

Atom secrets, secret leaflet
Have the boys found the leak yet?
The molehill sets the wheel in motion
His downfall picks up locomotion

The people must have something good to read on a sunday

The leader's wife takes a government car
In the dark to meet her minister
But the leader never leaves his door ajar
As he swings his whip from the boer war

He wore a leather mask for his dinner guests
Totally nude and with deep respect
Proposed a toast to the votes he gets
The feeling of power and the thought of sex!

Now the girl let the fat man touch her
Vodka fumes and the feel of a vulture
The driver waited in the embassy car
The fat man's trap was set for capture
So the girl let the thin man touch her
Mixing questions, drunken laughter
The ministry car was waiting there
A minister knows his own affair

The people must have something good to read on a sunday

In these days you can get no rice
No razor blades but you can get knife
In these days see the people run
They have no food but the boy have gun
In these days they don't throw the stone
Nor use the voice they use the gun alone
In these days to be an oddity
Be hunted down like a scarcity

In these days don't beg for life
Wanna take kingston advice?
Oh please don't beg for your life

In these days the beat is militant
Must be a clash there's no alternative
In these days nations are militant
We have slavery under government
In these days in the firmament
I look for signs that are permanent

In these days with no love to give
The world will turn with no one left to live

In these days i don't know what to do
The more i see the more i'm destitute
In these days i don't know what to sing
The more i know the less my tune can swing

In these days you can get no rice
No razor blades but you can get knife
In these days see the people run
They have no food but the boy have gun

There is a train at version city
Waiting for the rhythm mail
If you can jump then jump right now
She can pull you through to better days

Is that the train that the speak off
The one i heard in my younger days
All great bluesmen have rode her
I'm jumping up gonna ride that train

There's a lonely soul out on the crossroads
He's waiting there in the pouring rain
He's looking for that great ride yeh
That'll take him to oh what's her name

So i rode that train from version city
For ninety-nine an' one half days
Never heard such rhythm sound
It was in my soul which was on the train

We went straight through syndrum inc.
Up an' over the acapella pass
Then gibson town and fenderville
All stations to the mesa boogie ranch
We saw that soul out on the cross roads
Waitin' there in the pouring rain
We called hey engine slow your rhythms
See he wants to ride the version train

We rode that train from version city
For ninety-nine and one half years
I never seen such funky country
While riding with the engineers

Could not fill no application
Before i rode this rhythm train
Could not work at my station
Before i rode the version train

There is a train at version city
Waiting for the rhythm mail
If you can jump then jump right now
She can pull you through to better days

Is the music of grove skin rock
Soaked in the diesel of was boys war?
Blood, black gold and the face of a judge
Is the music calling for a river of blood?

Beat the drums tonight, alphonso
Spread the news all over the grove
The big meeting has decided
That total was must burn on the grove

Does it mean i should take my machete
To chop my way through the path of life?
Does it mean i should run with the dog pack
Is that the way to be the one to survive?

Never need a gun says tai chi
Move on up to dragon snaps his tail
Fall back on still waters
Hammer with his eye on the nail

Spread the word tonight please, sammy
They're searching everyhouse on the grove
Don't go alone now, sammy!
The wind has blown away the corner soul

Tell the news for me, sammy
They're searching every place on the grove
But don't go down alone new, sammy!
The wind has blown away the croner soul

Is the music calling for a river of blood?

Oh! mama, mama look there!
Your children are playing in that street again
Don't you know what happened down there?
A youth of fourteen got shot down there
The kokane guns of jamdown town
The killing clowns, the blood money men
Are shooting those washington bullets again

As every cell in chile will tell
The cries of the tortured men
Remember allende, and the days before,
Before the army came
Please remember victor jara,
In the santiago stadium,
Es verdad - those washington bullets again

And in the bay of pigs in 1961,
Havana fought the playboy in the cuban sun,
For castro is a colour,
Is a redder than red,
Those washington bullets want castro dead
For castro is the colour...
...that will earn you a spray of lead

For the very first time ever,
When they had a revolution in nicaragua,
There was no interference from america
Human rights in america

Well the people fought the leader,
And up he flew...
With no washington bullets what else could he do?

'n' if you can find a afghan rebel
That the moscow bullets missed
Ask him what he thinks of voting communist...
...ask the dalai lama in the hills of tibet,
How many monks did the chinese get?
In a war-torn swamp stop any mercenary,
'n' check the british bullets in his armoury
Que?
Sandinista!

(tymon dogg)

Come with me. i won't hide
We're going on a ride
We meet each day, use time to see
While we're young and almost free

I've got to lose this skin i'm imprisoned in
Got to lose this skin i'm imprisoned in

Do not turn or hate to see
All the things you think we've got
Do not turn or hate to see
What happened to the wife of lot

We're alone or so they say
We're not on our own in that way
When we're alone it's real tough going
We can take a part in someone else's play

Come with me, i thought he said
But that's not him anymore, he's dead
What's it like to be so free
So free it looks like lost to me

The towers of london, these crumbling
Rocks
Reality estates that the hero's got
And every hour's maked by the chime of a clock
And whatcha gonna do when the darkness surrounds?
You can piss in the lifts which have broken down
You can watch from the debris the last bedroom light
We're invisible here just past midnight

The wives hate their husbands and their husbands don't care
Their children daub slogans to prove they lived there
A giant pipe organ up in the air
You can't live in a home which should not have been built
By the bourgeoise clerks who bear no guilt
When the wind hits this building this building it tilts
One day it will surely fall to the ground...

Fear is just another commodity here
They sell us peeping holes to peek when we hear
A bang on the door resoundingly clear
Who would really want to move in here?
The children play faraway, the corridors are bare
This room is a cage its like captivity
How can anyone exist in such misery?

It has been said not only here

"allianza dollars are spent
To raise the towering buildings
For the weary bones of the workers
To go back in the morning
To be strong in the morning"

Down the road came a junco partner
For he was loaded as can be
He was knocked out, knocked out loaded
He was a'wobblin' all over the street

Singing six
Six

Well i wish i would have me a great deal of money
Yeah and a-mighty

Give me
Down
Junco partner

Well i'm down

Now lightning strikes in old
New york
It may be dark but i wanna talk
It might rain, it might snow
Too many things i got to know
If this is spring than it's time to sing
Never mind the l'il birdies wing
Look out, look out, old new york
New york's coming an' new york talks
Hey! strike! not once...
Strike! but twice!

Get out your money - peel a slab
Roll some notes an' hail a cab
Drive in church drive in back
Drive down seventh in a tank
Take in the sights, feel the breeze
See new york's one and only tree
It can be found in garbage park
But don't inspect it after dark
Strike! new york! lightning!
Not once but twice.

Accidental hike in the transit strike
Roller skate or ride a bike
Three to a car, brooklyn bridge
You won't get far if you're privileged
Graffiti jack sprays in black
An englishman can he read it back?
Deli joe he ought to know
He runs the gang on pastrami row
Strike! lightning strike!

Because glass to glass, street to street
Buildings touch st. peter's feet
From car to bar, prez to shah
Everything is in the jar
The 4 winds blow cos the 4 winds know
Takes a special hustle to make a roll
Honey girl on her feet
I wish everything to make her sweet
Strike! twice! ok so roll!
From harlem! strike one!

Harlem slum to penthouse block
On every door i already knocked
There wasn't anybody that i didn't leave alone
Somebody lying under every stone
Everything that a man could need
In a bag down by my knee
That looks good, this ain't got seeds
Cheaper than booze down in the bowery
Lightning strike! old new york!
Everything's light! strike!

Hey ho such a night
I'll see y'all when the lightning strike
A polaroid caught in the act
You're married too and that's a fact
But i won't peek and i won't squeek
Down by the trucks on christopher street
It's cuban day - oi vey
Chinese new year let's call it a day
Tootsie! hey chi man!
That melody is puerto rican
Hey chi man is what he's speaking
An' there's the road down into london town
Where many cars get broken down
It's the westway from ladbroke grove
Runs down to old hounslow
Just thought i'd mention the new extention
That run's down the 59th street intersection
Did you hear the news y'all?
London town on the broadway!

They say immigrants steal the hubcaps
Of the respected gentlemen
They say it would be wine an' roses
If england were for englishmen again

Well i saw a dirty overcoat
At the foot of the pillar of the road
Propped inside was an old man
Whom time would not erode
When the night was snapped by sirens
Those blue lights circled fast
The dancehall called for an' ambulance
The bars all closed up fast

My silence gazing at the ceiling
While roaming the single room
I thought the old man could help me
If he could explain the gloom
You really think it's all new
You really think about it too
The old man scoffed as he spoke to me
I'll tell you a thing or two

I missed the fourteen-eighteen war
But not the sorrow afterwards
With my father dead and my mother ran off
My brothers took the pay of hoods
The twenties turned the north was dead
The hunger strike came marching south
At the garden party not a word was said
The ladies lifted cake to their mouths

The next war began and my ship sailed
With battle orders writ in bed
In five long years of bullets and shells
We left tem million dead
The few returned to old piccadily
We limped around leicster square
The world was busy rebuilding itself
The architects could not care

But how could we know when i was young
All the canges that were to come?
All the photos in the wallets on the battlefield
And now the terror of the scientific sun
There was masters an' servants an' servants an' dogs
They taught you how to touch your cap
But through strikes an' famine an' war an' peace
England never closed this gap

So leave me now the moon is up
But remember all the tales i tell
The memories that you have dredged up
Are on letters forwarded from hell

The streets were by now deserted
The gangs had trudged off home
The lights clicked off in the bedsits
An' old england was all alone