The first album.
How To Get Your Band On Television
I'm the Boss of the company
And I've got hunger working for me
Listen and you'll begin to understand
I built my profits on stolen land
It's the economics of supply and demand
And I make the demands around here
Product sells, people die
Same manipulation wrapped in lies
Give a little money and play your rock and roll
The biggest prizes to the biggest fools
Good evening ladies and gentlemen
Welcome to the show where you the audience participate
On our show tonight we got lost of surprises in store for you at home
In keeping with the fashion for charity, not change
Here's out contribution--we've called it Slag Aid
For every pop star that we slag off today
A million pounds will be given away
Paul McCartney - come on down
With crocodile tears to irrigate this ground
Make of Ethiopia a fertile paradise
Where everyone sings Beatles songs and buys shares in EMI
Charity, starvation, and rock and roll
Let it be, eh Paulie?
Freddie Mercury, this is your life
Thank the Lord that you were born white
And thank apartheid for this wonderful opportunity
To peddle your hypocrisy in Sun City
A bit of a hot potato in a moment, eh Fred, in South Africa?
Well I'm sure there's a video in there somewhere
David Bowie, the price is right
A suitful of compassion and a gobful of shite
Still the voices of those who doubt
Coca-Cola for the peasants to end this drought
David the world can only take so much
And with you around, we're in for a really hard time
Jagger and Richards, game for a laugh
Dancing us down the garden path
To a place where money grows on trees
Where cocaine habits are financed by hunger and disease
There's only one mountain in the rock and roll business
Ladies and Gentlemen, and it's Mick Jagger
Ask the puppet-masters who pull the strings
Who makes the money when the puppets sing
Ask the corporations where does the money go
Ask the empty-bellied children what are we singing for
And Cliff Richard, three, two, one
The God who remains when the religion's gone
Cliff, we've got a special surprise for you today
So come up closer, step this way
Cliff, you're such an example of moral worth
Such a purist saint come to bless our earth
That on behalf of our viewers watching on telly
And on behalf of the millions with empty bellies
We're donating something special that we're all going to like
Cliff Richard, we're going to nail you up to a cross tonight
Ladies and gentlemen, just imagine it, someone comes along, takes everything you own, your
space, your house, separates you from your family and then hits you in the face if you say
anything different. Well, that's what we've been doing to the third world for the past
four hundred years. That's you and me. You the viewers at home, me in the studio, the pop
stars, everyone. That's how we make the third world, every day, today and every day. If
you want any correspondence with the program, just send your answers, letter bombs only,
to BP House, Victoria Street, London, SW1
Thank you and good night
Feed the world
Starve the rich
Goodnight
I know there must be more
I know there must be more
Than giving just a little bit more
When half of this world is so helplessly poor
Starved of the real solution
Charity and tradition
And the cycle of hungry children
Will keep on going 'round
I know there must be more
Will keep on going 'round
I know there must be more
Will keep on going 'round
I know there must be more
'Till we burn the house of commons to the ground
British Colonialism And The BBC
I'm the boss of the BBC
I'm the monkey at the top of the media tree
Your version of the riots in Cape Town
Comes second-hand from me
Chewing and spewing this revolution
For popular TV
All your opinions are carefully chosen
By what we'll let you see
Televised crap dressed up as fact
Your soap reality
We only want a chance to show the Editor's side
Of struggle in the news
Closer and closer to the State's eye view
And further from the truth
Push a microphone to the mouth of this youth
Bewildered and confused
Misreported, distorted, misquoted
A ready-made victim to be used
Quote you on things that you never said
Put this pencil to your head
Kill your revolution dead
TV tells us what to be and what to say and what to do
How to act and how to lie but never question why
Fighting to stop this mass-deception
Fighting to scrap the pass-laws
Fighting to end misuse of land
Fighting to close down diamond mines
Fighting to feed their hungry mouths
Fighting to change the world
And here, we sit on a fence
Built by distance and enforced by lies
Is a full stomach all it takes
To keep us pacified
Commercial Break
I'm the wife of the boss of the company
And I always make my husband answer to me
With what he says about the blacks, I totally agree
The main problem is, they're not civilized, you see
Look at the way that they squabble between themselves
Rioting at funerals--they'll surely go to hell
If you gave them nice houses, they'd only burn them down
You don't get that in a white man's town
And boycotting products won't do them any good
You see they need the trade to help buy food
And when I visit my niece on her beautiful homestead
The blacks who work for her seem really quite content
So I'll agree with my husband--let things stay as they are
That's always been his motto, and we've gone far
Unilever
Whitewash
When you don't want to feed the world
When you just want to feed your bank balance
Wash your guilt away
Unilever washes whiter
Soap to clean those dirty hands
And a slap for the people who work the land
Unilever
Man-made hunger
Soap in our eyes
John West is the best
Old soap opera
No soap-reality
Legal slave trade
Domestos kills all known truths dead
Soap to wash the darkest stain
Profit covers up the pain
Of a slow, deliberate genocide
And all the dirt you want to hide
Take the black and wash it whiter
Brooke-Bond Oxo
Blue Band, Bird's Eye
Lifebuoy, Sunsilk
Persil washes whiter
We make whitewash
We sell whitewash
Consume whitewash
Consumed by whitewash
Whitewash
Buy it
Somewhere in this cycle there's me and you
What are we prepared to do?
(vomiting)
More Whitewashing
Children in school forced to the desk
Finger the atlas and study the text
Lies and opinion presented as fact
Taught to accept, and never to ask
Those smiling workers in Ladybird books
They're not picking coffee at all
They're busy with bricks and mortar
Building the company wall
Flickering pictures hypnotize
We spend our lives watching others' lives
Too much watching to realize
That this is a smokescreen
And this is why people die
Those smiling news presenters
They're not reading cue-cards at all
They're busy with brush and bucket
Whitewashing the company wall
Set yourself up and play it again
Force the tears and entertain
Sing about a world of make-believe
Force this charity and leave
Rich people who claim to know
What's wrong with this world
Can't know anything at all
They're busy giving the orders
For us to build their second homes
Flickering pictures hypnotize
Flickering pictures hypnotize
And we who take the orders
And refuse to question it all
We're busy with spade and Bible
Burying the poor
Burying the poor
Mass-manufactured and given away
Blinkers to get you through your day
So you'll never ever know to what extent you're involved
Easily fooled, all your problems solved
You'll say starvation has nothing to do with you
You saw it in print, so it must be true
And the documentary explained it all
It's a simple matter of birth control
And if you send a little money you can sleep tonight
Or starve in sympathy on a Limmits Diet
And you know that charity cures malnutrition
And hunger put the sparkle back in television
Hunger put the sparkle back in television
Hunger put the sparkle back in television
An Interlude-Beginning To Take It Back
Words to describe Nicaragua of old
Cash crops and hunger and US control
Coffee and sugar on company land
Made to supply what the boss would demand
Then one July morning in seventy-nine
Nicaragua decided to leave it behind
(Chorus)
And the people are learning to take back their lives
As the country will change, Sandinista survives
Women are winning what they've never known
The power to organize outside the home
Starting to find what is equal and fair
Ensuring that this revolution is shared
Regaining lost chances, demanding much more
Running the factories, fighting the war
(Repeat chorus)
Nobody claims that it's over and done
There's too much depends on enlistment and guns
And raising their children and filling their plates
And chasing the Contras to Washington State
The Yankee conspiracy thrown to the ground
That's where the spirit of change can be found
(Repeat chorus)
Dutiful Servants And Political Masters
One, two, one, two, three, four
Things were rather different in great grandfather's day
He just put a chain around their ankles and made them work for no pay
He took everything they owned and yet still demanded more
He did a bloody good job in taming the poor
Now I'm rather more subtle, I say, I'll tell you what I will do
I'll do everything I can to try and help you
And you'll be helping me, I say, and I'll see that you're alright
You can have a place of your own, you can even pretend to be white
And you won't have to worry, I'll have a quiet word with your mates
Oh they'll be alright, they'll have enough on their plate
I'll put a bit in their mouths, you just pull hard on the reins
They'll do anything for you and they won't complain
You'll be so much better off, I say, you can share my paradise
Just sign my piece of paper and I'll organize your life
And it never fails, it does the trick, it works every time
So me and my dear wife and the family's doing fine
Great granddad got his dukedom when slavery was abolished
Dear old dad became a viscount when the Empire was finished
But times have changed for the better with freedom of choice
We're a thousand times richer, QED His Master's Voice
A dog stares into a gramophone trumpet, waits for its call to action
Mute and obedient, standing to attention
Look a little closer, the dog is a woman
She's working under a system that she can't understand
Trapped inside a world of labor and heat
So that she and her children will be able to eat
The trumpet is patriarchy, it's old and fixed
Where poor men are lured by desire to be rich
Where the limited power is still given to men
Where development aid is so wastefully spent
Where western education enforces this crap
Where women work in the open, yet live in a trap
There's one solution, and this is it
The dog leaps on the gramophone and has a shit
Coca-Colanisation
So I think, I mean, it's a nice sound
It's a happy sound, and it's not doing anybody any harm
...And In A Nutshell
And the company director spins the globe
Looks into on atlas of the world
A supermarket lifestyle for as all
A thousand nations under company control
Coca-Cola got machines in every land
No-one got the teeth to bite the hand
Stole their labor, their culture, and their lives
To create a Coca-Cola paradise
Swallowing their soft drinks and their lies
Let's take the blindfold from our eyes
Invasion
The first world's got greedy, we're consuming it all
The third world's got hunger, and military control
This unequal balance is a master plan
One gets rich from the other's land
They've got it all worked out, and we give our consent
They've got it all worked out, and we give our consent
They've got it all worked out for Central America
And they've got it all worked out for Africa
And in our naivete we believe myths and over consume
And give them our consent
Dying in the shadow of the USA
Let them eat bullshit, make the land pay
Make a fast deal with the local elite
Then substitute cash crops where once grew wheat
Build a cycle of dependence on a starvation diet
With food as a weapon, workers stay quiet
And multinational names have blood on their brands
From taking an interest in misused lands
Del Monte, Tate and Lyle, Ralston, Purina
Coca-Cola, RTZ, and Unilever
All packaging lifestyles for the glamorous West
Expand the company, exploit the rest
We are not isolated by distance
But by greed and our racist history
Just a wall's width away
Still impossible to reach across
This space in front of me
It's we who write this history
We who guard the money-tree
We support the companies
We stole the colonies
And when the system starts to crack
We'll have to be ready to give it all back
And when the system starts to crack
We'll have to be ready to give it all back
See the space which lies between the rich and the poor
How the space increases as we keep on taking more
Keeping that space between as all
Is how the west can keep control
With a mission and a checkbook promising aid
Posing for the camera the United Nations man came
Ha talked of control and the terrible drought
And the way that the west would bail them out
Then he stopped smiling and talked conditions
Of mutual aid, and American wishes
Sending in aid with sewn-on strings
If they won't buy arms then it's pulled back in
Feeding the world American style
Colonel Sanders has an empire behind his smile
Back up the investments with a military regime
Then cleverly says it's to keep the world free
But the multinational myths are beginning to fall
The poor don't want aid, they want control
And if we really want to see the third world eat
We've got to see through the wrapping on the high street
Past the barriers of culture that dictate our lives
We're busy consuming as the other half dies
And the answer's not a question of charity
Not whilst profit's still the top priority
So let the glossy shop-fronts know what to expect
And you bosses of Companies...
And the cycle of hungry children
Will keep on going 'round
Will keep on going 'round
Until we burn the multinationals to the ground
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