Notes on a new song: Rebel Songs
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October 9, 2011
Rebel Songs
I wrote this song earlier in the year from a line that appeared (as usual out of nowhere), complete with melody: "We don't need no rebel songs 'cause we're already free". It was the day after Ian Paisley (the firebrand Northern Irish Loyalist Leader) retired.
For the first time, as I don't watch much TV, I saw footage of him laughing away with Martin McGuinness (the Ex-IRA Sinn Féin politician and the current deputy First Minister of Northern Ireland), and learnt that these long term adversaries had been dubbed the “Chuckle Brothers” because of their habit of being seen constantly laughing away together in Stormont (Northern Irish Parliament).
If you are Irish, or in any way connected to the struggles of Irish history, I don't need to explain what this new information would do to your head...
Coincidentally, Pink Floyd's old song 'Another Brick In The Wall', with it's lyric "We Don't Need No Education", is about mind control and I'm sure my subconscious is making reference to it by using the line, "We don't need no..."
If you look at the words, "don't" and "no", in the lyrics “we don't need no education”, you'll observe they are double negatives that cancel each other out. So I guess it's not that we don't need rebel songs or education, for that matter, just perhaps new ways of approaching these things...
We don't need no rebel songs
'Cause we're already free
Times have changed, we've all moved on
It's no mystery
A flicker in the distance
Has become a blinding light
We don't need no rebel songs
To lift us up tonight
We don't need no rebel songs
To sing under our breath
We stumbled through this brand new day
And died a little death
When we realised that we'd become
The thing we resisted
We don't need no rebel songs
Now that we've untwisted
This is the life, a life that is unscripted
With a mystery prize still behind the creaking door
We came back, came back,
We came back from where we drifted
We don't need no rebel songs
To keep us company
All wrapped up in rusty chains
Our own worst enemy
Learnt by rote and repetition
Our thoughts were paralysed
We don't need no rebels songs
Now we can improvise
Copyright Rory Faithfield 2011
New Album: 'Songs For Sooner' (What's it all about?)
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October 2, 2009
The album title 'Songs For Sooner' relates back via the song title 'Sooner Or Later' to the dog I had when I was thirteen. Her name was Sooner.
Sooner was a beautiful jet-black Kelpie. I rescued her from a farmer who had beaten and abused her so much that she was terrified of everyone and everything. She was so terrified that she would spend most of her time hiding under the house. We called her Sooner because she would sooner stay under the house than come out.
I tried to love her back to life. I think I wanted to show her that the world is a far more beautiful place than the concept she held of it. Looking back, I’m not so sure it was just her I was trying to convince.
In the end, Sooner’s fear got the better of her. One day my brother Andy took her out for a walk. They crossed the main road together with Sooner on her leash and entered into the sanctuary of our local park. When my brother went to release her, so she could have a run around the fresh green grass, she was terrified, and misinterpreted this act of love and liberation as a clear and present danger. Once off the leash, she made a run for it. Not for the green grass and tranquil freedom of the park, but to make her escape back out into the unforgiving oncoming traffic of a four lane highway.
It’s taken me almost three decades to understand the message of Sooner's death. There is a moral to this story. I hope you get it Sooner than I did.