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Subhumans

Rats E.P.


Joe Public

Joe Public in a overcoat
A smile on his face and his fingers down your throat
Making you sick with his victory salute
'V's up for England' -- or does he mean 'Fuck you!'?

If looks could kill he'd stare you into the ground
The flatulence of greed keeps his money going round
The smell of indigestion he's got cancer on his breath
Before he takes your mind away he'll take your self-respect

Idiots and cowards don't vote or fight
Say your parents and the papers so they must be right
The leaders of the country don't do one or the other
They're too busy fighting against one another

Hey Joe! Where you goin' with that census in your hand?
To make us feel important? I don't think you understand
You represent a public whose views are out of date
The generation gap caused by the crap you generate


/// The typical 'Mr. Average' may not exist, but the majority of people come very close. The general belief that what is pioneered by the medis as 'normality' is the one and only concept of 'real life' worth living, is upheld to the point where the media lowers its standards further and further to capture the fickle hearts of as many people as possible -- taking the lowest common denominator as a standard to follow with pride... patriotic pride, working-class pride: outdated English values based on winning the war and marching from Jarrow... The basic dehumanisation process to turn individuality into conformity is able to take place through people's basic desire to be told that their opinion is the right one, thereby streamlining their beheviour to fit the media dream, where freedom is portrayed in the lives of nuclear families in soap operas famed for being 'true-to-life' when true level of repression and poverty has never been so high. Relying on dreams of social success through appropriation of proprety and Victorian values denies the individual the freedom of though so readily propagated by politicians and priests. And so from the government via the media filters the image of perfection to strive for, the rich-bloated-patriot-white-male-worker-success-story-hero, casting his oppressive shadow over us all. / DON'T BE CONNED -- THERE'S ONLY ONE OF YOU ///


Labels

Call me a punk cos I wear a leather jacket
You can call me a hippy cos I believe in love and peace
Call me an idealist because of songs like this one
You can call me what you like I'm all and none of these

Fix a label on me to keep illusions happy
Fix a label on me does it make you feel secure?
Fix a label on me to keep me at distance
And I'll label you as ignorant not wanting to no more

Before we understand ourselves do we have to fight each other?
Before we share opinions must we keep them under cover?
We classify and categorise and keep ourselves divided
We are all individuals not the images provided

Fix a label on me to keep illusions happy
Fix a label on me does it make you feel secure?
Fix a label on me to keep me at distance
And I'll label you as ignorant not wanting to no more

Labels are a subtle way of keeping us in line
Divided by conformity we waste away our time
We are all individuals divided by these rituals
Think again like I have done -- throw away the labels!

Fix a label on me to keep illusions happy
Fix a label on me does it make you feel secure?
Fix a label on me to keep me at distance
And I'll label you as ignorant not wanting to no more


/// What one looks like has always been the primary indication of a person's character; but when a look is dictated by the strictures of fashion, then looks promote a false character portrayal, and the beheviour of those who set the fashion is passed on to those who continue it, regardless of whether such behaviour is a true indication of their character. Sets of restrictions are imposed on the indivudual until his individuality is lost in mass-produced identities. The only use for imitative style is to enforce the sense of identity, to oppose the normality of one's surroundings -- but the way a person thinks is too often generalised as a result of what he looks like, and this creates the divisions that keep us fighting for causes that don't exist outside the dreams of social superiority, enforced by safety in numbers. People believe in labels and uniforms because they surround us, from Action Men to policemen, they shape and control our lives and so shape the restrictions we allow ourselves to think of as normal. A whole range of barriers between us stops cummunication, which has to be the major step towards solving the problems that we all agree need solving -- underneath the social values and labels we're all the same animals in the same cage -- never underestimate someone because of the way they look... / IT'S ALL IN THE HEAD ///


When The Bomb Drops

When the bomb drops it'll be a bank holiday
Everybody happy in their tents and caravans
Everybody happy in their ignorance and apathy
No-one realises 'til their television breaks down

The voices of the people are going unhear
But they got nothing to say cos they're deaf and dumb
Too concerned with money, luxury, adultery
Complacency and politics and apathy will never mix

When the bomb drops there'll be a four-minute warning
Three minutes of anarchy and one of blind futility
No-one left alive and no chances to survive
You've heard it all before -- but I'm telling you once more

To forget is to forgive but there's nothing to forget
I ain't forgotten how to live and it hasn't happened yet
They'll drop the bomb for something to do, can't remember what it's for
But I ain't forgot Hiroshima -- I ain't forgot the war

Does it really have to append like it did before?
Does it really have to append like it did before?
Does it really have to append like it did before?


/// Despite numerous anti-war slogans/marches/songs/organisations, progress towards decelaration of the arms race is still minimal -- proving, not that such awareness and its manifestations is of no use, but rather that there is not enough of such awareness. The majority of people have such set beliefs that any open and determined pacifism is hysterically conceived as enemy infiltration, rather than as an extension of the obvious fact that War is Death is Wrong. Such basic fundamentel logic is generally accepted as true but 'unrealistic' in a world of greed and paranoia where patriotism is a second nature and survival is taken for granted under the leadership of the country, who promote the general belief that the arms race is the major factor that keeps us alive: in fact, as the arms race increases in speed and efficiency, so does the risk of the not-so-fictional 'accidental holocaust'... Meanwhile, conventional wars continue across the world -- there is no 'world peace' -- wars so many thousands of miles away that the mere newsprint cannot convey the anguish and pain to the minds of those for whom World War Two exists only on paper and file, with Hiroshima seen as a one-off event never to be repeated. With promises of safety in fallout shelters affordable only for the rich, and proven to be merely transient in their viability as a safeguard of life, we all know ourselves to be duped into believing the threat to be so out of touch with reality that it can never happen, except in comic books, and such an impossible dream could be survived -- in this very possible nightmare there will be NO survivors... We are so advanced that we have come to the edge of a world we can destroy several times over. When the ignorance of their own power to stop it beforehand... / THAT MEANS NOW ///


Rats

A sense of enterprise is here
The attitudes that conquer fear
Stability togetherness
The feeling cannot be suppressed
Hand in hand we had our say
'United We Stand' but so did they
Hands in handcuffs dragged away
To cheers of hate and 'Victory!'

We fought 'the City' but no-one cared
They passed it off as 'Just a Game'
The city won't stop 'til attitudes change
Rats in the cellars of the stock exchange

Co-ordination was not so good
But everyone did just what they could
Unarmed with inexperience
We had to use our common sense
'If you act like rats you get treated like this'
Said the policeman like we didn't exist
When the force of law has lost its head
The law of force is what you get

We fought 'the City' but no-one cared
They passed it off as 'Just a Game'
The city won't stop 'til attitudes change
Rats in the cellars of the stock exchange

We fought their calculations
Money gained from third world nations
All that money spent on war
Could be used to feed their poor

The papers played the whole thing down
Said there was nothing to worry about
The rats have all gone underground
But we'll be back again next time round
We'll be back again next time round
We'll be back again
We'll be back again
We'll be back again
We'll be back again next time round
Next time round
Next time round
Next time


/// The 'Stop the City' marches were held in the 'City' of London, the centralised market of the Stock Exchange, all the major banks and a supporting cast of thousands of pounds of our money, too much of which (like a penny is 'too much') is used to further the causes of our Tory-based, class-ridden society, the financing of illegal arms deals with other countries and the general well-being of the people who control our taxes. A protest against the needless expenditure of our money on war and luxury when there's so much unemployment, poverty and inflation, against the obvious links between the directors of the multi-nationals and the houses of Parliament... Where many M.P.'s hold top positions in business and use them to propagate the ideas of the government in power by controlling the media -- playing a major part in winning the elections for the people who give them knighthoods by shaping people's political opinions and financing the political machinery at the same time... The back-scratching ideal that has created a net of power and corruption that controls a large percentage of our lives, without most of us doing any more than accepting it as 'how it's always been'.. As if our 'superiors'really were superior enough to keep us in line without any resistance / THIS IS THE BACKLASH -- KEEP COMPLAINING! ///


Subhumans.
Dick -- voice.
Bruce -- guitar.
Phil -- bass.
Trotsky -- drums.

Words & Music by Subhumans
Recorded at Southern Studio 24/26-7-84
Released Jan 85
Engineer by John Loder
Produced by Subhumans
Cover art by Nick Lant

No need to go further!! It's just Tripod publicity!!
Pas besoin de descendre plus!! C'est juste de la publicité de Tripod!!