SOUNDCLOUD RAIN

NEW VERSION

@

FIRST THING YOU SEE ON THE BLOGSPOT PAGE: INSERT PHOTOGRAPH OF THE KITCHEN CLOCK AT THE FOOT OF BLACK COMBE. AROUND MIDNIGHT OR NOON IT IS HARD TO TELL. THE AUTHOR TOOK IT BECAUSE IT WAS ONCE CONTENDED “A CLOCK IS ONLY AS FAST AS CHEETAH” BY THE AUTHOR AS A SEVEN YEAR OLD CHILD. 

2: PAGE TWO

INSERT A SECOND 

COVER PHOTOGRAPH ON 

THE BLOGSPOT PAGE:

THE SHEET WHERE 

PICTURES BROWN 

AND BLUE SIMPLY GREW:

AS DISCOVERED BY THE 

AUTHOR UPON THE PASSING 

OF HIS FATHER

MR. GILES ADRIAN 

GRICE TUCKER

LOVING HUSBAND 

AND FATHER

REST IN PEACE. 

BONUS TRACK: CHEESE DREAMS

Di di dit di di dit di di dit dit dit

Di di dit di di dit di di dit dit dit

Di di dit di di dit di di dit dit dit

Bring bring

bring bring

“Hello?”

Gold member, you're the one,

the one with the heart of gold

Vowels, pure vowels 

Immanuel Kant

will come to thee 

with immanence

You come home smacked up you come

d/ d/ d/ down

grooving up slowly

d/ d/ d/ down

grooving up slowly

d/ d/ d/ down

grooving up slowly

yeah yeah yeah

yeah yeah yeah

yeah yeah yeah

boom

boom

boom

boom

boom

how did we get down here from flat-top

wide tunnel cities self driving cars

bears in the moon and liquor and drugs

and whisky baaaaaaaaaaaars

boom shanka, you're the one,

the one with the sonic boom

knickers knickers faster than lightning

skin up fall out of bed

and did those feet

in ancient times

rain down, rain down,

come on raindown

and walk the sun

fatter, hippier, less well connected

always walk the hallways

down to create my own

and in the meantime

and in the meantime

I'll do the monkey bars with my legs

manic depression has enraptured my name

don't know what I want but I just want shame

don't know what I want but I just won't shave

rainy waif, rain always,

lay back and dream

on a rainy waif

now I know how Kurt Cobain sang

oh now I know how Kurt Cobain sang

no more laaaaaaaaaa la's

removal van canes will be turned into furniture

we're thinking of putting Tricky's name on the front sir

you never see me dead near an inch of closure

|| | |||| | || | ||||                         909 and 693 are wings 

“and a record made of sound 

goes round and round, conveying 

music to the speaker through the stylus,”

says the radio as I turn it on. 

Well, although there is no 

such thing as the Nirvana barcode

it opens up a discussion about 

the Telepathic Walkie Talkie, how 

if barcode is rain barcode is phone...

and at least I have 

the grace to come 

back and say that the 

extinction of consciousness 

has no monetary value.

It is past dawn 

and I see that 

that first mobile 

phone has gone.

SAIL AWAY 

I know it may sound like it’s none of your business but the first time I voted Labour it was because the song ‘Sail Away’ was on in the background or even the foreground of the village hall where we vote. 

- Anon 

INTRODUCTION 

This book is a book of songs. First of all you have the words to a record by The Flood which is recorded on earphones, binaural earphones, I tell you, with tiny mics implanted inside them. Then we have four solo albums. The solo work is organised according to the new Da Vinci circle, which is like a cyclical pattern designed by my brother Mr. James P D Tucker that goes as follows:

@

<BEE>             [long squiggle]

Infinity Symbol

Although I don’t understand it fully, I would say the above quote represents my brother’s experiment into the international language alphabet; and it has certainly influenced and inspired the naming and organisation of the four solo albums. Then there is also room for a brief mention of some of my work with Oedipus Wrecks, and also work with Grant Aspinall that followed on from The Flood. 

THE FLOOD

JUST SO YOU KNOW

On the day his A-level results came through at his little school up north John – who had written the highest marked English Literature A-level exam essay in the nation - went down south to stay with Paul and to look for work.

Their plan was to earn enough to join John’s Finnish grandfather on his home-made yacht in the Caribbean. John’s Finnish grand-father had built his own steal hull yacht in his back garden upon retiring and was now sailing round the world. John and his friend Paul were supposed to work and earn enough to join him for their Gap Year.

Instead when the Towers came down and things got messed up, they formed a band who soon began to record an album on state-of-the-art, binaural earphones, which meant earphones with tiny, tiny mics implanted inside them. The album they made was like dark music, as in dark matter, contained very few words and on it John promised to plug his senses in the mains.

THE BLASTS

‘The Blasts’ has no words - it is a bad monkey funky prog rock or even math rock rhythm and riff sequence I wrote when I was living in the shed. It makes a nice way to begin an album, as an instrumental for a band that were badass as Hella and Shellac. You’d have to listen to it yourself rather than trust my film of music, and for that we have the internet, thankfully.

MANTRA OF A MADMAN

Well, I was going to say this number has no words but that would be a lie. It has one line, a mantra. I inverted the Great I Can, I Am from Venice Beach, 1967 into the mantra “I Am, I Can,” because it had to be that way round for the earphones. Paul and I are singing it in major harmonies, and it’s said to be one of the most beautiful moments on a very beautiful record. I say record but my feelers are out and my Google search engines are primed and bring back news that what we had was actually an algorithm more than an album!

F # MINOR

Well, this is an instrumental by the Flood, which was recorded on earphones in the middle of the night in Cambridgeshire. Wolf aka Agent G (who procured the earphones from his bro and was our drummer) came up with this weird detuning (we were always detuning guitars) and h-a-n-d-e-d me the guitar, whereupon I jammed around for a bit until I knew what I was doing then I said “right I’m ready” and Tommo was on bass and Agent G on drums and we recorded this number, this instrumental jam which is said to be the Flood’s best song, one where we got the cat from Piper just right. I mean what is the street-name for the drug ‘Ecstasy’ when you start to detune the guitar strings all the way down? For me, F sharp minor is the answer to that question… and the point this song is trying to make. Whether or not Agent G knew that when he handed me the guitar in the F Sharp minor detuning I cannot say – but I would not put it past him. I cannot even say if I knew it when Tommo later asked me what the song was called and I said “F Sharp Minor.” Whatever the case it seems an almost unbearably beautiful piece and especially so for having something behind the music. I would also like to say that in The Flood we kind of posited the idea that O is the key of water and its soul-assuaging sound, and that is beautiful too – so all told we had a lot going on. When voices later told me to lose the book or the guitar, maybe there was already no choice by then.

THE WARNING

“Going to meet with the Otherness,

best go get a party dress,

play a stone, live in the wilderness,

I'm going to beat with the Otherness.”

“Suddenly their brain is an alien visitation,

suddenly I am the imposter againe,

lying in secret wait of myself,

knife ready to treat the pain.”

VOODOO ECHO

Well, I say this number is by The Flood but at one point I am massacring Jimi Hendrix which seems looking back to be folly to me now. The best bit about this song is that we – or rather I - through patience and spontaneity alike – manage to incorporate as much feedback and static as is possible onto the binaural earphone album, where this number goes in at number 5. Credit to Tommo for naming the song especially considering he wasn’t even playing on this number! Such a thing is typical of the Flood’s modus operandi.

HUNGER

I e I e I e have I e I e I e have

I e I e I e have I have Hunger

I'm a sick magnet I e I e I e I'm in want

maybe all I need is a new pair of shades

I'm a craving slave for you

your pleasure's dust your pleasure's just

your pleasure's just your suffering's bait

it's a sucker's fate for you

escape escape escape escape

your home your clothes and all you know

leave no footprint in the snow it's just a photo

escape escape escape your name

your stain your skin your dead routine

for the pristine dream for her

I'm going to get your freshness back

plug my senses in the mains

it's just a bloodrush to my brains

I'm going to get pretty much f***ed up

flee this world on a midnight plane

dance with the aliens and the insane.

This is where I wrote a song called ‘Space Is Big,’ which should if I had stayed follow on in the album or algorithm. In fact there were many, many other songs, and some of them recordings, that didn’t make it to the algorithm. Anyhow, let’s say I never went home – was never kicked out the band for weird behaviour – never came back to the north and got a mature student’s degree interrupted by mental illness before a full-on diagnosis. 

PHOTOGRAPH THREE:

INSERT PHOTOGRAPH OF THE 

TAPE I COOKED IN THE AGA

WHEN ITS PAUSE IN THE 

OPENING SONG WHERE 

CUT AND RESEALED IN 

THE REEL SOMEHOW 

HEALED AND WAS GONE

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS 

Thanks to all the musicians I ever played with including James Tucker, Robert Tucker, Hannah Tucker, Alick and Steve from Oedipus Wrecks, Rohan, Ed Green, Ben Fridja, Will Fenn, Tom Fitzgerald, Paul Inman, Zach Lait, Dobbin, Tom Barham, Steve Adams, Niki Galan, Tom Woodhall, Mark Velarde, Jez Williams, Max Bondi, John Duckitt, Mike Eccleshall, John Gray, Simon Pomery, Grant Aspinall, Colin, Martin, and more and many more. Yeah.

RECORDING NOTES FROM DR. ROBERT

1) Install the audio interface - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UGoQLfrW0nk

2) Make sure it’s enabled - https://help.ableton.com/hc/en-us/articles/115000204630-Setting-up-ASIO4ALL-Windows-

3) Add the audio interface to Ableton - https://youtu.be/D9tjzSctp_Q

4) Record - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7PbmTaJopec

How to record

Step 1: |Make sure that the audio interface is plugged in BEFORE starting Ableton. After opening Ableton, check your correct driver is enabled. Options > preferences > audio .

Driver type = Asio

Audio Device = Asio 4 All v 2

If you click on "hardware setup" you should see both "realtek" (this is the soundcard that comes with the laptop) and TI PCM2902 (this is the Behringer). Click on the power icon to disable realtek and enable the Behringer.

Step 2: Go from session view (the DJ view) to arrangement view (this is the wide view that is more suitable for those doing long recordings). To do this hit tab.

Step 3: Make sure the sound is coming through from the guitar. Click on any track that is of type audio (i.e. not midi). Note that each track goes horizontally and represents a different instrument. When you click on the track a white flashing cursor will appear. This means that you will begin recording from this place.  Then click on the "record enable" button for that track. Each track has a dropdown which is set to Ext. In by default. Ext. In is the correct option. If the guitar is plugged in to the left hand channel on the Behringer (where the mic goes) then channel 1 should be selected. Channel 2 corresponds to the second channel on your Behringer. You can see the sound coming in on the audio channel you selected on the far right hand side.

Step 4: Click on the record button that is located near the top of the page to begin recording.

‘THE NEW BEAT’

[As found on Bandcamp. Cover image: myself and Dr. Calculator Ptom looking pouty at Glastonbury after GCSE’s.]

DREAM WITH OPEN EYES

(by Secret Chord H originally and used as radio jingle circa 1999)

Last night it seemed we couldn't 

sleep but maybe I was dreaming.

The world expands inside my 

hands it's getting heavy.

Of all the treasures I could

choose I can't seem to decide.

Today the shade was washed 

away where I would hide.

Dream with open eyes, come 

below and we can fantasise.

Now that I’ve stopped telling lies, come 

below and we can fantasise.

Last night it seemed we nearly 

died but maybe I was dreaming.

It made me feel sooooooooooooo 

alive and soooooooo in love.

Dream with open eyes, come 

below and we can fantasise.

Now that I’ve stopped telling lies, come 

below and we can fantasise.

CHOCOLATE DOG

MY DOG HAS GOT NO BRAIN

MY DOG IS A TOTAL PAIN

HE’S GOT THREE EYES

AND A BIG FAT NOSE

AND GETS HIMSELF TANGLED

WITH THE GARDEN HOSE

HE ONCE TOOK A PILL

THAT MADE HIM ILL

AND EVER SINCE THEN

HE’S BEEN STANDING VERY STILL. 

[aged 8]

BAD DAY AT THE OFFICE

Such a bad day at the office

down the pub to get pissed

though I can't afford it

we'll never get a pay rise

stay up till sunrise

call in sick in the morning

spend the whole day mourning

underneath the covers

where the fuck is Batman

Sugar Candy Mountain

waiting for some action

heard it brings good fortune

papers want a scandal

tell them the truth

if you can handle

what a fucking headline

where in Hell is Tinkerbell

somewhere alone and dying

dawn calls in sick in the morning

what's the use in trying

don't believe in dying

it's shocking and appalling

it's four o'clock in the morning

and Paradise is boring.

CHIEF OF THE BLACKBIRD SPIES

Well I fell up a sycamore tree

and nearly spilled my glass of wine,

and though nobody came for me

I didn't mind it I felt fine,

for I was trading stories

w/ the chief of the black bird spies

amongst new leaves and old branches

that don't know how to tell lies...

He said to forget the job,

sack the boss, and hang the cage

which containeth all your rage

for but the minimum wage.

I said it's easy for you

in your neighbouring Otherness -

be Nature custodial or frightening? -

to avoid the mad enemy Stress.

He said he finds it fun-loving

to tense-hop all around

for cataclysm is catalyst for the cat

that sat on the map of sound.

Quite soon he spread his wings

until his wings were spread

and flew to Morrisons supermarket

for a tamed and manner'd head.

He’d said he thinks privation

is the mother of imagery,

and inconsiderate violation

at the root of the creation of beauty.

We’d bemoaned a lost society

w/ all its malaise and cheap talk,

its word-ways no better than

cheep cheep squawk squawk.

We’d spoken in no uncertain terms 

and out in the great outdoors 

where Mother Nature operates 

according to her natural laws. 

When he left it grew quite quiet

for he was a tremendous talker 

and had a way with words 

and had said I would go far…

when I left his sycamore tree 

I was glad to see my own home 

and return to my own kind 

near the beach that’s full of foam

but I remembered that black bird 

and his eloquent influence 

performing from the end of a branch 

in ways that just made sense. 

SYMMETRY LIPS

Symmetry lips   symmetry lips

kiss me quicks  need a fix

make me feel  natural and real

cuts heal  with a plastic seal

I’ve been in your heart  and danced in hot rain

I've been in your heart  and danced in hot rain

now consciousness  is everywhere

now consciousness  is sentient air

the sky falls  apart into place

I crave to sleep  behind your face

everything in its  proper place

live where the sky  and the river freely give

live where the sky  and the river freely give

AIR RAID SHELTER

(originally recorded on binaural earphones in The Flood but not used for their record)

Air raid shelter, we're in it together,

let's not get entrenched too deeply,

fear and pain's our only motivation,

got to break free from that habit apathy.

Clinging to loveless, sweaty, rubber limbs

won't cure your heart, it's a painful art,

air-raid shelter, we're in it together now,

wrap me away in your wombs and duvets.

See this world from outer space minor,

saaaaaaaaafe distances have found

all our solid, common ground,

echo grammanon habeo amore.

Won't your spaceships come to find me,

pull myself right back to the centre,

attack on all sides, hold you soooooo tight

now that there is noooooo time.

I’m just trying to forget how to smell acid,

and still it seems acid isn’t flaccid, 

but I think that you’ll find I still 

got there in the end somehow. 

THE NEW BEAT

Door the case

fluff the line

feel the last

dull the white

hone the drift

dawn the most

deaf the ear

grope the bread

fee the seat

blue the ticket

dream the lemon

boat the weed

mine the brick

dwarf the vote

peace the bull

D the random

renew the two

widen the road

steal the wings

gate the lane

mean the scene

send the head

rend the Hell

roll the ball

(C/ Em/ G/ F/ G/ C)

LUCY IN THE SOUL WITH DEMONS 

I no longer know if Lucy in the soul with demons

even happens to be an actual substance 

but I know that acid can alter personality 

and when home-made and strong be very scary.

Do not flinch at your own shadow when 

you take its dark receipt into the glen 

for panic in a wild stallion horse’s eye

can spread like wild-fire across the madding sky 

where a digital wind of blue and green 

blows in fake and chemical as glycerine

and the derangement of the senses can go

hang its head in shame, dear Master neo-Rimbaud.

PRIVATE DETECTIVES AND SECRET SPIES

I sleep in a hole for the Hoover tonight

there's always something not quite right

look at a wall it's not too hard to see

all the cracks and flaws beneath the paint

maybe all we need is to decorate the place

private detectives and secret spies

seem to have uncovered all of my lies,

scars and birthmarks beneath my skin,

should I sever my face with razor blades

to show you some ugly truth w/in

well maybe I should but I'd prefer to

score your flawless body with sin

like two new humans made for life

with default buttons to wipe any slate clean

and one of them man and one of them wife

in Crufts as it is in the black angel’s death song

A SMALL ADVERT FOR FREE SEX 

My name is David Bonky, 

I'm a knock-kneed hummingbird,

there's a tear up my jacket 

and I heard a magic word:

Trans/ philo/ quis/ ation. 

I fly through colours and shapes.

Lightspeed is my passport. 

The countries are for apes.

A knock-kneed hummingbird 

table on which to land and read

does not seem to me to be 

such an unreasonable need.

I'll breakfast on snooker 

colours, spark a dullard cigarette,

sail the wind of change and 

have no room for regret.

I deem it quite Romantic 

to go do the monkey bars 

with my legs into her open 

chamber underneath the stars. 

I think love is both the all-

seeing eye and love is blind.

So wear an emotional condom 

before you fuck my mind. 

For that’s what language is, 

the emotional condom of 

the world into which we’re 

all thrown in search of love.

Soon I must fly on, from 

this gnarled treefinger perch, 

and heal the glitch in the soul, 

and join the Giant Search.

I don’t know what we’re 

searching for but it’ll find us first.

Maybe just some peace and 

quiet to slake the eternal thirst.

THE POWER-BALLAD OF MARTIN VICIOUS

I can see death and see flippers

coming out of his senses and say

“come closer you f***ing terrorist,

come closer you f***ing terrorist,

come closer you f***ing terrorist.”

It's because I live a life of all time leisure,

all drugs pure and the radiance just right.

I might be wrong but then I might.

Score some dodgy crack and die

here alone with nobody for a name.

I can be Proust and fathom ten

or eleven types of ambiguity and

rue them all cantankerously,

rue them all cantankerously,

rue them all cantankerously.

It's because I live a dream of my still

working, all love pure and trust in the night.

I might be wrong but then I might.

Score some dodgy crack and die

here alone with nobody for a name.

OCEANS SMILE 

(originally by Oedipus Wrecks)

Oceans smile with liquid eyes

and fill themselves with rain.

The tide goes out and leaves me

lost, the last thing a glass gene.

Follow me to the resurrection

while the blind get crucified.

My weapon’s only loaded in my eyes.

Death will come on silky wings 

but I for one will not go.  

A soul is endless, oceans severed

and keeeeeeeps a perfect O.

Follow me to the resurrection

while the blind get crucified.

My weapon’s only loaded in my eyes.

Go drink the ocean with your tea

cup, give your heart far out.

If oceans smile with liquid eyes

then they'll give you a shout.

Follow me to the resurrection

while the blind get crucified.

My weapon’s only loaded in my eyes.

Too drunkenly I sail the water 

on Rimbaud’s smoking boat.

With whiskygills primed in fire 

I sail the waves to Boot. 

Follow me to the resurrection

while the blind get crucified.

My weapon’s only loaded in my eyes.

(reconstructed via the new, synchronised word)

Well, the boiler man is coming and I have to give mum a shout when he arrives. The guys in The Flood met my mum down there by the way. They called her. They called her down. It was a case of my own weird behaviour having unsettled them I think. What bothered the guys was when I came home from the pub with Tommo after having had 3 “F sharp minors,” 5 White Russians and then we started to puff green whom it would seem was always there and I launched into a speech in an imaginary language, ad-libbing it, impromptu, keeping it up for half an hour while rolling on the floor in the professional hysterics of neo-shamanism until they thought they had lost me completely whereupon I went to the shed and had sex with the cold concrete floor on ecstasy – or tried to. That was why they called my mum and said I had been behaving very strangely. So I had to go home after all we’d done and went off to get a degree from my local University (Lancaster), deeming it a word-guitar from Fender. Half way through the weirdest things started to happen – visions and voices and electric semen flying around and holograms and projections and special effects and books changing and body parts seeming to as well and you name it – and I was hospitalised. I still got my degree after a 28 lie down but have been on heavy meds ever since. Now I sit and wait for the boiler man to arrive – here at the fell foot which has been visited by the way by the guys, in The Flood, whom it would seem I kind of miss. Only yesterday did I have my depot – which means an anti-psychotic injection – and I haven’t slept since then because I am eager to get a good book out there… 

‘SONGS IN G’

[As found on Bandcamp. Cover image the melted cassette.]

BONECHINA DRUM 

Where has all my washing gone?

Maybe it has gone to Heaven! 

Mirrors on the street rebound. 

Everyone is happy and free.

My dream-meet experiment tended there. 

Not the local DogMuckels. 

All walks of life were gathered and one. 

To wake from the dream is to die. 

That’s when you put on your socks. 

Unless they’ve gone into the sock void. 

Don’t mind me I’m paranoid. 

I’ve got some bizarre ideas. 

If a clock is only as fast as a cheetah 

I. T. might stand for Instant Travel

but I’ll pad downstairs and drink a cup 

only at my own slow speed. 

FLOWER-PRESS LOVE POEM MUSIC 

If a flower-press ending on cannabis 

could seem to equal a dialysis 

then a love poem hoping to impress Flora 

could seem to equal more a motor 

but giving up weed in order to be free 

I can’t see how this really matters to me 

and if it’s a system I just love you still

and love has not gone under the green hill 

if all the noise in the world would be quiet 

I’d hide in the cupboard during the riot 

if systems rule with fear not love 

I’d half it and laugh it with an imperfect dove

here I am at the foot of Sea Ness 

this anagram of boredom is in a mess 

I’m all set up for a walk on the beach 

to watch the waves rolling out of my reach 

I trust my family and I trust my friends 

I hope my dog’s life never quite ends 

the kitchen is clean because I cleaned it myself 

my father’s philosophy is up on the shelf 

if all the greed in the world would go away 

I’d still be Bede at the end of the day 

if power is wrong at least it’s transient 

a birthday came and a birthday went 

and this is the me we all want to see 

and this is the way I know to be free 

and this is the Now that is in Eternity 

and this is the leaf that came to the tree 

if the wording of this little contract is mine 

alas you are not but I’m still feeling fine 

I’ve seen the stars that are out tonight 

I’ve tried to forget exactly what colour is white 

I’m drifting to E on the end of a stick 

I’m searching my memory but it’s just a block 

if only I could hold you in my arms 

I’ve fallen for all your loquacious charms 

ICARUS UNBOUND 

(a finger-picker in the drone of G)

I really love you my friend Mark, 

don’t get me wrong I am not gay, 

it’s just a way for me to start, 

it’s just something to say…

placing bets on raindrops running 

down the opaque window pane,

I have been a melting robot,

then they said I was insane... 

there you are across the water, 

living on the Isle of Man, 

if only my attention-span could 

be more like Peter Pan... 

you’re the one who taught me de-tunings, 

stairs down to The Velvet Underground, 

I am the one in love with Flora, 

and that fertile map of sound... 

you say it’s got too late to make it, 

I hear you crawl through new air,

but I was never one to fake it, 

I for one don’t really care... 

in your room was a very high ceiling

and I remember it was bright, 

I can almost taste the loving feeling, 

even though now it is Night...

you could not tell if the vocal 

in Aphex Twin was a demon 

so made us listen to Nick Drake when 

on another easy comedown... 

lines are blurred in drug-slurred idiom. 

lyrical streaks now open up. 

I’m thinking of youth which has now flown. 

but I’ve still got a little plastic cup.

THE FIRE-DANCE

The fire-dance dwelled in electric drums

where ecstasy fell soft fathoms to clap

and bells let peace form in blue notes

and peered at deer in the wood and ate of it

and wet let excellence sound out its criticism

and dawn let sting its unsheathed sting

and chloroform in the heart let see 

if only Game Over was seen in nights.

SONG OF THE NEON DAWN 

X-ray specs don’t lead to sex 

and mobile phones don’t have gay undertones 

and television is a big decision 

and the internet can’t just forget 

and laser beams are born in dreams

and digital clocks don’t come in flocks 

and Ableton Live is my nine to five 

and the latest App is an angel’s lap 

and I sing for Kate whose always late 

and I write the Night until it’s white 

and my vertigo lives down below 

and my neon dawn will be reborn 

and we’ll renew the morning dew 

and Google our senses out there like a tide 

and dream of love aloft on wings 

and try and forget the nights we cried 

and the alphabet is the suicide note

of Nelly the Elephant if you deem it true  

and love’s gone veggie over Disney again 

and the grass is green and the sky is blue 

and E is a bet with the myriad mind 

and I’ve seen so much I’ve gone blind 

and a poem’s a seat where you sit and eat 

and a driverless car has gone quite far 

and a use for dust is a beautiful bust 

and the wheel of a bike is a map of the Lakes 

and a rugby match is quite a catch 

and an abandoned band is written in the sand 

and a red skin cell is a state of Hell 

and sadness seems the mother of dreams 

but maybe that’s the other way round 

and a flower grows just for your nose

BIRTHDAY OF I. A.

You’re not a knock-kneed hummingbird, / you’re not a birthday of I. A, / and who you are I’ll never know now, / and if I did I’d never say… / I am your med-banging elephantine, / and I cry on the windows of trains, / and maybe all I need’s a length of, / need’s a length of metal chain… / and through it all I wish you rainbows, / made for two and very strange, / and somehow what’s most familiar, / is what really can estrange you, / rearrange and slowly derange you, / oh yes it most definitely can. / So don’t run in the corridor / or you’ll sin in the eyes of Santa / as he watches on.

TELEPATHIC ELEPHANT 

Another, another, another fucking joint. 

Another, another, another fucking joint. 

Another, another, another fucking joint. 

Another, another, another fucking joint. 

Another, another, another fucking joint. 

Another, another, another fucking joint. 

Another, another, another fucking joint. 

Another, another, another fucking joint. 

Another, another, another fucking joint. 

[Note: this song which was originally a Secret Chord H B-side concerns a Pearl Jam ‘VS’ cassette tape with a pause in the opening number where the reel is cut and re-sealed. In a sense it is about healing the pause in the song and then cooking the object in the dark blue AGA, top oven, hottest one.]

THE SWITCH THROWN 

Blessed may be the end at last 

under the sea

below the soul 

in the upside-down 

Oceans above us

(all that heaven sends is rain)

and blessed is the rain that heaven sends

it is the life for the gilly flowers 

some might say 

it even falls up 

and you’re going to have to think againe

for a clock’s only as fast 

as a wounded cheetah 

who knows how to 

get drunk on cold Wifebeater 

but gets drunk instead

on the rhythm and metre 

O love thanks 

for coming round,

O love cherish 

your map of sound,

O love I dreamt that

we were drowned  

I made such a mess it’s wasn’t cool 

but at least I didn’t 

give it away 

that music is 

the sacred pool 

or whatever else I had to say

it’s half past four but then again 

the Night is young 

the switch is thrown 

whatever could 

the poor boy mean 

he means his heart is yours to own

SAD HYPOCHONDRIAC

I know she's only a phone call away...

maybe she's got something to say?

Anyway by now her number's probably changed...

seems even numbers can't just stay the same.

You always used to say to me

“to love someone truly is to set them free” -

you always knew better than me

you always knew better than me.

I know she's only a daydream away -

transient rainbow not made to stay -

only made of sunlight and tears! -

beauty like that should last for years.  

You always used to say to me

“to love someone truly is to set them free” -

you always knew better than me

you always knew better than me.

I’m just a sad hypochondriac.

Just another shooting rock star in love with the black.

Don’t want to die of a sudden art attack.

I’m just a sad hypochondriac. 

I'm just a sad hypochondriac.

I'm just a sad hypochondriac.

I'm just sorry for everything I lack.

I’m just a sad hypochondriac.

WE COULD BE SO HAPPY

(played at a gig on a rooftop in London, the last gig by The Flood)

Serotonin dopamine

no Codeine or Diazepam

I got ruin'd you got wrecked

let's just say yes to each other’s plans

we could be so ha ha ha happy

we could be so ha ha ha happy

Buproprion and Fluoxetine

a toooooooootal loss of all

language-is-thought-control

it's just some sedative we'll

hide away under snow

I wake up dying for some

junk food to save my hole

when all the money has run out

and our housing contract expires

and the pigs come to track us down

the night will be filled with burning fires

the night will be filled with screeching tyres

the night will be filled with burning lyres

we could be so ha ha ha happy

in the future that ain’t what it used to be

on a drug called Strictly Free

on the loss of the cannabis battery.

WICKER CHAIR

Baby I can see the tree kneel down

in Nick Drake’s de-tunings before you

maybe it’s just the germs accrued

upon the windowpane maybe it’s true

love what’s love halved in chaos

love’s the answer love victorious

love’s the hope the heart literally

needs in order to survive without which

it can stop and I love to be alive

so I thank you for bringing us together

everybody loves you between us is the weather

this fair day stay a while and play

trouble’s all gone away love is the only way

I KNEW THAT SHE LOVED ME

I escaped last night

into a heightened dream

from a dull and longing sleep

and the stars murmured

their cool ballad

to the approaching sky.

Secrets hung like ghosts

in the corner of my wanton world

all blurred and drugged too deep

and I knew that she loved me

from her invisible motions

and the dagger in her soft reply.

The questions concealed in her eye.

Her smile a luring prison.

Her blink a beautiful danger.

Her breath a poisonous magic.

And I knew that silence

would soon let slip its whisper,

knew that fantasy

had never been so real

and I knew that she loved me

because I knew everything.

I knew.

‘THE WHITE DOOR’

[As found on Bandcamp. Cover image: the sheet where pictures grew.]

HEARTBOOK

We’ll never take E on a green, 

Glastonbury hillside ever again,

never see Love playing through dark,

aviator Ray-Bans after the rain, 

we’ll never be young as we once were 

and looking back I know it’s all gone, 

the real E’s a she and she is not free, 

but we can converse while you’re on a plane 

flying over the Atlantic ocean 

you message me online full of emotion 

to say new material has emerged 

I tell you’ve never done anything 

which you need to apologise to me for, 

you kept me in food when in Berlin 

I spent my last money on a whore,

Everything happened back in the day 

and we isolate bits to form a narrative, 

everything that is except for work,

and we used to say live and let live

flying over the Atlantic ocean 

you message me online the ball still in motion 

to say new evidence has emerged 

If work sets you free I will never feel 

freedom not like I did back in the day,

the day we were young, you and me 

playing in the band, whatever we used to play,

and only the songs seem to survive,

the poems don’t seem to want to last, 

and I’m trying to learn Ableton Live, 

and get your message like a blast from the past 

flying over the Atlantic ocean 

you text me online w/ a true notion 

to say unheard music by us has emerged 

TRUE LOVE DOT COM

Dead clock plodding play a different song // we're waiting for some action and some change to come along // been waiting all night at true love dot com // you're only just starting to notice the mushrooms are still too strong // dead pedestrians thinking fumes stay in and get fat in your new chat rooms // we chase the wave forms of the dusky dawn w/ black shadow cat-prints going backwards on the lawn // and I confess my open heart is lying w/ her legs apart // and if she said she's in love w/ me I wouldn't go taking it personally // for love has no ego as everybody knows  and something inside me she's given me grows // and a playground swing on the vexed edge of life sighs empty and forever and out falls a leaf // and not into love does that green leaf fall where wet Westerly winds swoop and call // we are the glitter on the Christmas trees and not the litter in the filibustering breeze // and the E comedown has no value in maths // and the loonies all walk on the wrong paths // and the grass is green on the Other Side // it pulls the ropes of the evening tide.

THE SUPERSTRING GUITAR

Cool white is the highnote if it's up to me,

cascading down to the deep blue sea -

will blue trousers over the trouser blues

fall down on the Excellent News?

Music penetrates is-ness,

renovates sensation's quest.

Out in the desert the pigeon-stars

ripe w/ new creatures won't bring out the Tsars.

Water splits but the desert's dry.

Stonemouth silence chewing gums by.

Why the high note seems to be white

is the sideways gravity in the smile of night.

The Super String Guitar was electric and was smashed.

Transcendence is the dream of anything squashed.

“You're going to get a dog w/ a laser brain.”

L to the pregnant snorkel = mc squared.

Impairing the wild pear tree to tears.

Impairing the wild pear tree to pears.

Flutter in the sideways gravity of the smile of light.

Phew for a minute there you lost the screen.

E = L to the pregnant snorkel.

E = L to the pregnant snorkel.

L to the pregnant snorkel = mc squared.

Flutter in the sideways gravity of the smile of light.

BAXTER 

I love my dog 

he’s barking mad 

when he wants to smile 

he wags his tail 

his uncomplicated love 

is healing for the soul 

he has seventy words 

like the book with smell 

I wonder what the others are 

maybe later I’ll know 

mashed potato and stew 

and a Pizza Hut 

and the waves of the sea 

go round and round 

swim in mystery 

but do not drown 

ice cream is nice 

on Freedom’s shore 

so is sugar and spice 

and more and many more 

and so it came to pass 

that I sat in a room 

with the dog by my side 

and the music on 

and I’ve got the dog blues 

yeah I’ve got the dog blues 

which only means 

I’ve nothing to lose 

and the stream of life 

flows on and on 

and a cup of tea 

awaits in the kitchen 

and the dream of love 

has not quite died 

and I feel assured 

deep down inside 

because I love my dog 

he loves me too 

what more do I need 

don’t need to sniff glue 

to feel all high 

when I have fresh air 

and the Emperor has 

abdicated againe 

and a nice long sleep 

will reunite me 

with planet earth 

at the end of the day 

what more can I say

FAREWELL TO THE SEER OF SEA NESS

Farewell to the seer of Sea Ness -

see you later when the future is less.

What will you do about your trance? 

Will you send a postcard from France?

I hope that you have a lot of fun…

I hope that you may find someone -

and the scenery streams by the train 

and the world is small beneath the plane 

Farewell to the seer of Sea Ness -

see you in the future when the past is less.

Will the future there be quite cold?

Will you feel sad and feel old?

I hope that your dreams all come true.

I hope that there’s hope for you too -

and the dreams stream beside the car -

and you make it Westwards quite far.

Farewell to the seer of Sea Ness -

see you in the light we might bless.

Will the visual radio still swirl?

Will you still blame it on the girl?

I hope that your heart will beat on…

I hope that your hope’s not all gone -

and the freedom you find is the best,

and the beauty you dream is a quest. 

Farewell to the seer of Sea Ness -

see you in the middle released from the stress.

Will the sound of silence be heard?

Will they hide the mystic bird?

I hope that your love arrows down. 

I hope that you don’t hit the brown -

and the light will puncture you 

and the good life will still be true. 

THE GHOSTS LAMENT (THE GUZZLER MEN)

(Oedipus Wrecks)

I'm the only one left, left to shoot my 

own gun. This is the dead land. Crack a smile 

and curse the sun. Death awaits to fuck me. 

Give me bliss and give me kisses. Death a-

waits to save me. The ghosts lament, the ghosts 

lament. Come on baaaaaaaaaby, you know it's e-

asy, don't say maaaaaaaaaybe, let's go crazy. Death 

awaits to fuck me. Give me bliss and give 

me kisses. Death awaits the same me. The 

ghosts lament, the ghosts lament, no more ghosts.

||||

[Note: when I discovered the James P D Tucker sheet where pictures grew, and the pictures seemed to depict the lyric to one of my old songs, this is the song.]

THAT BLACK NATURAL E

[spoken word narrative for B minor]

Where once I wandered far and wide 

on a field-file, a file-field, 

a fenceless farm without 

security alarm where all hearts bleed

and all arts breed, now Hell

is very quiet, unadvertised.

McBreastmilk, 

McBreastmilk, 

don’t feed your kids.

Gentle face erasing cream,

smear it in and let it sink

down through the pores of your skin

to erase your deepest down dirt.

O stars the government

that truly speaks for us!

Get an extra kid for free

when you spend 99p.

Freefall 0800 down

your own black hole pupils.

Maybelline you maybe only make-believe

you may be the true mating queen of the hive,

may mad vampires stalk you,

stalking walls walk through

your vagrant dreams.

I see state of head

is more than Head of State.

Monster Munch can

always gobble up your food.

Cancerel can always 

sweeten the stewed-

carfume coffee we sip in 

this liminal afterlounge.

It’s getting cramped 

as a tin of beans in here.

In emergency please 

break glass and exit.

Credits at the end of innocence

are falling like numberless lists

of fallen autumn leaves.

Snatched handfuls of light

come to nothing in the dark room.

There must be a use for 

this dust amounting.

There’s nothing like digging 

a meaningless hole as if to cure the 

spiralling lethargy of Hell...

and when I went into the 

woods to bury my soul, 

all the trees knelt down.

O perpetual orgasm of the sun! 

Privation is the mother of imagery.

Prayers, ghosts and 

e-mails chatter on 

the ego-loss breeze.

The chitchat in the solipsistic

kitchen of fiction is 'phatic'.

My new, motley fridge magnet

letters contain no question 

mark in the pack but the first

qualification of Modernism

is enquiry and furthermore

wilful ignorance is a sin.

Meanwhile outside the 

fallen Autumn leaves 

are where bears have 

dipped their feet in pots of paint 

and danced across the threshold 

of the paving stones.

Water clears its throat from the tap.

Gunpowder was only invented

for fireworks and a firework

is a champion sperm nosing up

blind to explode bright and wonderful

deep-sea creatures in the Ancient Night.

The world is a cool, bejewell'd

marble snug in Holy Orbit

suckling on a mother sun.

Supposedly there is soon

to be New Atlantis on the moon.

The cure for cancer 

sustains your heart.

Robbed by a bastard vending machine,

somewhere a tramp drinks paint-stripper 

to cleanse the doors of perception,

a drunkard attacks a wall

on an otherwise empty street,

a policeman forces himself

to come with a gun.

Hey salesman 

slow down 

with that

fast-food. 

I don't mind

waiting here

for a year. 

(2002)

WAVETABLE IN C

I remember when my mnemonic for the guitar strings was Even A Dick Gets Big Erections… now I don’t need one, I’ve heard a better one from a fellow autist, high-functioning autist – Even A – no – er - Every Acid Dealer Gets Busted Eventually. At the moment I’m on James’s red electric. I remember when he got it for Christmas and I got an acoustic, a Fender, an expensive one, and I wanted to be Kurt Cobain so I was annoyed that I got an acoustic not an electric. I was upset and offended my parents. And now here I am playing on James’s red electric. As I say my mnemonic used to be Even A Dick Gets Big Erections, but this one’s in C. I’ll leave it up to you to work out what that means. Your guess is as good as mine. It could be for countryside. It could be for court case. It could be for caliphate. It could be for civilisation. It could be for completion of the soul. 

NO DEATH ONLY CHANGE 

Don’t be afraid/ there is no death only change/ let’s pretend, let’s pretend/ there is no end of play/ tonight, tonight/ I only believe in tonight / so for once/ throw your cares and travel with me/ travel with me/ travel with me/ travel with me/ I for one/ have long gone/ out the door and far away/ down south/ mouth to mouth/ to exhume a brighter day/ live for this/ chance at bliss/ this kiss that wants to form/ on the air/ everywhere/ as the fungus sun beats down/ on the nervous under-town/ planes are the shoes of clowns/ yeah yeah yeah /

THE POSTMODERN ID 

I’m thinking about the old days, 

how the hippies are not ageless as the sun rays,

I’m thinking about the ideals of 60’s, 

and though I don’t believe in pixies 

the effect of global warming on the unicorn 

succeeded Piper At The Gates of Dawn, 

the summer rain falls with as many hands,

as there are names for new rock bands... 

I’m thinking about the imminent future, 

there has to be a place still for Nature, 

thinking about the state of poetry, 

the young light has dawned on me...

the effect of global warming on the unicorn 

succeeded Piper At The Gates of Dawn, 

the summer rain falls with as many hands,

as there are names for new rock bands.

I’m trying just to think about the present, 

and how my life could be so pleasant,

don’t want to be distracted in daydreams, 

by a woman as lovely as the sunbeams...

the effect of global warming on the unicorn 

succeeded Piper At The Gates of Dawn, 

the summer rain falls with as many hands,

as there are names for new rock bands.

I’m thinking about the doors of perception,

how literature is beautiful deception, 

you might find the bedroom is hidden, 

you might find the dawn is unbidden...

the effect of global warming on the unicorn 

succeeded Piper At The Gates of Dawn, 

the summer rain falls with as many hands,

as there are names for new rock bands

so try to pass the gravy over 

Facebook now and be free. 

Don’t know what a Dorian Mode is,

but I know who Toad of Toad Hall is, 

and the lady in my life is all missing, 

and the music’s only meant for kissing.

DOWN IN THE PATCH WORK QUILT BELOW

I like the light and the flight of arrows

I also love the sound of running water 

Down in the patch-work quilt below 

Where the river of sadness used to flow

It’s easy to trip up on a daisy 

Lazy of us to let it get this way 

Down in the patch-work quilt below

Where mad children splash and play 

Art gets to its feet like a cartoon Bambi 

She might go veggie for reasons of Disney

Down in the patchwork quilt below 

Where the ego-loss breeze can freely blow 

Heading down to the sea can free you 

No-one knows how to free you but meyou 

Down in the patch-work quilt below

Where we’ll inevitably have to flow

‘GARDEN’ IS THE PASSWORD TO MY IMAGINARY WORLD

Because it is recorded and online while this book is in the process of being written I will represent this instrumental. I had the idea – once a portion of my songs were recorded – to make an album of instrumentals – no words - all about my boyhood mythos of tunnels inside the oldest fell lined with free beer dispensers and fruit machines. In said mythos, you whisper the password ‘garden’ to the portal at the back of the cave on the face of the foothill Sea Ness (originally Seer Ness after a seer and his trance) to open it up and then can enter the tunnels. Because there are no words, the names of the songs would have to tell the story on this album, which saw us travel to the old USSR and make it home safely for dawn. Unfortunately it never worked out and I can’t remember why but this instrumental is something that remains from the album, maybe the only thing.

WALKING THE BEAT

(impromptu spoken word piece)

Women can be very beautiful

they can be sharp-elbowed too 

they think when we discern their beauty 

we are being blinded by love 

love is a banana custard to them 

man’s highest emotion to me 

but single is my jingle these days 

I sleep on a single mattress 

if I ever do sleep that is 

the dog’ll be beside me 

he’s a symbol of gravity 

and humour and katabasis 

it’s been a while since I’ve been in love 

and what lovely dresses they can wear in summer 

ones with floral patterns on 

that come all undone - 

it’s winter right now 

winter has her compensations 

I’m sitting in a coffee-cake dining room

there’s a Christmas tree 

adorned with baubles and bright white lights 

I suppose they should come down 

it’s the 2nd of January 

Bertrand Russell’s History of 

Western Philosophy is on the table 

some chocolate from Finland 

some baccy some papers 

some of my mother’s driftwood art 

Quality Streets which my dad 

used to call Quantity Streets 

and what else I don’t know 

a toothbrush that hasn’t been opened yet 

‘THE ALARM CLOCK’

[Again as found on Bandcamp. Cover image of myself at the numinous, purple-bleeding screen with guitar, courtesy of Dr. Robert L G Tucker.]

THE DARK CARNIVAL DANCE

[‘The Dark Carnival Dance’ has no words. It was an old favourite among my Cambridge friends and Cambridge band The Flood which I brought back from Warwick University, and when I went back to see The Flood in the holidays, I would try and teach them it. It’s actually quite difficult to play. It has quite a few chords in it and I confess I did not write the first two chords, but heard someone else (Tom) at Warwick play them on the bass, whereupon I picked up the ball and ran with it, wrote the rest of the number, in terms of both rhythm and lead. So I thought I would still leave a trace of the instrumental in this instance in the lyric book. Somewhere there still exists a rudimentary version recorded through The Flood’s binaural earphones!]

A POINT FIVE

[impromptu spoken word piece]

“I was going to pack it with content… a clock is only as fast as a cheetah - I said that at seven, seven. I got to the end and realised I hadn’t pressed the right buttons on Ableton. You have to press the right buttons in life. That’s more like it. Previously on this program oceans smile with liquid eyes and fill themselves with rain. Also I. T. might stand for Instant Travel too. Lucy in the soul with demons might happen to be an actual substance. And if a flower-press ending on cannabis could = a dialysis a love poem hoping to impress Flora could = more a motor. That was it. Then I realised – see I was trying to put Jimi’s amp guitar on the vocal and it was full of feedback, squealing like an electric donkey then I realised the vocal hadn’t gone down at all. I’d pressed the wrong buttons. I am hoping I pressed the right buttons this time. You have to press the right buttons. And now we’re going to have a typing solo. I’m noticing the space bar is like the snare drum. I type with 2 middle fingers you know, like William Carlos Williams did.” 

TEST MONKEY IN B

We’re aliens looking for life on Mars 

aliens trying to make life in jars 

aliens homesick for the stars 

trying to find home in the all-night bars 

in a world with no more la di da’s

the sunset silts its knickers and bras 

the night is bright with white guitars 

the fat cats smoke their fat cigars

the wall inside is still the Tsar’s

I watch the passing of the cars 

I’m through with reading inveterate scars 

in a room resounding with loud hurrahs 

SKUNKFOOT

(spoken word narrative to go over a drone of E)

Portability still seems the Apotheosis of Form: sometimes I can be walking along on a sunny day when I jump from the jungle to the Arctic to the Sahara. Mutation in consciousness itself, truth too simple to understand, these are gesture-without-motion-bones, like sadness gene and dreaming gland. It's not impossible to write an anti-poem. Love is not a mechanistic set of rules. Love was once aligned with madness, fever and intoxication. Love became grouped with language not God. Love became a tough word-combination. Love has no ego as everyone knows, and so it goes and so it grows. I for one think Lucy in the soul with demons may happen to be an actual substance. Travelling south, as I read Rimbaud, a rainbow smashed a railway train window. A baby cannot trip without memories... I remember “every atom ate our eyes.” Our eyes: they are ingrown in the ocean's bellyful of wine, down in the seabed-orchard. There is angelic music inborn in the inner ear; but those whom the Gods wish to drive mad are sent the end of ‘Bike’ in their heads and madness is not something to be Romanticised as a return to Purity. Impunity seems more what the poet wants. He likes to float on the artifice of organic emotions through synthetic sounds, and is into exploring alternative histories suppressed by the overarching meta-narrative. For plastic surgery of the soul there are libraries. Poetry is the bike riding itself. Monopoly money will get us well, Monopoly money will get us bread, she picks the blue tac off the wall and says “my T-shirt is red”. I put my wounds up on bright flags; I take the angel up the arse. To plug my senses in the mains might engage [!00 %] of my brains. It’s all about a permanent reactivation of the Glastonbury Festival spirit. John Tucker is taking acid again. Money shags in the dark. Thoughts of one’s greatness only diminish one’s greatness. Skunkfoot is putrid demons excreted through stone. Love an army of fire. Fire needs some incentive to rise up. Shall I touch my heart with a red Bic biro? When all the air in outer space is consumed… The bird in the wood, it was definitely a horse, with solar spike I can use the Force, with R2D2 I cleanse my doors, I’m just trying to win my Star Wars. I’m starting to think in five musical parts at once. The Anon Throwaway as a new form could become an alternative currency to rival with money for the role of the real. Formal education is not for everyone. The yellow DogMuckels M atop the pole in the industrial park is the postmodern churchspire in the spiritual vacuum. Postmodernism is theme dissolved into message. Giant killers are frozen peas in the microwave. I look into the mirror though I shouldn’t pool my sources. I’m not going to die at the age of twenty seven, watch the dreamtapes on repeat from a golden seat in Heaven. The heart beats to the rhythm of one. A fiver is surely cheese and onion flavour. Cataclysm is catalyst for the old cat that sat on the map of sound, just because the world is very round. If there were paper under my heart there would be writing on it and it would be art. I might ding it in compressed Space Age seconds.

(2002 - 2003)

THE WISH OF NIGHT

Madness swirls deep in the heart

A butterfly resides in you

A tragedy of feelings lost

surrenders to the wish of night

& in this world I can't explain

I know exactly where I am

Inside a crevice of desire

In the dreamy air of a lover's scent

Wherever you take me, that's where I'll be

In the weeping skies my mind gives up

& falls into the arms of sleep

I'd fade to know I thought of you

& the world has risen to my hands

& the earth murmurs beneath my feet

& the light of all that's good is true

if believing is the dawn of dreams

I guess that I'm afraid to tread

The purple skies for the risk of a word

But at least I'm sure of fear

As she gives me the strength to feel afraid

A whisper fathomed deep in mine

Well I don't even care to cry

& I don't care to face the edge

& plunge into the oceans dead

& the flame of love has lit my candle

& the sky has echoed my desire

& all the air is drawn into my lungs

& I know the secrets of the shade

& I know the wars that come from peace

& I know the mystery of love

& I know the resilience of the soul

& I'm sure that knowing you is true...

FIZZY POP 

I’m a clown, I’m a clown,

a clown in the circus of death. 

I had a mate who sent the words 

“Liquid Crystal Meth”

into space, into space,

and I was underneath it, 

shower down, shower down,

make me feel alright. 

No-one knows, no-one knows 

what I went through in life.

The sadness shows, the sadness shows,

the trouble and the strife, 

but under the stars, under the stars 

I dream of love eternal, 

shower down, shower down,

make me feel alright. 

Fizzy pop, fizzy pop, 

gets drunk in Monopoly Jail,

time goes slow, ever so slow,

as slow as a garden snail, 

but ecstasy is a teddy bear 

back in the garden of Eden, 

I don’t mind, I don’t mind,

if you let me off my chains.

INSTANT TRAVEL 

[warning: contains voices]

Not far away in Magic Faraway Land,

there’s poetry written on the bank notes,

sadness gene is smitten with dreaming gland,

the God Particle foreseen in the dust motes...

I. T. might stand for Instant Travel too,

NHS for Lucy in the soul with demons,

H20 stands for your hypothalamus tattoo,

ESA for Extra Sensory Allowance - 

so how about we take a long holiday there?

You buy yourself a ticket with the opposite of bling.

You’ll see through the frame of angel hair, 

and might just need a love-song to sing.

Yeah yeah yeah, our love is the answer,

spinning in a circle around the tired sun,

waiting for the cure or vaccine for cancer,

seeming to be dreaming of the mid-day moon…

POETRY BUTTONS

Smart guitars between the stars 

allow the ladies burn their bras 

I don’t ask for whom the beck 

puts a necklace on her neck 

let us have a go then, you and I 

when we are tired of getting high 

piss on the dawn when dad is dead

poetry buttons are in my head 

poetry buttons for endless revisions

and helpless self-derisions 

got to keep the quavers at bay 

got to make the monster go away 

the monster is not me 

he lives beneath the deep blue sea 

when all the air in outer space 

is consumed without a trace 

through a prodigious systematised

detuning of the strings we rise

would you compare me to a tramp 

now my face is on a stamp 

the poet makes himself a tea

now he’s a mystic visionary 

poetry buttons for endless revisions

and helpless self-derisions 

got to keep the quavers at bay 

got to make the monster go away 

the monster is not me 

he lives beneath the deep blue sea 

voices voices everywhere 

and yet not a drop to think 

think of England when you’re on 

drink of physical hyperlink 

all the world is on a page 

where we spend our petty wage

engage with the dark night of the soul 

that dreams in meaning like a troll

poetry buttons for endless revisions

and helpless self-derisions 

got to keep the quavers at bay 

got to make the monster go away 

the monster is not me

he lives beneath the deep blue sea

MONSTER OF ENERGY 

‘Monster of Energy’ has no words! It sounds like The Velvet Underground jamming over a processed beat. When last I listened to it on Soundcloud, I got to the end and an advert flashed up, saying “originality is over-rated.” I felt offended, questioned why I was still messing around with pop music as my father would put it, when I should be trying my hand at science. I turned the advert off before I finished listening to it, and focussed my energy on that vapid fashion statement suitable only for the rebellion of youth, pop music, if only to be free.

TEACHER OF MY HEART

I have found you you're the Teacher

of my Heart there's only one one

and though my mind is endless old

my tender heart is foolish young

and my timeless impassion'd battles

of emotion have sooooon begun.

You have lost me in a Teachers

whisky bottle drinking down down

down the shipwreck IS the treasure

harboured in my pirate undertown

where visions of the real Unknown

await us there when we drown.

They have told me it's a T-shirt

that's the body worn by the soul

O to have to discorporate and wash

our eyes in the Fairy Liquid bowl

it's good for you to know a goal

there is no music from a black hole.

THE STAIRCASE 

Once upon a time I was spiked 

and thought I could fly 

jumped right out of a window 

and fell through the sky 

somehow managed to land 

on my smelly size 12 feet 

seven stories below on 

the heaving city street 

now I tour the public schools 

giving talks to forewarn 

all the youths about drugs 

in the world where they’re born 

taking LSD can change 

your innate personality 

take it from me please never 

take the drug they call LSD 

Splinter was the master of 

the Turtles in the kids cartoon

and now he’s dead and he’s gone 

beneath the morning moon

and I’m so sad to hear of that 

for loss is painful in the heart 

so may we all remember 

him in our chosen art 

Sitting at the back was a

boy whom I instantly knew 

would do everything which 

I had pleaded with him not to do

puffing on a cigarette 

making all the others laugh 

maybe he’ll grow up to be 

a kind of talking giraffe 

When I fell I broke both legs 

and did some damage to my spine 

but I can walk if only slowly

and am in my headspace fine 

I can still sing but not dance 

which I never did much anyway 

and I sing about health over 

wealth at the dawn of this day

WHISPER

(originally by Black Hole Myths when we were still called Funnelspirals)

I wanted to hear musac from a black

hole by Judas Priest but the guys

sent a parrot after a carrot and

through the conch to outer space

singing 'I won't always be an orange

just because you've sectioned me,

no I won't always be on Orange

just because you've sectioned me

but at any given time I'm working

in a crane' and Jesus said 'Syd by Ray

in a way Spiderman's handwriting

has been too obscene, I rake the

blade over the wishbone of my

legs Breakfast All Day/ gay

teachers can still lay eggs and

I won't always be a lemon just

because you've sectioned me,

no I won't always be on Lennon

just because you've session'd me

but at any given time Oedipus

is spying me up in the shower,

why I'll break the speed of speed,

rendered squander never priceless,

I'll never speed againe, at any given

time I'm a rare aquatic insect.'

(Hackney)

BLACK FLAKE OF INFINITY

Rocking instrumental at the end, newly added. Sorry about the facsimile of music, the film, but I wanted to represent the albums track by track. I was actually trying to encrypt a node in musical truth in this number. I was playing anything over a rocking drum beat on two guitars which would only connect at random intervals.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR 

It may seem selfish to write a bit about my self, but as the author of almost all of the songs in this book, and the one who is paying for the book I would like it known that I am not just another airhead, failed, wannabe pop star, prancing clown, and that I have a more srs side to me. At seven I am said to have helped invent the net: when the idea of the net needed storing in writing in the attic here at the foot of the fell to give it a chance to grow all the way round the world and to keep it free it was me that wrote it. By eight years old I was the witness from The Lords And The New You Know Who and had made not one but two very strange Naturalistic Observations. By eleven I affected my own evolution when I was marked by a failed experiment into the maths of the new colour as was contained back in the book I wrote at seven (it didn’t turn out to be the new colour in the end). By fifteen I had attained the face of stars which might’ve been scripted in the Bible. By eighteen, in 2000, I forewarned of September 11^th and wrote the highest-marked English Literature A-level exam essay in the nation at 100%. I also predicted the hunt for the God Particle from looking at dust in a late ray of light angling in and founded a new religion based on the elephant.

After school, to cut a long story short, I recorded an album on binaural earphones with mates, had an effervescent mobile reverberating the rhythm of ‘William Tell’ through every technological inlet in the room before it rang, hosted the Plough alignment for a rhythm change in the White House, got a First despite the onset of mental illness, noticed a sensory overlay of my name on Piper At The Gates of Dawn, worked at a numinous, purple-bleeding screen, built the Tower as an instrument of philosophy, conducted an experiment into a tape with a pause where cut and resealed in the flimsy reel, and discovered the sheet where pictures (seemingly depicting my own song lyric) grew. Then I falsified the Nirvana barcode in writing and attained visual radio, broadcasting dreams.

Having said all of this, it doesn’t make me a genius, and I consider the book to be as much my brother James’s as mine own, because he’s the one that designed the new da Vinci circle and gave us <BEE>. I don’t wish to be Anon meanwhile and nor does he, and so should cite the reference of help where it is granted: as soon as I had the idea to structure some of my songs according to the new da Vinci circle, help was at hand to organise it for me. I had turned my best papers into songs, like one I wrote to get into Warwick on ‘Instant Travel’ and one I wrote when there called ‘Lucy In The Soul W/ Demons’ – especially for the job of making a songbook, to give it content, and having done that, and having decided <BEE> would be the format, it all just came together, in no time at all. In fact I feel I am slowing things down to have my own story at least partially told, but without it, it simply wouldn’t be fair – I wouldn’t get a chance to explore my own genius, only my brother’s. I still feel that for me to go through what I went through in my life and turn out another failed, fretboard masturbating guitarist who’s not even as good as they were in the 1970’s and who hasn’t organised a single, professional-sounding recording could represent a failure. It also wouldn’t be right if those things I went through were not treated and seen to as a result of my bringing out a book comprised of a weed-reeking insect collection of rock songs from my froward youth. It also wouldn’t be right if I went through all that and had to be Anon, for that would represent a decrease in individuality. Likewise, my brother’s contribution in <BEE> is his own contribution, not Anon. All this is why James’s one isn’t even being regarded as genius!

Now we shall see if there is room and time enough to incorporate the rest of my musical oeuvre. For a start there’s Oedipus Wrecks whom it seems foreshadowed Doom way back in about 1997. Coming after The Road To Heaven by Noj And The Mob, who were comprised of my siblings when we were young kids, Oedipus Wrecks were my second outfit, but the first to do proper gigs at pubs in Camden Town and Kentish Town and other places too. We were an energetic three piece in terms of the instruments but there was a fourth kind of shadow member, meaning the guy that we got our name from, Dr. Calculator Ptom was kind of aloof in the background. By now some of our set-list’s numbers have been incorporated into the new da Vinci circle, so if I am to run you through it there will be repeats! This is why even the best minds of my generation couldn’t bring this situation to the state of order! If I start with Oedipus Wrecks we don’t get to do <BEE> and if I start with <BEE> Oedipus Wrecks can just be a footnote towards the end! Some say Oedipus Wrecks was the only time I was a musical genius and though you shall see that the sheet where pictures grew was not my game, I did have a game which was the face. I had attained the face with two friends, Tom and Ben, on a camping holiday in Eskdale.

After Oedipus Wrecks I moved school and formed Secret Chord H, and then after school came The Flood by which stage I had given up on verse chorus verse and was a permanent stoner who had little left in the tank after fronting so many bands already and never looking back. After The Flood I fell ill and that was when I formed a band with Grant Aspinall, an art therapy duo, who started life as Funnelspirals and then changed name to Black Hole Myths.

Now I shall show you the Oedipus Wrecks set-list in full, repeats and all.

NOTE ON OEDIPUS WRECKS

My friend Dr. Calculator Ptom named the band upon hearing my songs at school. He used to say gnomic things like “the universe is a projection of the mind.” “The G note is green on the guitar fretboard.” “Born Slippy is evidence dance can have a soul.” “Poetry is untranslatable because of the music.” “I was doing some thinking and realised Death is God.” “Early Oasis is good for bittersweet, comedown energy.” We boarded a train not knowing where it was headed in the middle of the Night in London. By now he is Dr. Calculator Thomas and the song is ‘Born Slippery.’

THE OEDIPUS WRECKS GIG, CAMDEN TOWN, CIRCA 1998

I

SHALLOW OCEANS

Oceans smile with liquid eyes

and fill themselves with rain.

The tide goes out and leaves me

lost, the last thing a glass gene.

Follow me to the resurrection

while the blind get crucified.

My weapon’s only loaded in my eyes.

Death will come on silky wings

but I for one will not go.  

A soul is endless, oceans open

and keeeeeeeps a perfect O.

Follow me to the resurrection

while the blind get crucified.

My weapon’s only loaded in my eyes.

Go drink the ocean with your tea

cup, give your heart far out.

If it’s true what oceans do

then they'll give you a shout.

Follow me to the resurrection

while the blind get crucified.

My weapon’s only loaded in my eyes.

Too drunkenly I sail the water

on Rimbaud’s smoking boat.

With whiskygills primed in fire

I sail the waves to Boot.

Follow me to the resurrection

while the blind get crucified.

My weapon’s only loaded in my eyes.

(reconstructed via the new, synchronised word)

II

KILL

My eyes sting,

my teeth are bleeding raw,

too much thought

to make me sick.

Stinky clothes

and mouth become

my skin and all

these fruits I want to kill.

Give my hope,

surrender to the tide,

you can take

my remains;

but I must go,

to wash the poison

from my eyes,

before, before, before I kill.

III

SNAKE SNAKE BUTTERFLY

Snake snake butterfly, lay me dead & close my eyes.

Angel serpentine, she waits on the Other Side.

Give me your alibi; give me chains to stop me fly;

give me night to soothe my blinded eyes:

so I can see the secrets of the skies.

We must rise, freedom falling from our eyes,

unlock doors, it's a perfect time to die,

and it's okay ‘cause baby we'll go insane

but don't reach out too far for the flame.

Snake snake butterfly, lead me to the Other Side.

Angel serpentine, she waits on the Other Side.

IV

SECRETS IN THE MUD

This is the sound of getting totally fucked.

Of when you first get your notebook sucked.

Of changing gold into Glastonbury mud.

Of lying down in a field with your bud.

This is the music through whom we aspire.

This is the rule book that is thrown on the fire.

This is the jam where the trousers are down.

This is the wine-shop on the edge of town.

Chorus: Glastonbury, you should be free, and all you have in your big city,

you hit my G, you make me see how I want to see,

lights go down, lights come on,

and all my sadness seems to be gone,

although I still love to be what I dream I am.

[guitar solo]

V

HEAVEN KNOWS

Heaven knows and walks away -

but what it knows it will not say.

It’s impossible to make a cowboy film in space?

Heaven knows and turns its face!

Heaven’s filled with silver eyes.

Heaven’s hills all harmonise.

I hear its angels when they call...

Heaven knows and lets them fall!

[reconstructed]

VI

MOTHER IS DEAD

Fuck this, fuck that, fuck me yeah,

I wish that I had been there,

been there to saaaaaave Jesus,

I'm sure he meant to please us.

Mother is dead,

mother is dead,

mother is dead.

We're young and filled with semen,

we're going to break some hymen,

we'll make the cops turn in their badges,

we're going over all the edges yeah.

Mother is dead,

mother is dead,

mother is dead.

VII

THE GHOSTS LAMENT

I'm the only one left, left to shoot my

own gun. This is the dead land. Crack a smile

and curse the sun. Death awaits to fuck me.

Give me bliss and give me kisses. Death a-

waits to save me. The ghosts lament, the ghosts

lament. Come on baaaaaaaaaby, you know it's e-

asy, don't say maaaaaaaaaybe, let's go crazy. Death

awaits to fuck me. Give me bliss and give

me kisses. Death awaits the same me. The

ghosts lament, the ghosts lament, no more ghosts.

||||.

VIII

VITAL SIGNS

Smile like a smile just to smile,

cast to Heaven for a while...

let's rip holes in the boat,

throw the captain overboard,

throw the angels off the bridge,

death comes and stops me getting

bored of life's soul-machine.

What we need is energy,

show me all your vital signs,

what we steal is what we need,

what we need to feel alive,

for I'm alive with vital signs.

Back to Hell to plunder wings,

let the ritual now begin,

come and ride the waiting beast,

ride it gone into the fire,

ride it to the waiting feast,

my baby's waiting to get higher,

to get higher, to get higher...

what we need is energy,

show me all your vital signs,

what we steal is what we need,

what we need to feel alive,

for I'm alive with vital signs,

yeah feel alive with vital signs.

Come again there's lots to do,

don't you know that I love you?

NECKLACE NOOSE

I

Necklace noose, 

reckless truce, 

drooling before 

wet, electric eyes...

ii

a salmon escaped the ancient net. 

A sprightly hypertext sniper on 

Piper At The Gates Of Dawn 

accrued to the procession. 

The anguila eel is wet and 

named after the devil for 

mysteriously appearing in 

the puddles of towns on rainy days. 

iii

Literature is a vehicle. Punk 

is an attitude more than a 

genre of music. Piggy 

is a symbol of Reason and 

dies. Civilisation is but a 

thin veneer belied by dark, 

arational forces. The doors film 

is emblematic of a paranoid 

meltdown into post-euphoric 

psychosis. Yeah, dance music 

can have a soul for sure. 

iv

A purple parrot perched upon the 

shoulder of the pirate squawking 

“don’t tell Moronika.” A green 

one was sent to space through 

the conch… maybe all I need

is a length of metal chain. A Lion 

Bar was driven through the economy 

in a car and a carfume whooshed 

from the unicorn’s bottom… 

v

and why did the chicken cross 

the road if not to break on 

through to the Other Side,

break on through to the Other

Side, break on through to the

Other Side? I am the Burger 

King, I can eat anything. 

Preferably a Double Whopper 

with cheese, fries and a Coke. 

Vi

When ‘The End’ is playing 

on the jukebox I can clear up 

the pool balls, when the boys

are away on holiday, and 

the noose lets us go, and 

thinking I can drink more 

firewater whisky than I can 

I puke on the carpet when 

the boys get home, when 

we are new you and new me.  

(1998 reconstructed)

This is where I’d do the Flo’, because it’s Oedipal, something Oedipal going on I have failed to lick, but I can’t think of anything to say like that poet who said his mouth was full of coins whenever he wanted to speak to his ideal intended woman. What I might mean is it was my mother who made the flower-press ending on a comic strip anti-hero, and I that wrote Flora a love poem in teenage years, but she’s way out of my league.

HANNAH

Not being able to do the Flo I can at least celebrate Hannah who is the one that persuaded me this book is the one to go with because it proves music can be 4D and is way better than stuffy old poetry that monopolises indigenous wisdom in regimented metres. Indeed, James’s blue E-comedown T-shirt from 2001 is better than monopolising indigenous wisdom in regimented metres. So it is that I celebrate Hannah who still goes to Festivals and gigs, pays attention to the music scene, has a good time, comes back home from hippy Bristol with her left-wing ideals and gets me singing. In other words this is a late Acknowledgement of her radiance in selecting this book to be the one to go with. Hannah would say I hope it all goes on in the Happy World of Haribo; that when you renounce Starbucks cool new shit can happen; that wall is shit (meaning my laptop files).

Meanwhile, I think music is penetration of isness, and meaning in it solipsistic, like faces in the fire or Hamlet’s three creatures in the cloud-change. I think after garage and house comes library; that voices could be “onjects,” quavers, syllabubbles, sonic machinations at the periphery of sound and most importantly the colours of the vowels from Rimbaud. I think writing a letter “Dear Music” could be instructive in mental health in the future. There is also something I think I know but won’t impart and it’s because I have a heart. I also believe that you shouldn’t put Paradise Lost to music unless it’s going to be amazing so it’s an aesthetic not moral question.

THE FIRST SOLO ALBUM

Well, when I was kicked out of the Flood I came home to the Lakes, fuming, and set myself an ambition of recording three albums like Nick Drake. Many of us back in the Cambridge scene liked Nick Drake – and by that stage there was already one album recorded, the earphone album, which I wasn’t including but which I do now include. I returned to University, my local in the north, Lancaster, had a breakdown but pressed on to finish my degree; and when I had got my First Class Honours degree I was diagnosed mentally ill which is when I got together with a fine musician called Grant Aspinall who helped me make a solo album - something good to look back on. I don’t know what to say when it comes to Grant. At the moment I have the solo album he recorded for me on Soundcloud under the name John F B Tucker but there’s a whole bunch of recordings we made. So I’m going to give you the lyrics to the solo album first. The album is called ‘Songs To Record With Earphones’ [Demo 3]. It isn’t actually recorded on earphones but in a more normal studio set up, in a secret location in Disneyland, Paris. Grant was really cool in allowing it to happen – he says things like “it doesn’t matter how old you are unless you’re in a boyband.” Also “you don’t have to be Syd Barrett, anyone can do it.” My mother’s generation, he likes Bob Dylan and the Pink Floyd.

GROG LADETTE IN G

Baby we create the dawn

behind a veil where silence is born

and dawn conspires with the sea

and everything untrue recedes

and down into sleep with no dreams

and all that’s left is you and me

and all that’s left is you and me

no-one knows how to free you

eeeeeeeeeeexcept for meyou

no one knows how to free you

eeeeeeeeeeexcept for meyou

horserace books in traffic light

colours through the ancient night

in the end it’s all white

in the end it’s alright

NOTES FOR THE FILM ‘ENTER THE VOID’

This was originally called ‘Musac From A Black Hole,’ also ‘Interstellar Artois’ and is an instrumental I wrote in London. It’s kind of dark and frightening and contains some excellent drums and guitar work too.

ONTIMEY

If this thing were a woman

I’d be in trouble by now

and if it wasn’t I’d

be in double by now

like a witch she says

take FACE instead of fags

and then I put my

wounds up on bright flags

READING THE LESSON FROM JOHN IN ETON COLLEGE CHAPEL

Once upon a time there was an acid-rainbow

that struggled from a black hole and smashed through a window

of a big cathedral and landed on a page

and rearranged the sermon the vicar was enraged

O but then he found it bore a strange notation

and it was so profound he needed medication

and then the paper bread turned to acid which was nice

and everyone was singing music from a black hole by Jesus Christ

all the congregation gave their neighbours a nudge

and asked if every good boy still deserveth fudge

the wine it came in buckets through the back of the song

and even the vicar too, he started to sing along

3484, 3484, what do you need one of those for?

I was at the beach I threw a stone to the sea

to rearrange the day and the deity

no-one was beside me except the pretty dog

oozing and exuding uncomplicated love

voices from the city they were heard between the waves

like lost souls trapped in the cracks between the paves

then I saw the mystery of the single shoe

and knew that it was time to drop a line to you

you were off your face on something by this stage

said there’d been an accident and were hiding in the cage

and Barnes has scored a chicken and blanes is a liquid knife

and wingers are allowed bikes in the afterlife

3484, 3484, what do you need one of those for?

IN A FIELD KNEE-DEEP IN GRASS

Lovers and tools are breaking their own rules in the game

mad children play unaware of the guilt and the shame

pirates are looting the world and riding the breeze

angels and thieves are kissing at the tips of the trees

and I’m in bed against you

wouldn’t bet against you

I’m in bed against you

shouldn’t bet against you

if all that I’ve loved is a bunch of telly snow

still you can’t take away the afterglow

Science says don’t touch your dreaming gland

it’s all Thumper to you VS Edward Scissorhands

and I’m in bed against you

I wouldn’t bet against you -

I’m in bed against you

shouldn’t bet against you

and I’m in bed against you

I wouldn’t bet against you

I’m in bed against you

and b equals d

[Note: this song seems to be concerned in part with a tape of Pearl Jam ‘VS’ that has a pause where cut and stuck together in the reel.]

THE A AND E. P.

Grant and I also got together and made an E. P. called ‘The A and E. P.’ by Funnelspirals which is on Soundcloud. It’s got four or five numbers including ‘The Blake Song’ which is where we put Blake’s ‘Laughing Song’ to music. Grant sings some lovely harmonies over the top while I was going more for a speaksing or sprechstimme style with my vocal. The opening number ‘Coming Up’ was written so that the lyric would work backwards as well as forwards. One of the songs was already on the solo album, if that is it came first, because I can’t recall which of these two came first. There is really only one lyric that I contributed, the song ‘Coming Up,’ which as I say also has a lyric if you play it backwards.

COMING UP

Face of stars he had no nose.

Einstein’s prose = Einstein’s prose.

Backward f, forward f, equals running through.

Frozen in red, sensation in blue.

Fire sticks and alcoholics.

Violent Texan, bright northern becks.

The face of stars, he had no nose.

Einstein’s bros = Einstein’s bros.

L to the pregnant snorkel.

L to the pregnant snorkel.

L to the porcelain laptop.

L to the pregnant snorkel.

L to the porcelain laptop.

L to the pregnant snorkel.

L to the porcelain laptop.

L to the pregnant snorkel.

L to the porcelain laptop.

‘UNPLUGGED AT THE FOOT OF SEA NESS’

Have I not done enough already?

And if so what of my solo acoustic album ‘Unplugged At The Foot of Sea Ness?’

I can know where it goes in the book but not where it goes online… there seem to be three options. (1) If I augment the new da Vinci four on Bandcamp I spoil the fact of there being four. (2) If I go for the same Soundcloud page where my solo album that Grant made for me is, it’s not ideal and messes up the chronology. (3) If I go for the other, empty Soundcloud page, that puts it in a loop with The Flood, then I no longer succeeded the Flood with what I did with James.

So it is that I might need to leave it out!

I would say the best place to leave it online of the three options is Bandcamp, and that by not calling it “Various Artists” (which is what I called the new da Vinci 4 in the end) I am showing people that it’s a different thing.

So there we were only a minute ago with everything in the right place, and now I’ve gone and put Unplugged At The Foot of Sea Ness on the end of the new da Vinci circle four on Bandcamp.

In a way, I think it might be alright if I do that, now that the 4 are “Various Artists,” and this new one is just me and a guitar. After the “plug my senses in the mains” episode in The Flood it was said that I should do an album of just myself and a steal string acoustic guitar and now I have. I feel it is better placed on Bandcamp than in the loop with the Flood stuff on Soundcloud, because if it was in the loop on Soundcloud I wouldn’t have followed up the Flood with <BEE>. This way, at least I got to follow up <BEE> with an actual album, because the ongoing spoken word album with Grant might never materialise.

THE NEW SNOWMAN

We are the velvet e’s,

we’re shitting in Cuntington’s letterbox,

the valley road below,

beneath us as we fly.

We are the velvet e’s,

we’re shitting in Cuntington’s letterbox,

the valley road below,

beneath us as we fly.

Blissful Lovingness is

where all religions meet.

On the corner of the street.

I am the Burger King,

I can eat anything.

Especially a Double

Whopper with cheese -

and in reality the killer

stayed up all night.

STAVING OFF THE WASTED YOUTH

Please wait while you are on hold,

your secret world will not be sold,

and while you work out what’s gone on,

we’ll treat you to a song.

A cow has sat upon the throne,

and said to travel by Smartphone,

for all connection should be long,

and the maths you do is not wrong.

Thank you for waiting while I love you,

thank you for searching for the truth,

there’s only one God above you,

w/ medicine for a wasted youth.

You’ve been placed in a long queue,

but everyone’s in love with you,

procrastinate and find your crest,

I think your love is best.

The mashed potato that you ate

could sell for millions in the Tate,

and London renews sensation’s quest,

to put your mind at rest…

Thank you for waiting while I love you,

thank you for searching for the truth,

there’s only one God above you,

w/ medicine for a broken tooth.

ECSTASIA

Ecstasia, it will find you,

ecstasia will track you down,

wearing your bro’s blue T-shirt,

somewhere in a different town…

a comedown can be difficult,

a comedown can really hurt,

but it’s going to be easier

in your brother’s blue T-shirt.

Love, it will wound you

then forgive you all the same,

and one day death will find you,

and nobody is to blame...

I’m waiting at the foot of Black Combe,

I’m waiting for my true love,

and E has no value in maths

when you come down from a Dove…

FULHAM F. C.

Fuck you fuck you

we are the best

we are the best

we are the best

Fuck you fuck you

we are the best

we are the fucking best

Fuck you fuck you

we are the best

we are the best

we are the best

Fuck you fuck you

we are the best

we are the fucking best

Fuck you fuck you

we are the best

we are the best

we are the best

Fuck you fuck you

we are the best

we are the fucking best

Fuck you fuck you

we are the best

we are the best

we are the best

Fuck you fuck you

we are the best

we are the fucking best

FABLE

How much is that druggie in the window,

he’s washing off Steve’s holographic beard,

in the totally powerless shower,

he’s making me feel pretty weird,

blah blah black sheep

have you any wool?

Yes Sir, yes Sir,

ten fucking kilos…

How much is that druggie in the window,

I think he’s gone beyond the pale,

they made him a living art installation,

and he wishes he’d stuck to the ale,

blah blah black sheep

have you any wool?

Yes Sir, yes Sir,

ten fucking kilos…

How much is that druggie in the window,

the vision I had has grown dim,

I can particle accelerate Nothingness,

but I can’t write a poem like Jim,

blah blah black sheep,

have you any wool?

Yes Sir, yes Sir,

ten fucking kilos.

HEY MAN HEY

Hey man hey what do you

have to say about today?

These new pube-shaving,

lecky-saving times?

The air seems slightly strange

to me in all honesty,

but I’m just a guy

that plays hide and seek with rhymes.

I lost my teddy in the void

when I was paranoid,

now all I am is all I owe...

at least I dared to dream

unlike a mechanoid

of love the likes of

which we still don’t know…

Well scream is bad,

when you go quite mad

and you lose your dad

and the magpie gets down

into your bones…

and you can’t come down

from the under-town

like a decaying clown

and you know the truth

which nobody owns.

So you must obey the dust

in which you trust

and which lies at

the bottom of everything

and bore the Lord

with your secret chord

and your word-hoard

knowing not just what

tomorrow will bring.

LIQUID MIRROR

The night is alright under the electric light

and I am thinking of you

how we used to love each other

black and blue forever and ever

how I used to watch over you

while you slept and when you wept and

when we leaped and love was fire

now the light comes fair and even

hyperlink to very Heaven

just like it was when love was open

and it is still full of hoping

full of groping full of dreams

love has not gone stolen pollen

lustful London lips are swollen

and liquid mirrors still run to the sea

where the fish swim without insanity

even though they have fucked eyes

we already went there,

we already did that

sometimes you’re a willing dupe

and sometimes a doormat

PHET ACCOMPLIS

Love, love, good for the brain,

the more you eat them,

the more you go insane.

Love, love, good for the heart,

the more you eat them,

the more you break apart.

They’re dissipating energy

with spiralling entropy,

falsifying vision with

indoctrinated feelings,

colouring perception

with vague mysticism,

you’ve been plugged in

to the mental health system.

Love, love, good for the brain,

the more you eat them,

the more you go insane.

Love, love, good for the heart,

the more you eat them,

the miracle will start.

They’re dissipating energy

with spiralling entropy,

falsifying vision with

indoctrinated feelings,

colouring perception

with vague mysticism,

you’ve been plugged in

to the mental health system.

HIGH, HOW ARE YOU?

Oh high, how are you? I’m high and I’m new.

Oh high, how are you? I’m high, and I’m through.

Here you come with your candle eyes

and your big horizon and your higher skies

here you come with a beautiful smile

I’m going to talk to you for a little while

oh high, how are you? I’m high and I’m new.

Oh high, how are you? I’m high, and I’m through.

Here you are with your hopeful stance

and your lucky star and your backward glance

here you are in the eye of my mind

let’s hope we don’t go completely blind

oh high, how are you? I’m high and I’m new.

Oh high, how are you? I’m high, and I’m through.

There you go, with you angel tear,

and your brand new car getting into gear,

there you go, with your perfect skin,

can’t wait until you come back again

oh high, how are you? I’m high, and I’m new.

Oh high, how are you? I’m high, and I’m through.

[reconstructed]

SNOWFLAKE SONG

Snowflakes are falling to the ground,

that’s why the door-mouse makes no sound,

I could sing in an imaginary tongue,

but I find Klingon is best for song...

then it’s up to birds to saaaaaaaaaay,

“hope you have another blinding day.”

There are no footprints out there yet,

but I might go out and lose a bet.

Sometimes I dream of mapless space,

a little place without X tattooed on its face.

So then it’s up to you to saaaaaaay

“hope you have another blinding day…”

snowfall was injecting smack

into the Universal Mind a while back,

and now I’ve nothing left but tea

still I think you’ll find it’s well enough for me...

so now it’s up to me to saaaaaaaaay

“hope you have another blinding day.”

I COME FROM THE JUNGLE

I come from the jungle,

I come from the jungle,

I come from the jungle,

I come from the jungle,

I am a giraffe, I am not Bungle,

I come from the jungle,

I come from the jungle,

I come from the jungle,

I come from the jungle,

I come from the jungle,

I come from the jungle,

I am a giraffe, I am not Bungle,

I come from the jungle,

I come from the jungle.

EVEN A DREAMWOMAN GETS BEAUTIFUL ELECTRICITY

A thesis as thin as the Rizla it’s in

can lead all the way to the loony bin

and make you forget just how to spell

Winnie the Pooh and get unwell...

but even a dreamwoman

gets beautiful electricity -

come with me, come with me.

The way she hugs my myriad mind

I’m flying through colour but colourblind,

I wish to escape the shape of the paper,

I wish to taste the waste of a flower...

for even a dreamwoman

gets beautiful electricity -

come with me, come with me.

Come with me love away from the violence,

I don’t want to take a vow of silence,

don’t want to have to conceal this feeling,

for feelings are not meant for concealing...

and even a dreamwoman

gets beautiful electricity -

come with me, come with me.

BARNESIE

Barnes’s goal against Brazil

it is the best I have seen still

it was not born under the hill

Barnes’s goal against Brazil

Barnes’s horse got on the course

they said to have more intercourse

so Barnes’s horse flew to the sun

when it got back it was no done

Barnes’s name is not in vain

for I’m the one who gets the blame

inside the flame when the game

has gone insane and is quite lame

Barnes’s nose I don’t suppose

objects to the way her garden grows

and the redolent rose strikes a pose

for the garden hose that no-one knows

Barnes’s wait is just for Kate

whom it would seem is Head of State

went on a date with a mate

and came back home so very late

CHRYSALIS DAYBED MUSING

If you said to me

I would’ve fancied you

had you not let it be known

that you want to eat my bones

then I’d say back to you

girl I don’t want to eat your bones

but of course all the while

I want to eat your bones

but I’ve not thought it through

for if I’ve eaten your bones

yummy as they may be

then I can’t make love to you

but if I suddenly said

and this is coming from me

I don’t want to eat your bones

it would be the saddest thing

so what I really mean

is you are in my heart

you are in my dreams

where there are no bones

pulchritudinous sylph

you’re the reason to hope

like a primrose in Hell

through whom I would traipse

just to hold you again

in my slender long arms

quench all these

insatiable fire alarms

and that’s when we’d kiss

that’s when we’d glow

that’s when we’d shine

that’s when we’d know

HOW TO BREAK THE LIGHT SPEED LAW OF NEUROPLASTICITY

You're The Juggernaut that's what you are

walk like an Egyptian and wriggle your little wing

like a winged chainsaw flying up in the cloud

swoop down and seal my soul and everything

For I'm the witness of this scene

I've read the pages of orange and green

I've got to keep my new yellow T-shirt clean

otherwise I'll offend the mating queen

On Grand-darth's Ship I went off a-sailing

suffice to say your horror-packet is served

and when I get back I think I'll give you a ring

for it's the least that you my demon have deserved

For I'm the witness of this scene

I've read the pages of orange and green

I've got to keep my new yellow T-shirt clean

otherwise I'll offend the mating queen

and when you score such a radical goal

it stays with you in your open, Holy soul

and you get no money and get no headlines too

but you've done what someone's just got to do

TEAR-JERKING SENTIMENTAL ENDING SCENE

The friends I’ve made

I’d like to keep

and brush their hair when

we get to sleep

I think this illness

is a monster

chill with the stillness

and love yr brother

the severed notebook

went on for ages

with no connection

in all its severed pages

I hate these voices

these infernal voices

I made my choices

they were not James Joyce’s

now I want to stay free

I want to stay me

I stay calm

in all uncertainty

and I want to stay cool

and not be the fool

who was the Smartest

kid in school

O crossroads of

all inward spiral

I hope your smile

does not go viral

the severed notebook

itches with skunkosis

in my back pocket

pre-diagnosis

and I now look back on

youth that’s flown

over the houses

into the unknown

today it’s snowing

there is no knowing

if the creative

juices are flowing

and I want to stay free

and I want to stay me

and I want to stay calm

in all uncertainty

yes I want to stay clear

as a morning beer

now that you know

I’m the ancient seer

and I live for you

SONG FOR JAMES

James is amazing -

he is my brother -

when we were blazing -

we stole off our mother -

names are for crazing -

engage with the other -

when we were younger -

love was the answer -

Games are for lazing -

saith the author -

when we grow up

we’ll each be a soldier -

dames are for sharing

with one another -

those who must keep them

are soon to learn better -

frames are for breaking -

as saith the nutter -

and when we break out

our love is together…

aims are for reaching -

for further and further -

and love’s not for breaching -

and so it’s not over.

THE NEO FLOOD ALBUM

So, now all that remains to be done is drink herbal tea compress sans sugar, read loads of philosophy and cogitate on finishing off The Flood. That is, it strikes me that we could add a new album by The Flood to the mixture. Agent G and Tom from the band have okayed it for me to organise a new Flood album. I have the material recorded, or at least some material recorded, but where would it fit in? I think it should go on the empty Soundcloud page so that it is in a loop with the first Flood album and the songs of Mark’s new outfit Candyblasta. Then it’s like there is an on and an off function; because this second moiety is not recorded on binaural earphones.

After all some thought our experiment would result in a new creature. They didn’t know I had already “done” The Lords And The New Creatures when I was 8 but that is something like what the guys thought we’d end up with in the Flood, either that or the air swarming with visual radio which I have also known.

So it is that I upload a second album or even “play-list” by The Flood onto the empty Soundcloud page so that it is in a loop with the binaural earphone stuff. O is the key of the babbling unicorn. Back in the day we started the O language, which was putting O’s on the ends of all words. You can double your vocabulary with but a single letter that way! So it is that things end up alright. Whatever I say in this book, I love my friends from the band and the other band and without them I would be a fresh vegetable. I recently took an O. D. the likes of which it was genius to survive and during that suicide attempt, my friends visited me in voices which can be real people, and without them there I would indeed be a fresh vegetable of the dusky dawn. So I hope to still be on good terms with them whatever has been said in this book, for we were the only guys in town who were listening to The Velvet Underground at 16. We were bohemian aristocrats, Beatniks, renegades, wild-cards. I still remember, for example, when we played ‘Come To Daddy’ by The Aphex Twin on the organic instruments, as two bands become one, in the studio room upstairs at the abandoned primary School in Cambridge. I was on the drums and they were walking across the floor so hard I was hitting them. I was said to be a badass guitarist and a force of nature on the drums by Agent G later, but what I was most after was attaining lyrics that could work as poetry. Early on in Oedipus Wrecks (my GCSE band) I was said to have attained poetry. It’s great when someone says your lyrics are like poetry. I would say the best lyricists include Lennon and McCartney, Bob Dylan, Leonard Cohen, Jim Morrison, Kurt Cobain, Morrissey, Ian Curtis, Nick Cave, Thom Yorke, Tricky, Billy Corgan, Nick Drake, Syd Barrett and probably a handful of others, maybe even Noel Gallagher unto some people. If I have attained poetry in my lyrics herein I would consider that a success.

In short, I don’t wish this to be an invidious thing. I wish to still consider my old friends real friends. Alright, there were certain hometruths my awesome brother needed to point out to me – for example I had forgotten it was my idea to invent the earphones – but at the same time I don’t want to fall out with everyone. Music is supposed to unite us. It is a time of war in the world at the moment, in the Ukraine and it leaks into the head from afar, so there’s that to consider.

We had a pact back in the day that if any of us made it they would take the others along with them. When I went back to University at Lancaster, Mark, who had dropped out of APU to pursue music, and Jez with whom he shared a tremendous creative empathy kind of made it with a new outfit called Candyblasta. Rather than give you a long poem on their sound it would be better to give you an hyperlink. The point is we should still have to honour the pact, which was sealed with drinking Guinness in a Cambridge bar originally, and Mark’s idea. Please let us lot not start fighting or else what hope is there for world peace? Musicians traditionally fall out with each other, over matters of ego and intellectual property and we did, but let this be a setting straight of the record. Let beer be free in the future, let music be 4D, let souls be not forgotten, let the soul of the world be healed.

The new Flood album is called ‘Wishlist’ because I wish we were still together as a band and making music at the Lock Up in the dead of night, the vampire hours, on that old industrial estate, smoking skunk, detuning strings, operating earphones with mics in that record. So it is that I leave you now with the lyrics to the new Flood album. They are all numbers from The Flood’s original days apart from one or two which are “about” The Flood. There is an instrumental on it in a de-tuning which I wrote back in the day. I’d say it’s quite strong but that may be the acid talking!

LOVE YOUR NEIGHBOUR

(recorded on binaural earphones in The Flood but not used on their album)

Love your neighbour till your girl gets home

I’m fleeing the town in my neighbour's clothes

love your neighbour in her underwear

I wonder what goes on under there

and you’d better repent

for all the money you spent

now you’re dove has been sent

Love your neighbour when you're all alone

I left my message on your answerphone

love your neighbour with her tricks and lies

ask no questions hear no flies

and you’d better repent

for all the money you spent

now you’re dove has been sent

Love your neighbour till the war is gone

I think they think that’s not fair on John

love your neighbour when the war is over

treat your neighbour like your long lost lover

and you’d better repent

for all the money you spent

now you’re dove has been sent

ALAS THE DAY

Alas the daaaaaaaaay doesn’t matter anyway

for there is a Night and heartbeats are bold

and hold me tight and Night is blessed

and filled with questions can not guess

what will happen next O maybe death 

then of course we’ll lie under fertile loam

but for now we’re miles away from home

O electric street I’m feeling New Beat

I feel the heat within my sensory atrophy

so many things are all happening at once

the infinite cocks are fucking the infinite cunts

then of course we’ll know who sees something strange

and he will know when it’s time for a sea-change

MOVING ON

When you record on earphones and say you’ll plug your senses in the mains they become aliens, aliens from Hollywood films, like the Fifth Element where there is a blue alien that can sing in two notes at once.

When I hear the sound I think of Jess and her impeccable taste in musical tunes.

I’ve got a little bet that the next guy after me to attain the face of stars, to be enraptured and enthralled, will still write the line I wrote at the time and like I did too think it is his own.

My father knew the line and sometimes I think of him – he hasn’t gone so far – is only up the way – lying underground.

When I was a boy and we first moved up he took me out the back and asked what I could hear and I said I didn’t know so he said it’s the beck.

SPACE IS BIG

Space is big

space is big

space is big

space is big

space is big

space is big

space is big

space is big

and the edge 

is the middle

and the middle

is the edge

is the middle

is the middle

is the edge 

John is gone

John is gone 

John is gone 

John is gone

John is gone

John is gone

John is gone 

John is gone 

and he left

his pink pyjamas

pink pyjamas

pink pyjamas

and he left

his pink pyjamas

they were on 

find a bridge

find a bridge

find a bridge

find a bridge

find a bridge

find a bridge

find a bridge

find a bridge

or we’ll never

live forever

live forever

or we’ll never

live forever

live forever

SNAKE BLUES

Amen/ hello / let’s go for a ride / do you believe in life before death? / Amen/ hello / let’s go for a ride / do you believe in life before death? / Red is the guitar / green is the grass / grey is the sky/ don’t say goodbye!

THE SPHINX

So here we have an instrumental, two guitars in de-tunings over a slick processed beat, unchanging, with a big bass-shaped hole. The guitar is actually redolent of Radiohead at some points. They said it was as good as Mark Velarde but it’s not really. Nevermind.

SOMETHING LIKE A SONNET

If Freedom and Peace of Mind are what you’re after / you’ve made the right choice with BT Talk Together / with an unlimited number/ of local evening and weekend phonecalls / if sorrow sighs upon your shoulder/ find yourself another lover/ manoeuvre over backyard fences/ angel where do you hid tonight?/ I’ll make maps of the stars to find you/ soft caressing breeze to guide you/ if you can be in my dream/ can I be in yours too? / get rid of/ ad hoc/ remembering when we wandered round Amsterdam making up poetry about neon chameleons on the spot/ random dime/ random time/ don’t pour Pepsi on the bright equipment/ don’t piss on the cloakroom floor/ don’t fly with only a dream contraption/ don’t keep wanting more and more/ I’m too loud and I woke my mother/ I’m too loud and I woke my mother/ I’m too loud and I woke my mother/ I’m too loud and I woke my mother.

(co-authored with Paul)

ALAN THE BAT

Sullen, silken sulks,

we drink the same rain,

spit is clean

and so is dirt.

*

Another, another,

another fucking joint.

*

Even a duck

gets big erections.

*

Lucy in the soul w/ demons

might happen to

be a substance.

*

To plug my senses in the mains

might utilise !00% of my brains

but it’s all gone wrong at the plug,

just a dream on an ancient drug.

*

Di di dit di di dit di di dit dit dit

Di di dit di di dit di di dit dit dit

bring bring

bring bring

“hello?

Hi dad!

I’m fine!”

*

Here I am as I write by night

furtive in flight

with the sprightly

hypertext-sniper

on Piper At The

Gates of Dawn.

*

And the sheet where pictures

brown and blue

simply grew

was Winnie the Pooh.

PHOTOGRAPH FOUR 

INSERT PHOTO OF FLORA’S FACE STOLEN FROM FACEBOOK. UNLIKE THE PREVIOUS THREE PHOTOGRAPHS THIS ONE IS NOT MINE I MEAN I HAVE NOT TAKEN IT. I MEAN I HAVE NICKED IT BUT NOT TAKEN IT IF YOU KNOW WHAT I MEAN. I MEAN CAN WE SHARE WHAT IS POSITED ON THE WEB? THIS PHOTO CONTAINS ZERO SUGAR. IT MIGHT HAVE TO GO IN THE RECYCLING BIN. I MEAN DREAMS IN THE RECYCLING BIN GO ROUND AND ROUND. THIS WOULD HAVE BEEN A NEAT WAY TO FINISH. WHEN IN LONDON DO AS THE GREEKS DO, WHOM IT SEEMS LET THEIR CHILDREN PLAY NAKED IN THE SUN. MY FAVOURITE FLOWER-NAME IS SELF-HEAL. 

FURTHER LISTENING

To listen to The Flood, whose album was recorded on binaural earphones, visit rhythm guitarist Tom Woodhall’s page on Soundcloud.

To listen to my first solo album, ‘Songs To Record With Earphones’ [Demo 3], visit John F B Tucker’s Soundcloud page.

To listen to the E. P. I made with Grant Aspinall back when we were still called Funnelspirals, it is called ‘The A and E. P.’ by Funnelspirals and can be found on Soundcloud.

To listen to the four albums of the new da Vinci circle, even though they are not really meant to be listened to, only read in a book, visit John F B Tucker on Bandcamp and look for Various Artists (you find they have amazing covers like the sheet and the melted tape).

To listen to other collaborations with Grant Aspinall, including the song ‘Eternal Full Moon,’ including when we put Blake to music, including ‘Seclusion,’ including ‘Snake Snake Butterfly’ visit Grant Aspinall on Bandcamp.

To listen to ‘Unplugged At The Foot of Sea Ness’ visit John F B Tucker on Bandcamp.

To listen to ‘Wishlist’ by The Flood, visit John F B Tucker’s other Soundcloud page.

TRADING ANGEL AFFIRMATIONS

What do you do

with a literary failure

what do you do

with a literary failure

what do you do

with a literary failure

early in the morning?

Woke up this morning

feeling so bad

felt like a pig

had shat in my head

He-Man’s out to get me

that’s the way it seems

people always let you down

so do those that die

for no hamburger heaven

draw the same as those

that shape 9/ 11?

and don’t forget a rose

would smell as sweet

if it were but called

barmy as the army of

Michael Vaughan, m’ Lord,

Michael Vaughan, Michael

Vaughan m’ Lord,

Michael Vaughan, Michael

Vaughan, m’ Lord,

Michael Vaughan

yeah yeah yeah you’re

in the broken army

now broken army

well it’s a one for the money,

money for the blow,

blow to get hairy now

go cat go but don’t you

silence my cosmic Muse

do they know it’s

my 40th birthday

tomorrow at all?

Lean in your tits

when I’m sitting in Kutz

with my hair everywhere

like a malting scarecrow

chicken korma police

arrest this man

he talks in curry

to be very blunt

Aphex acid isn’t flaccid

ecstasia so much

to answer for

my childhood won’t smile,

my childhood won’t smile,

but I’m gonna be big

feeeeeeeeed the

biiiiiiiiiiirds

let them know

it’s my birthday tomorrow

God save the queen

we mean it man

her Hitler hairdo

is making me feel ill

and we have crashed

her party everybody

must get stoned

close your eyes

make it a better place

for you and for me

and the entire human race

suicide is dangerous

it brings on many changes

liquid donkey

liquid donkey

tra la la la la la la

I am the Almighty Cornholio

and I bring you water

water when you touch me

water when you

hold me tight

poetry it’s over

poetry away

poetry or not

as the case may be

somewhere over the

fractured acid-rainbow

Baxter the dog flies

teenage mutant

ganja turtles heroes

in a halfshell

Turtle Power!

Back in the day the best Flood gig was when Niki (or Agent G aka Wolf) and I tuned up, warmed up, and then there was a power cut. It was no accident it was the gig. The whole warehouse went black for minutes and when the lights came back on that was it, we had performed already. We really did push the boundaries as to what could be a song, even more so than the guy that moved rocks about in a river to change its pitch, or the guy that destroyed a table with an axe on stage. Our songs had a psychotechnological edge. If you consider poetry as a defamiliarisation of perception – if you also consider Rimbaud’s comment that the poet makes himself a visionary through a prodigious derangement of the senses to attain the unknown – then the very act of recording through earphones was a poetic act in itself. I think that night when we presented a power-cut as music there was one band on after us and they played and played until their fingers were sore and their frontman ended up down on the floor, writhing about, screaming lyrics into the mic. That seems to be what I have been doing herein, in a way, in the sense of having run out of lyrics a while back and still carrying on. 

The reason it is being a book and not only a new-look net-book on my blog on the bot is that nobody reads it when it’s on the bot – for maybe it’s too long for that - and what I want is a literary career or at least a chance to score. 

My dad wouldn’t mind this book going out there. 

It’s like we needed to create our own website.

It’s like the book I wrote at seven – did I mention it? - that predicted the net and which got stolen – it’s being replaced or rather upgraded. 

I tell myself that if I were bringing a poem collection out - I tell myself there is enough contained within to satisfy that desire, even if my song lyrics are meant for wiping up semen.

Signed by everwell, she couldn’t hit it sideways, or maybe a soothsaying Spiderman with the hairgel of Dracula, Atlantis, Aquarius, the 60’s.