Instruments played:  Sitar, Guitar, Bass, Drums

Lyrics:

Everything under the sun and the moon
The emperor will be there soon
His greatness will bless the land
All the people hand in hand

His presence filled with gloom and grace, 
Sadness etched within his face
Magnificent and Splendorous
Generous and Dangerous

Emperor's Greatness

The painting is ‘The Course of Empire’ by Thomas Cole (1801 – 1848).

Say a prayer and don’t despair about the cost of living crisis 
Cos life’s not fair and they don’t care about the rising prices 
The millionaires and billionaires wield their wicked powers
they own the shares, they don’t pay the fares, they’re not working longer hours

  They contaminate, discriminate, and revel in their sleaze 
  the permafrost is lost, but we still have the wage freeze 

the bankers are all bigots, experts in exploitation 
oil tankers and their frigates reeking eco-devastation
while we reimburse the nurses with the joy of food banks 
and the curse of empty purses and our hollow huge thanks

  You’ll find that it’s impossible to get paid any less
  can’t save no money saving lives for the NHS

The CEOs who freely chose to bolster their careers 
They’re mosquitoes in tuxedos bloodsucking profiteers 
who smoke cigars with glowing hearts, toasting market forces  
They’re Oligarchs, they’re greedy sharks, they’re feeding on the corpses

  The ambulance abandoned us, so now we need a hearse
  Yes the times they are a-changing… but they’re changing for the worse

I blame the vloggers and the bloggers, I don’t “like” and I don’t “subscribe”
All that scrolling and a trolling, through soundbites and diatribes
and we fixate on the clickbait that seems to be hell-bent 
on dictating that the content fuels our discontent 

        All the species being ghosted, wiped out like dinosaurs
        While we’re busy being offended, and fighting culture wars

Shopaholic fashionistas with their selfies and their memes 
And reams of influencers beat us senseless by extremes
it’s a trash-bag full of hashtags, rubbish flowing in our streams
algorithms causing schisms and addiction to our screens

        We’re the masters of our destiny, but it isn’t as it seems 
        Who’s pushing who’s buttons? Are we slaves to the machines?

Narcissistic mystics with their conspiracy theories
Going viral in a spiral of Netflix mini series
And woeful social media, where profiles are a deepfake
It’s a form of schizophrenia, like a hollywood remake

      We make a virtue of our vanity, embracing the absurd
      with virtual reality, to replace the real world

Cost Of Living Crisis

PS Perkins: Guitars, bass, lyre, vocals
Ron Thomas: Autoharps, Drums

Production notes:
---------------------------------------------
Very early on we wanted to use autoharps on this song to create a sort of swirling backdrop, reminiscent of the harps in Indian/Bollywood soundtrack songs of the seventies.

Right away there were challenges because the song is in B flat and is not wholly diatonic to begin with, utilizing a chord built on the augmented lydian scale in the choruses. So rather than transpose the song to a more amenable key (since the chromatic bits weren't going to work no matter what key we used) we instead re-tuned the autoharp. Moving through the strings one by one we tuned them either up or down a half step where applicable to bring them into key. Where the augmented chord hit in the choruses, we excluded those notes so that the autoharp was filling the diatonic parts of the chords and omitting the accidentals. It took us several tries to get it right. In the end we arrived at a chord progression that could be strummed on the autoharp and the modified chords could be played with existing dampers.

We also tuned the lyre so that the top half of the strings included the chromatic augmented notes while the lower register of the lyre was tuned using the diatonic, so the lyre could play the melody all the way through both parts of the song.

The inspiration for this song was essentially fourfold:
--------------------------------------------------------
First, H.P. Lovecraft's terrifying necromancer Joseph Curwen (from "The Case of Charles Dexter Ward") who masked his true identity in order to thwart suspicion from his fellow townsfolk. He has many secrets lurking in his underground catacombs where he performs acts of necromancy most foul, extracting the "salts" of the dead in order to raise them at will and learn the secrets of ancient eldritch deities.

Second, a poem by Rudyard Kipling titled "En-Dor" which was a warning against the rise of spiritualism and the cost of communion with the dead in the early 20th century.

Third, the biblical Saul who traveled in disguise to visit a witch at the city of Endor in order to summon Samuel from the dead and garner advice on defeating the Philistines, but who only prophesies doom for Saul. Saul dies later the next day in the battle of Gilboa.

Lastly, the story of Odysseus communing with the underworld where he enlists the help of Tiresias to have a chat with the dead and secure for himself a safe journey home.

They all seek communion with the dead for one purpose: to gain knowledge which only those who have crossed over between realms might possess. 

Lyrics:
-------------------------------------
A mask may reveal what it’s meant to conceal
From those who are standing beside us
Armor of pride, so we learn to abide
By the monsters which hide deep inside us
The monsters which lurk deep inside us
Oh, how they scratch and they bite us
The monsters which lurk deep inside us

Only to know what the professor knows

Eating black bread, wearing clothes of the dead
The soil soaked in honey around us
For fear if we failed, leave the ogre unveiled
And it’s back in the grave where they found us
Back in the grave where they found us
Freed from the ties which had bound us
Back in the grave where they found us

Only to know what the professor knows

In the catacomb vaults, we extracted the salts
From cadavers to lengthen our youth
Chanting the names at the edge of the flames
And a mirror to show us the truth
A mirror which speaks only truth
See how it seeks not to soothe
A mirror which speaks only truth

Only to know what the professor knows

In the underworld maze, in the night of no days
Concocting the plan we’re devising
Much to endure on the road to En-Dor
And to snatch from Elohim arising
To snatch from Elohim arising
Snatch from Elohim arising
Snatch from Elohim arising
Snatch from Elohim arising
Snatch from Elohim arising

BARDS:Of The Shimmering Seraphs

The Professor

Radar - Meet Cody

Ancient One

Back with Pinner with some new jazz fusion - Above The Clouds.  Love what Stephan does.  Again and again.  Follow his wonderful playing here on Soundcloud:  https://soundcloud.com/pinner

And for a playlist of now 120 tunes we have recorded together!:  https://soundcloud.com/jamie-rhind/sets/smokin-with-stephan-stephan

Thanks as always for your generous time listening, for your comments and for your shares

Jamie

Above The Clouds - Stephan Lipinski / Jamie Rhind

noxpox - automatic lover

HEAVEN HELP THE FOOL - HUNGRY GIZMO scs…ALWAYS MOVING SONG AND OF REFLECTION AND THE REAL UNCONDITIONAL REDEMPTIONS OF OUR LIFES AS WE ARE ALL HIT AND MISS AS LIFE IS COMING OVER THE SIDES OF FLOATATION DEVICES AND ITS ALL YOU DO IN THIS JOURNEY AS A FOOL IS TO LAND ON YOUR OWN AND CONTINUE. 

HEAVEN HELP THE FOOL +^circle be unbroken 
BY HUNGRY GIZMO scs 

+^LOOP S.  W.

HEAVEN HELP THE FOOL **HUNGRY GIZMO scs

File Updated: More Bass...

Listen to Meaning by The Beautiful Dark on #SoundCloud
https://on.soundcloud.com/S5vihrBFDddgKwuq6
↗️that's the original track this is a mix of

Lyrics

The strangest people be,
Who understands another really?
Love
The ghosts
The quests
The crimes
Admit it when your out of line

But their lines are oh so grey to me
I suppose the black and white does move to resave
The ivories are free
And their niche gets tinkling making life less mean
More meaning
Do be silence!
Woo me with silence

Killing with Isis lies?
An ideal aint worth even one life!
Groomed,
Your institutionalised
There’s no zeal
Jah Jihad strife.

Just get out!

The strangest strange
Strays' stream
Rivers of rose
Flowered water
Wise beam'





Notes
In this song I am thinking about the extreme elements of humanity and how they become that. It's usually the most vulnerable and the weakest of weak humans being manipulated to be that which is sad.
When a person is weak and vulnerable it seems easy to feed their hunger for meaning with lies about the world and their reality

Meaning {Bass the head off ya mix}

Cinder Blocks

Reflections on like, growing old, a little sad, but I think we all share emotions of good and bad times.

I Don,t Like Tomorrow Today

Retired musician .  Just writing a few simple songs about
life and growing old.  Song about my childhood on a
Louisiana delta farm.  Most songs were written and composed by me on my Boss  BR8 Digital Recording Studio.  Hope to complete my first CD soon.  I have a few cover songs also.
 

I Don,t Like Tomorrow Today

Chuck Aaron