
Microdisney. One of my favorite bands of all time, they had a song called Love Your Enemies.
Microdisney's message was always delivered in an indelible sarcasm with much British (errr.... Irish) sensibilities. It didn't always make sense to an ernest lad from Van Nuys, CA, but I was attracted by their album "We Hate You South African Bastards", and their other album "Everybody Is Fantastic". They re-released the "...South African Bastards" record on CD, changing the title to "Love Your Enemies".

Microdisney were Irish, which may or may not be relevant.
I have no idea where their name Microdisney came from. After
much googling I turned up nothing. I doubt they were a big enough blip on the radar for the Disney™ corp to come after them, and had they, I'm sure Cathal Coughlan and Sean O'Hagan (The Lennon/McCartney of Microdisney) would have had something to say, as they often did, about corporate greed and socio-political unrest. Cathal went on to form the band Fatima
Mansions (check their fierce tracks Only Losers Take The Bus and feel the whoop-ass in their politically difficult to pronounce Blues For Ceausescu) and Sean formed the High Llamas. Pretty obscure stuff for sure, but despite Microdisney releasing 4 or 5 albums it's the 2 pictured that are a permanent and necessary pat of my music collection. Later songs like Town to Town, Horse Overboard, Singer's Hampstead Home, Give Me All Your Clothes and Birthday Girl were all great- if not blatantly uncommercial - especially in the mid to late 80s when they were their most productive - and radio was exploding with synthesizer-based bands like Human League, Simple Minds and Thompson Twins. Microdisney weren't anti-synth, but they were pro-song writing and made their noise by any means necessary often playing the inside of a piano, an off-key guitar or an old drum machine. But their lyrics were what attracyed me. High And Dry features the opening lines : "Why'd you have to leave me for some Albanian gambler on the Beirut train?/When I'd finished laughing, /I celebrated with a glass of hate. /You got dreams and I've got demons."
Love Your Enemies :

Why don’t you love your enemies?
Why don’t you give them everything?
Why don’t you get down on your knees?
Adore your enemies
Idiots
Fuck em all
Only fools
Fucking idiots
Fucking idiots
Fucking
All my friends – I mean you
All my friends – God afraid
And they dance in the streets in the hot afternoons
And they spat at our backs and they kicked us away
To live in the dark, live in the park
This is the reason why we were born
And his head is aching
Why don’t you put your eyes up? And his God is waiting
Why don’t you put the light up?
Give them everything
Give them everything
Give them everything
Give them everything
And this is all I’ll ever be
And this is all
I’ll ever be
We lay in your bed in the hot afternoons
And we argued about how little money we had
Life in the dark
Life in the cold
This is the reason why we were born
Our own language
Our own lot
Our own fears
And our own Gods
Our freedom and the right to do
As we please with the likes of you
And I try to laugh at them
And they smack me on the face
And they push us through the fields
Saying “Love your enemies”
Give them everything
Give them everything
It’s too late –
Ha Ha
God begins to call
And this is all we’ll ever be
And this is all they’ll ever be
The elder upstands and the rebellion is well
And it fills them with joy just to see us this way
And taking each step just to take the next breath
And taking each breath just to take the next step
The sons going past as I swung from the trees
Take everything you own and make it into a neat pile
Set fire to it, burn it all
See what your love can do
Say “Oh look what my love did”
The power of love
The power of love
The power of love
1 comment:
Been twisted up a bit by some so-called so and so's lately meself...though my true bluuz remain...some of these nu yahoos are a pain!
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