1. |
Last of the Iceni
02:34
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Strophe
We’re the restless ghosts in the winds and rains,
Funnelling the valleys, sweeping the plains,
Inlets and warrens that run underground,
Unbridled pathways, unquiet streams,
Haunted hidden corners of rootless sound,
Hives of Iceni, dead and unqueened,
By bronzebreasted redcrests violently weaned,
We’re the baby who wails for her dead mother’s breast.
Antistrophe
We are dead keening women, whispering grass,
The breath in the lilac and bluebells, the blast
Through the pale yellow oak leaves, hawthorns
And nettles. And that shout, queen of warriors,
From your victory chariot with your triumphant
Horsemen around you! And that salt chill of a winter’s
Reprisals that blighted twice twenty summers.
We’re the mother who wails for her new baby’s death.
Catastrophe
We are the cries in the corn, the harrowings hooted
Under moons of hunger, in the squeals of the hunted,
The creaking of geese through night-forest fears,
The unresting dunes and the moaning wave-break,
We’re the memory that’s cankered two thousand years
Of Celtic blood with an unhealing ache,
We’re the oracles lost in the noise diggers make.
We’re the dead daughters wailing for the end of the world.
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2. |
What's My Name?
03:57
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3. |
Woad Riot
02:37
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Boudicca got a lot of Romans
Hanging out in the Styx;
The Woad Goddess goes to school
Where they teach her how to be nix.
She’s the Mother of Britain’s
Biblical kicks
Against the odds,
Against the pricks.
She’s the crazy moon
In a gurly whirl
The finest hour
Of the Norfolk girl!
Ride ride, I wanna ride,
Ride ride, a riot on my horse,
Woad woad, a-whoa woad,
Blow whoa, a riot on my horn!
She’s the fury in Janus’s office
Sown with the wildest oats,
She’s a wild goose-chasing sky,
The whiff of burning boats.
She’s the country queen
With the world in sway
Who blooms and blows
It all away.
She’s the crazy moon
In a gurly whirl
The finest hour
Of the Norfolk girl!
Ride ride, I wanna ride,
Ride ride, a riot on my horse,
Woad woad, a-whoa woad,
Blow whoa, a riot on my horn!
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4. |
Muse of the World
00:55
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5. |
The Clampdown
01:51
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6. |
This Girl's Year
01:40
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7. |
In The City
00:30
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8. |
The Anarchy Tour
04:49
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9. |
The Clash
12:27
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Now as a summer dawn paints the ripening green-gold spears of Iceni corn a battle blood red,
Boudicca turns her attention to provincial governor Suetonius Paulinus.
This seasoned professional soldier marching hot-foot from his rout of Welsh tribes in the West,
Concentrates his army at a place never really identified but some believe near Fenny Stratford on Watling Street...
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10. |
No Future
04:14
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She is history not myth but remember
History is written by the vicar
And she neither wrote nor won.
No freedom, no future, no fun.
Rome had to win or lose an Empire,
Britain had to win or simply expire,
And with it the Western horizon,
No freedom, no future, no fun.
Procurator Decianus Catus
Spoke down his nose, spoke down his anus,
"The Emperor claims the dead king's kingdom"
No freedom, no future, no fun.
There’s no future in your Roman dream,
Your traffic lanes and your shopping schemes,
Your soapless baths and your manly steam,
The Iceni queen bee is making free
With your city!
She danced to the wardrums, warhooves, hornwhine,
Exhorting, as Romans were drilled into line,
Her race to fling back the squares of London:
No freedom, no future, no fun.
Now her rebels hole up, where home is none,
On roots thin as hope and a dream of Britain,
Hunted through nettles and thorns, their soles stung:
No freedom, no future, no fun.
Her hard core Iceni's last stand and fall
Is the longest, fiercest, stubbornest of all
But is crushed - like flint - in The Battle of Thornham:
No freedom, no future, no fun.
There’s no future in your Roman dream,
Your traffic lanes and your shopping schemes,
Your soapless baths and your manly steam,
The Iceni queen bee is making free
With your city!
"Our Roman matrons have a place too
In a civilised home: I could offer you
A place in mine: dresses, baths, decorum:"
No freedom, no future, no fun.
Death-and-glory queens, country dragons:
Whores of fashion in Camolodunum,
In Roman roses their own scent gone,
No freedom, no future, no fun.
The salts that she sowed in the Squareheads' wounds
Return in a wash that will sour our lands
But they couldn’t chain her to the History of Rome:
She chariots a tide in Whitehall home!
There’s no future in your Roman dream,
Your traffic lanes and your shopping schemes,
Your soapless baths and your manly steam,
The Iceni queen bee is making free
With your city!
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11. |
Rude Girl
03:55
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12. |
Britain's Dreaming
02:01
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Julius Caesar
and the Roman Empire
couldn't conquer
the blue sky"
and I think of you, Boudicca,
with that same sense
of singing triumph
even though your glory days
were under grey skies
and short-lived
and weren't innocent
or cornflower-pretty
as some Celtic blue summer
and had more to do
with this Norfolk flint
and stubborn soil
than an air of heaven
and even though
Decianus Catus
and the Roman Empire
seized the sunrise
of your three easy wins
as if seizing the flames
of your famous red hair,
and even though
Suetonius Paulinus
and the Roman Empire
crushed your country
if not your body
in his square Roman fist
sowed harvests of hunger
rubbed decades of salt
in your people's wounds
the old word
buddug
still sings in my Welsh blood,
in the Norfolk winds
off this unresting sea
buddug:
buddig:
victory
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13. |
Never Quite Buried
02:04
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14. |
Clashtonbury
02:06
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Went down West to Glastonbury
To the hippy revolution:
Romans dressed as Celts, and yippies
Snorting fine solutions,
Weekend greens on ganga grass
Treading cowshit-hell pollution,
We parked the car and pitched the tent
And the pigs told us to move ’em
Move the tent to the left,
Move the car to the right
You don't have any ri-i-i-i-ights
And we don't want to be
The "Offender"
We don't want to be,
The "Offender-oo-er"
We came here to play
Queen Boudicca
But the Romans have take N over oo er
Eighty five quid and no concessions, so
What was all that about ‘open’?
Bankers, wankers, bread-head merch
It's a capitalist org-a- sm:
They've raised a market in the fields,
With a thousand kinds of freedom,
Fifteen stages, 100,000 ways
And an endless shift between them!
Take a walk to the left (piss in a hedge)
Trudge a mile to the right (sleep in a stream)
You're in hell toni-i-i-i-i-ight
And we wanted to be
In Avalon
And we thought we would be
In Avalon and on....
We came here to play
Queen Boudicca
But the Romans have take
N over oo er…
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Peacock's Tale Musical Storytelling Sedgeford, UK
It's all right, folks, we're married. A marriage of melody and rhythm ( flirting with harmony & timbre.) Old married woke
folk, indie, Norfolk noir, beat poems, ghazals & Americana for the world from NW Norfolk. Maz lead & harmony vocals, acoustic guitar. Gaz lead & harmony vocals, drum & bass. Traditional tunes with contemporary beats.
garethcalway.blogspot.com/p/doin-different.html
... more
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