| Disc 1 | ||||||
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| 1. |
| 3:22 | 
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| 2. |
| 1:46 | 
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A giant eye zapped across the screen,
With tentacle type feeler type thin roots, Reaching for someone maybe me, With large black block letters, Chiseled into the white around the pupils screaming, R e v o l u t i o n, Revolution, And as the eye giant and green, Sort of oozed with no obvious locomotion, Closer and closer until it was like this on my screen, It split and blood flowed down each side of the street, Washing away things that we didn't need to see, Just like beer cans peanut shells and copies of the daily news, And then laying there, bleeding like a stuck pig, Was a stuck pig, Get the point? |
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| 3. |
| 2:36 |
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We deal in too many externals, brother.
Always afros, handshakes, and dashikis. Never can a man build a working structure for black capitalism. Always does the man read Mao or Fanon. I think I know you would-be black revolutionaries too well. Standing on a box on a corner, talking about blowing the white boy away. That's not where it's at, yet, brother. Calling this man an Uncle Tom, And telling this woman to get an afro, But you won't speak to her if she looks like hell, will you, brother? Some of us been checking you act out kinda closely. And by now it's looking kinda shaky, the way you been rushing people with your super-black bag. Jumping down on some black men with both feet because they are after their B.A. But you're never around when your B.A. is in danger. I mean your black ASS. I think it was a little too easy for you to forget that you were a negro before Malcolm. You drove your white girl through the village every Friday night, While the grass roots stared in envy and drank wine. Do you remember? You need get your memory banks organized, brother. Show that man you call an Uncle Tom just where he is wrong. Show that woman that you are a sincere black man. All we need to do is see you SHUT UP AND BE BLACK. Help that woman. Help that man. That's what brothers are for, brother. |
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| 4. |
| 4:27 |
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| 5. |
| 1:21 |
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This is just like listening
to a conversation being held by the many people who congregate on one of the most popular blocks in the largest area of black America Did you ever eat cornbread and black eye peas Or watermelon and mustard greens? Get high as you can on Saturday night Go to church on Sunday to set things right Listen I seen Miss Blake after Willy yesterday She'd've killed anybody who got in her way Hey look I got a TV for a pound on the head And Jimmy Jean got the best Panamanian Red No I ain't got on no underclothes But we all got to get through this gypsy rose I think Clay got his very good points You say a trade bag with thirteen joints? Who cares if LBJ is in town? Up with Stokely and H. Rap Brown I don't know if the riots is wrong But whitey's been kickin' my ass for too long I was s'posed to baby but they held my pay. Did you hear what the number was yesterday? Junkies is all right when they ain't broke They leaves you alone when they high on dope Damn, but I wish I could get up and move Shut up. Hell you know that ain't true. |
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| 6. |
| 3:12 |
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The subject was faggots
and the quote was "ain't nothin' happenin' but faggots and dope" Faggots and dope, faggots and faggots and faggots who line dot dot dot dot dot Like that, 34th street and 8th avenue Giggling and grinning and prancing and shit Trying their best to see to see the misses and misery and miscellaneous misfits who attend the faggot ball faggots who have come to ball faggots who have come to ball faggots who were balling because they couldn't get their balls inside the faggot hall Balling, balling, ball-less faggots cutie cootie and snoodie faggots I mean you just had to dig it to dig it the crowning attraction being the arrival of Ms Brooklyn looking like a half-back in a mini-skirt with swan feathers covering his err hers a it's pectoral and balls and he err she or it prepared to enter the faggot ball but sitting on the corner digging all that I did as I did long long, black limousines and long flowin' evening gowns had there been no sign on the door saying "faggot ball" I might have entered, and god only knows just what would've happened |
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| 7. |
| 3:21 |
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| 8. |
| 2:54 |
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Glad to get high and see the slow motion world.
Just to reach, and touch, the half notes floating. Worlds spinning orbit quicker than 9/8ths Dave Brubeck. We come now, frantically searching for Thomas Moore, rainbow villages. Up on suddenly, Charlie Mingus and our man Abdul Malik, to add bass, to a bottomless pit of insecurity. You may be plastic because you never meditate, about the bottom of glasses, The third side of your universe. Add on Alice Coltrane and her cosmic strains. Still no vocal on blue black horizons. Your plasticity is tested by a formless assault. The sun can answer questions in tune, to all your sacrifices. But why would our new jazz age give us no more mind expanding puzzles? Enter John. Blow from under, always, and never, so that the morning, the sun, may scream of brain bending saxophones. The third world arrives, with Yusef Lateef, and Pharaoh Saunders. With oboes straining to touch the core of your unknown soul. Ravi Shankar comes, with strings attached, prepared to stabilize your seventh sense, Your black rhythm. Up and down a silly ladder run the notes, without the words. Words are important for the mind, but the notes are for the soul. Miles Davis, So what? Cannonball, Fiddler, Mercy. Dexter Gordon, One Flight Up. Donald Byrd, playing Cristo, but what about words? Would you like to survive on sadness? Call on Ella and Jose Happiness. Drift with Smokey, Bill Medley, Bobby Taylor, and Otis Redding. Soul music where frustrations are washed by drums, Nina and Miriam. Congo, Mongo, Beat me, senseless, bongo, Tonto. Flash through dream worlds of STP and LSD. Speed kills and sometimes musics call, is frustrated. And the black man is confused. Our speed is our life pace, much too fast, not good. I beg you to escape, and live, and hear all of the real. Until a call comes for you to cry elsewhere. We must all cry, but tell me. Must our tears be white? |
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| 9. |
| 2:00 |
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A rat done bit my sister Nell
With Whitey on the moon Her face and arms began to swell And Whitey's on the moon I can't pay no doctor bills But Whitey's on the moon Ten years from now I'll be paying still While Whitey's on the moon You know, the man just upped my rent last night Cause Whitey's on the moon No hot water, no toilets, no lights But Whitey's on the moon I wonder why he's uppin' me? Cause Whitey's on the moon? Well i was already given him fifty a week And now Whitey's on the moon Taxes takin' my whole damn check The junkies make me a nervous wreck The price of food is goin up And if all that crap wasn't enough A rat done bit my sister nell With Whitey on the moon Her face and arms began to swell And Whitey's on the moon With all that money i made last year For Whitey on the moon How come I ain't got no money here? Hmm, Whitey's on the moon You know I just about had my fill Of Whitey on the moon I think I'll send these doctor bills airmail special (To Whitey on the moon) |
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| 10. |
| 4:32 |
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Standing in the ruins
Of another Black man's life, or flying through the valley They're separating day and night. "I am death," cried the Vulture. "For the people of the light." Charon brought his raft and came from the sea that sails on souls, And saw the scavenger departing, taking warm hearts to the cold. He knew the ghetto was the haven for the meanest creature ever known. In a wilderness of heartbreak and a desert of despair, Evil's clarion of justice shrieks a cry of naked terror. He's taking babies from their mommas and leaving grief beyond compare. So if you see the Vulture coming, he's flying circles in your mind, Remember there is no escaping for he will follow close behind. Only promised me a battle, battle for your soul and mine. He taking babies from their momas And he's leaving Leaving Leaving Leaving Leaving |
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| 11. |
| 4:16 |
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it was not enough that we were bought and brought to this home as the slave, locked in the bowels of a floating shithouse, watching those we love eaten away by plauge and insanity, flesh falling like strips of bark from a termite-infested tree, bones rotting turning first to brittle ivory then to resin.
that was not enough. it was not enough that we were chained to leg irons, black on black with a piss stained wall forced to heed nature's call through and inside of tattered rags that strained our privates, and evidently years of slavery did not appease your need to be superior to something like a crazed lion hung up on being the king of his corner of the cage, backs bent under the wieght of being everything and having nothing, minds too like bomerrangs curving back into themselves kicked and carved by the face-straining smiles that saved my life. that was not enough. somehow i can not believe that it would be enough for me to melt with you and integrate without the thoughts of rape and murder. i cannot conceive of peace on earth until i have given you a piece of lead or pipe to end your worthless motherfucking exitence. imagine your nightmares of my sneaking into a vieled of satin bedroom and attacking your daughter, wife and mother at once ripping open their bowels sexually like a wishbone. imagine that magnified a million times when you realize that the blinders have been stripped from my eyes and I realize that slavery was no smiling happy-fizzy party. your ancestors raped my foremothers and i will not forget. i will not forget that Yale or Harvard or Princeton or In-Hell because you are on my mind. i see you everytime my woman walks down the street with her ass on her shoulders. i see you everytime i look in the mirror and think about the times that i would pat myself on the back for not being too black afterall. i think of you morning, noon and night and i wonder, "just exactly what in hell is enough?" everytime i see a rope or gun i remember, and to top it all of you ain't through yet. over fifty you have killed in mississippi since 1963. that doesn't even begin to begin all of those you have maimed, hit and run over, blinded, poisoned, starved, or castrated. i hope you do not think that a vote for John Kennedy took you off my shit-list because in the street there will only be black and white. there will be no Democrats, Republicans, Liberals, Conservatives, Moderates, or any other of the rest of that shit you have used to make me forget to hate. there ain't no enough. there ain't no surrender. there is only plot and plan, move and groove, kill. there is no promise land. there is only the promise. the promise is not vowel until we have been nerve gassed, shot down and murdered, or done some of the same ourselves. look over your shoulder motherfucker, i am coming. |
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| 12. |
| 0:34 |
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Picture a man of nearly thirty
Who seems twice as old with clothes torn and dirty Give him a job shining shoes Or cleaning out toilets with bus station crews Give him six children with nothing to eat Expose them to life on a ghetto street Tie an old rag around his wife's head And have her pregnant and lying in bed Stuff them all in a Harlem house And then tell them how bad things are down South. |
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| 13. |
| 5:15 |
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Many suggestions
And documents written. Many directions For the end that was given. They gave us Pieces of silver and pieces of gold. Tell me, Who'll pay reparations on my soul? Many fine speeches (oh yeah) From the White House desk (uh huh) Written on the cue cards That were never really there. Yes, But the heat and the summer were there And the freezing winter's cold. Now Tell me, Who'll pay reparations on my soul? Call my brother a junkie 'cause he ain't got no job (no job, no job). Told my old man to leave me when times got hard (so hard). Told my mother she got to carry me all by herself. And now that I want to be a man (be a man) who can depend on no one else (oh yeah). What about the red man Who met you at the coast? You never dig sharing; Always had to have the most. And what about Mississippi, The boundary of old? Tell me, Who'll pay reparations on my soul? Call my brother a junkie 'cause he ain't got no job Told my old man to leave me when times got hard (so hard). Told my mother she got to carry me all by herself. Wanna be a man that can depend on no one else (oh yeah). What about the red man, Who met you at the coast? You never dig sharing; Always had to have the most. And what about Mississippi, The boundaries of old? Tell me, Who'll pay reparations on my soul? Many fine speeches (oh yeah) From the White House desk (uh huh) Written on the cue cards That were never really there. Yes, But the heat and the summer were there And the freezing winter's cold. Tell me, Who'll pay reparations on my soul? Who'll pay reparations, ‘Cause I don't dig segregation, but I can't get integration I got to take it to the United Nations, Someone to help me away from this nation. Tell me, Who'll pay reparations on my soul? |
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| 14. |
| 4:30 |
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Mmmmm
I can't seem to find the words to say (to say) I don't have strength to play the games you need to play (to play) Every day I seem to be running from the truth I ask myself questions but it just ain't no use 'Cause it seems no matter, no matter, what I try to do I'm still loving and living, lying and losing Every day (Yeah, every day) I've got a job And to say the least It don't mean a thing (it don't mean a thing) It don't begin to compare With the hurt and pair that I've seen (I've seen) Sometimes I know I can't tell wrong from right I don't seem to know day from night It's no wonder that the whole world uptight They're just loving and living, lying and losing Every day (Yeah, every day) Stop on the way home From work to have a drink Just to give myself a little time to think 'Cause it seems that more and more I start to realize That the truth that I wanted The love that I needed Has somehow disappeared before my eyes I can't seem to find the words I need to say (to say) I can't find strength enough to play the games you need, you need to play (to play) 'Cause every day you got me, got me running from the truth And no matter, no matter what I try to do It seems that somehow it just ain't no use I'm still loving and living, lying and losing Can't seem to remember God it's so confusing I'm still loving and living, lying and losing Every day (Yeah, every day) |
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