about
Original appearance on the "Frequencies of Use" album.
lyrics
What do you think we are to you,
and what it is that you perceive we do?
Had music been here before you came near it?
How might it have sounded before your ears could hear it?
What had made this place appealing
was our freedom of expression and of feeling,
a total lack of acumen and guile,
and disregard for any need for self-defining style.
We'd once obeyed an inner voice,
but now are constrained to a range of choice
of mendicant, vassal or charity case.
Someone wants to take care of me
and make the public more aware of me,
but the way that they know how to sell me
is by my doing everything the way they tell me,
as though I'm some lost or helpless child,
when musicians here had formerly run wild
and did as we would in our own habitat;
now they display us, captive, in a simulation of that.
We'd once made our native noise;
they've replaced our weapons with the toys
of mendicant, vassal and charity case.
Here is the most dangerous of musician –
to whom it won't occur to ask permission,
and says what he can't be stopped from saying,
broadcasting from his mind, where the music's playing.
What would you do if you could get him –
try to kill his noise, or would you just let him?
Knowing him won't benefit you, so ignore him;
he'll do likewise – you know you can't do shit for him.
He's a man, not one of the boys;
makes hardship into something he enjoys,
not mendicant, vassal, nor charity case.
© 2105 Steve Fitch / My Music by Me Music (BMI)
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