Twenty-First Century Man (lyric book and album art)

Music and lyrics © Keir Daly 2009

Keir Daly: vocals; lead, rhythm, bass and acoustic guitars; piano; drums, tambourine; teaspoon in a glass and microwave oven.

Dozens of guitar picks and strings, not to speak of many fingernails and a set of headphones, were harmed in the making

of this album.

It is dedicated to Jill Medlock.

Release date: 1 March 2010

Twenty-First Century Man Catch me if you can Catch me if you can I’m not a company man I don’t belong to a clan I have evaded God’s plan I safely pass through any scan Catch me if you can Catch me if you can Shadowed stranger in a well-lit land, I hail no leader, front no band My Achilles’ Heel is in my hand That’s where they marked me with a brand I was designed in Japan Then I was made in Taiwan Bought and sold in Pakistan Last seen in Afghanistan Last seen in Afghanistan Now do you know who I am? Yes, you may name me if you can I’m a twenty-first century man I’m a twenty-first century man Twenty-first century man

Song for Calum

I could sing for those who hear But you read the signs

If my meaning isn’t clear You’ll see between the lines

Turn it up and play it loud Things we like to do

That’s why I’m proud to sing This one for you

This one’s for you

What’s the difference, signing, singing? They have the same letters too

There’s no silence while I’m bringing This one to you

Oooh, brother of mine

You know this one’s for you

Oooh, brother of mine You know this song’s for you

They may think my sounds are deafening

You know that’s not true I sometimes crank the volume up

So you can listen too Although I sing this quietly

It’s not because I’m blue But there’s no noisy way to tell you

This one’s for you This song’s for you

Brother of mine, you know this song’s for you

You know this one’s for you

Orient Yourself Hey, let’s go the way the wind blows As long as it’s travelling to the East You’d best understand it Like another planet More poetry than prose Let’s all go to Asia Be bemused, amaze ya, With the riches she bestows Give it up, all your Anglo-vanity, Like the food you pretend is good to eat Trade your doctor’s call For a hawker’s stall With real limes and sugar cane Let’s all go to Asia Or else euthanasia By an English weather vane Orient yourself! Malaysia, East Timor, Vietnam, Singapore Tokyo, Guangzhou, Chiang Mai may be the making of you Orient yourself! Kyoto, Malacca, Kaohsiung, Manila, Gwangmyeong, Bengkulu, Ho Chi Minh should redefine life for you Orient yourself! Orient yourself! Orient yourself!

Portugal

We were in Portugal My dad and me

We were driving By the sea

We turned into a mall and Drank a glass of something and

Then we did some shopping and I bought my first CD

There where the ocean met the sea

We played and played Led Zeppelin III

That’s when a new idea Born somewhere between my ears

Of something I might just be First took a hold of me

So that Christmas time I wished

For what became my greatest gift With it I give back to the world The sounds I heard in Portugal

It isn’t Fado It isn’t Folk

It’s not Flamenco It isn’t Rock

It’s something like all four With a little something more

Portugal

Where the ocean meets the sea This is what passes between you and me

Free Roam Generation Although we sit in your schools You mustn’t think we are fools Ain’t gonna live by your rules Ain’t gonna mind your schedules We’re gonna free roam We’re gonna free roam We’re gonna free roam We maybe can’t spell But we can sure create hell You hear that tolling bell? We act in a Just Cause We don’t need your applause ’Cause you’re a Far Cry from home And don’t know how to free roam We will escape from your law And then for our encore Assert our freedom again By cheating ten out of ten Get used to frustration Confront the Free Roam Generation Free Roam Free Roam We jump from fast moving trains ’Cause we have microwaved brains But you can’t get no relief ’Cause we don’t come to grief We’re a new mutation A Free Roam Generation

You can try to contain us But we’re gonna be famous When they write History It’ll be our CV ’Cause we have Free Roamed Since you’re nearly through You should see things anew The world’s broken in two Between us and you That’s because we free roam We’re the Free Roam Generation

Malcontent I don’t like cars, cars I don’t like trains, trains And I don’t like buses or trams I don’t like aeroplanes I don’t like books I don’t like TV, no! I don’t like the Internet Movies or radio I don’t like kids, kids I don’t like adults too The young and the old can go to hell Or maybe to a zoo I don’t like girls, girls And I don’t like boys, boys When I was a little bitty baby I resented toys I don’t like beer, beer Vodka, schnapps or scotch I don’t like brandy or wine ’Cause I don’t like much

My Guitar and Me

Nothing! That’s what comes between my guitar and me

Me and my Epiphone SG Nothing at all

No, it’s not a Gibson, but you know what I did?

I made it twice as good because I took off the lid Put in a Nail Bomb pickup, an Invader too

Gave it a Bigsby tremolo, now let me show you what it can do

It’s all lacquered and shiny and it’s red and it’s black You better not plug it into an amp from Radio Shack

Unless you want the studio blown to hell and back

Either you trust in the vocal or you believe in the axe One of them gives you fiction and the other one riffs you facts

But when it comes to the solo only one of them will last

And now you’ve heard them both I know which one you like the most

Only one of them will last

Ozymandias I met a traveller from an antique land Who said, “Two vast and trunkless legs of stone Stand in the desert. Near them on the sand, Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown And wrinkled lip and sneer of cold command Tell that its sculptor well those passions read Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things, The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed. And on the pedestal these words appear: My name is Ozymandias, king of kings: Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair! Nothing beside remains: round the decay Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare, The lone and level sands stretch far away.”

(A sonnet by P. B. Shelley, published in 1818.)

Flatland Blues

All across the land As far as you can see

Nothing like a hill Occasionally trees

The wind sweeps straight across It scrapes your hair and face What two-dimensional god

Dreamed up this friggin’ place?

From zenith to the ground It’s everywhere the same

And I’m lookin’ around For somebody to blame

What could be the joy In rendering it so flat

Designed just to annoy And blow away your hat?

Some seem to find the sweep

Of half a sphere of sky Uninterrupted, deep

But I want to know why Some horizontal creep

Made oaks the tallest things Apart from me and sheep

Oh I wish I had wings To fly away from here

To somewhere summited and steep But salvation isn’t near

So all I do is weep

Flatland Blues!

Apollo Just keep flying Past the moon You’ll reach somewhere Very soon As you’re ploughing Through the stars You’ll hear something From afar Guiding you to Where you’ll dwell It’s not heaven Nor is it hell But I am your God And you will worship me Don’t think living’s What you’ll do More like giving What I’ll take from you I am your God And you shall worship me, me, me

Terminator

It’s not exactly Simon and Garfunkel or Bob Dylan It sounds a lot like music that is out to make a killin’

When they sang they sang for peace and sometimes of salvation

All I have to offer you is raw X-radiation

All things tend towards The End and When the Music’s Over If you’re Waiting for the Sun you’ll get my supernova

Neil Young said Just think of me as one you never figured

I say When you think of me, think Arnold Schwarzenegger

Zeppelins aren’t made of Led and Macs aren’t made of Fleetwood But if The Green Manalishi comes I wouldn’t do what Pete would

You may like your Purple Deep, perhaps your Floyd is Pink

But my nuclear black’s a better colour, don’t you think?

They may tell you music’s got a future — don’t you see You’d be better to believe that music ends with me?