Mrs Grath by the Boss

Rock and Roll Prophesy is a blast from the primordeal
soup of it's idiom.

It's bludgeoning guitars, bass and drums,
layered vocals, flute and searing keyboards
lambast the senses with harsh yet melodic
rock music that supports the sharp, cynicism free
notion of a twenty first century free from war.

Nurtured in the peace loving belly of the late great Dave Goodman's
Mandala Studios circa 2000/2001, RRP is an direct excitation of that studio's
motto, 'music can help save the world.'

The album was finally ready for presentation to the world on the very morning of the fateful 11th of September 2001, yet didn't
have much promotional power behind it, even though it obviously appeared on time in the zeitgeist with it's bid to out-myth the dawning New Age of Terror.

It opens sonically with the equivilant of what it might feel like having an electric kipper slapped in your face as 'Voices of a Future'
adroitly and poignantly sets the theme from the future: 'Visions and Voices of a better world' As if speaking out bravely might help the situation? I listened further.
There follows a string of songs enlarging on the proposed paradigm, with a patchwork
of ideas as fanciful as they seem implausable, yet which, knowing Pok's sometime associations with a blend of the more colourful end of protest, indigeonous modern tribal lifestyles and so-called 'value creating' buddhism, stem from formative culture.
Such ditties as the 'Freaks shall inherit the Earth' offer a stark but humorous, even positive take on post apocalyptic vistas of reality as he obviously sees it, secure in the hands of the present day misfits.
If it is at all unclear exactly how Voices from a Future will aid the world at large in shirking war, Pok has provided a calm centre-piece where is enshrined the naive edict that
'We can put an end to War today'
Fine stuff I must say. And how is this this to be achieved? The song offers yet more:
'An End to War is made of will
Change the action change the language'
There you have it. Encapsulated. In a nut -shell. Thanks Pok, we can all relax now.

Riddle presents an angry rant-ilicious rap of a sort that at at length and by modifying licks from Neil Young, takes you behind the official presentations to the poisoned social malaise and offers hard won nuggets of relief and hope in reward for your attendance at the sermon.
Twice the album soars of into what must be termed spacerock. The first, complete with obligatory 'rebirth' nativity narrative for planet earth, clocks in at a 9 minutes 43 seconds and is called Born of Stars. The second, a compact 2mins 48 seconds of a space voyage is called 'Finale (When we were young.)'They are both intense 'white knuckle rides' through evolution, so take some protein pills and put your helmet on.
Other stand-out tracks are 'The Scorpion and the Tomato' a cautionary tale of the scientists working during the infancy of modern genetic research, warning of potentially horrific outcomes following the escape of random genes into the biosphere.
Sounding like banshees with chainsaws, the most boisterous cut has to be 'People are making a Change' which rattles and rolls, sounds like death metal but has pro-active lyrics that sound like they are coming through a loud-hailer. Dude?
The requiem 'I hold the candle near' closes the album at a less frantic pace, with a sort of prayer, earlier fires still smoldering and the new meme, a message, perhaps less common even a few years ago, burned into your circuitry.

Wearyall Hill

Up on Wearyall Hill at the House of the Unicorn
From where Barley and I trapsed to the Thorn
At sunset of a balmy day
When all the spirits were in array
I played the tune and we touched on
Matters that beacme revealed and shone
With a strange incandescent torch
That could not be proven though it scorched
Our inner trackways with new steps
And by which ways we were surely streched
As I looked opon the lengrends of old
From Glastonbury that are still being told
Though relics have gone through ages folded
Upon one another and our minds moulded
With another tale that that which was real
Centuries ago.
We try to peel back the millenia, layered as we are
With misconceptions that can jar
The clever intellect will not have it so
But may concede to have a go
And real between the lines of fable
To see if it is possible to be able
To have some fun in archetype
Where it is possible that we might
Find our Grail within and without
And maybe whisper, speak even SHOUT!
That it is to be found in this holy ground
That Blake supposed had been graced by feet
Of He who Christians hope to meet when they die
Jesus that is, son of Mother Mary dear
And nephew to Joseph of Arimathea
From across the sea he brought the Marmore Hawthorn
That flowers in the same season that Christ was born
This he planted on Wearyall Hill
And there and around it's descendents blossom still
As one to the Queen is took each year
That it bring her good yuletide cheer
He brought the cruets of Christ's blood and water
To place them on a British altar
He mined the tin organised the men
And the sea trade from Rome and back again
Yet most significant
Most magnificent and poignant
Was that vase that cup that chalice
That man might not gain through malice
It was Parcival that decent knight
And Galahad who nay did fight
But knew the question to ask
That would fulfill their quest, their task
To seek and find the Holy Grail
And so restore a circle failed
And falling possibly to ruin
Because of what wrong thinking people were doing
It was the sacred womb of the Goddess
Ceredwin's cauldren beyond cost
No prize of the ancient world
Could more significance have held
But names as well as tin had begun to trade
For the coming way of Christ in the Piscean Age
A pagan artefact would not do
They needed something new
And by and by paraphenalia
From the time of Christ's crucifixion
Became the new benediction
And Joseph brought some to Glastonbury
Where he set up the first Christian ministry
With the 'Ealde Chirche' that Bligh Bond saw
In vision where made of wattle and daub
Twelve round wooded huts were stockaded in a ring
A larger round hut centering
This site in the Abbey grounds is now St Mary's Chapel
And if your discerning mind can grapple
With diviners and psychic mediums
That possess an architectural disposition
And as to whether their visions are real or false gold
Then maybe the Blakean vision will unfold
And the hidden landscape be shown
It's illuminated pathways of the Ancients glow
In patterned lattice work of lines
Sacred diamonds and other angles of
Design inclined like crazy jackstraws alive
Pulsing with scintillating serpent power
Surging through the landscape
Veiled in the land's shape
Lighting up the Thorn on Wearyall
Subtly drawing attention to it all
Tantalizing my sense of what this all could be
Knowing the story is just a but silly
But loving the mind that wished it
So I went to the Thorn and I kissed it
Then the time slipped and I surely saw
A Phoenician ship pull up on the shore
That wasn't there a moment before
Up the sides of the hill the sea had come
And covered the levels leaving Islands
And marsh and no roads of tarmac to be seen
The Morlands Industrial site was drowned beneath the scene
So from this ship that had pulled on
Came several shrouded gentle men
And ladies meek and holy seeming
As if from some place a light was gleaming
Some Britons were already waiting on the hill
And greeted the newcomers with much goodwill
As if they knew each other from before
Travellers who had returned from afar
Then the source of light it was revealed
From within a cloak no longer concealed
The Holy Grail, the supper cup
From the last time Christ did sup
With these twelve acolytes stood also here
And by now it should all be clear
That this is Joseph of Arimathea
He who held the status of Nobilius Decurian in Rome
A procurer of Tin Copper and Lead for Rome
And leading member of the Sanhedrin ruling council
In Jerusalem
He could take the body of Jesus from his tomb
He was his uncle after all
Joseph was a disciple of Christ and wealthy merchant in the tin trade
Which is why to Albion he had made his way
Time and again, once with Jesus on board
The Druids and they were of one accord
In spirit, as was the way in ancient days
Though perhaps then they knew that the times would change
Certainly when Joseph came back again
Old stories were being rearranged
The Romans had seen to that
But had no nack for creative thought
And anyway had to win hearts and minds
So renamed Gods and Goddesses after their own similar kind
-Already nicked from the Greeks
It's easy to see what the conquering mind seeks
It's not philosophic integrity but social control
With violence and the words to make you feel at home
So far from home they had to make it their own
And brought their own villas, plants and household things
Replaced the roundhouse and introduced plumbing
Ripping of the culture of Albion's own
Renamed and ruled over
But with space for the conquered to know some luxury
New standards of living to help coax
Priviledges for those who accepted the yolk
Fought for or married into
Payed the calens tax, wore a toga
It was Roman takeover
Bit by bit
Devouring local culture and concreting it
With military stations for complete control
And mercenaries on the payroll
This was the time that the great Zodiac
Had moved one more notch on it's cosmic track
And turned from Aries to the Piscean Age
Which is where Joseph of A takes the stage
He appears at this tumultuous time
Direct of Jesus's bloodline
And as holy men had done before
Brought holy word to our shore
But to the Romans and their Empire
He was an immensly important man
A wealthy Jewish merchant sailing with the Phoenicians
The responsibility of organising tin mining far overseas
Was one that Rome sorely needed for control
As a tax paying populace could not be secured by warfare alone
Contracts must have been drawn up by the Romans
Fleets of ships at Joseph's command
Whose negotiating skills got to Britons to work
Creating a relation that steadied the land
Joseph was essential to the sucess of the Roman masterplan
Though this format of workers and boss
Which makes me think of what Britons had lost
Early on then, whereopon later we did it abroad
When one thousand years on Europe became conquistadours
And strip mining has since excavated us
So much one might think it a curse
Two thousand years and counting and we're nearly a husk
Joseph was a foremost man of his time
Whose well meaning ways may well have led to Earth crime
Of corporate irresponsibility that has carved up the world
So that into a cataclysm we could be hurled
But he was caught in the grip of the age
Of insatiable violent rage
Of Empire and Religion perverse
What was it worth for better or for worse
Joseph was born in the crux of that time
Was of noble birth in Jesus's family line
Respected across the board and needed for his ability
Balancing the conquest by creating its new social/spiritual reality
A powerful man caught in a changing world
Forging as best he could
With his Caudeucious staff coiled
An integration of material and non-physical
He was moving with the times
Trading from Roman homeland
To far places with minerals you understand
Quite how they got that tin I'm not sure
Whether it caused any little wars
But Joseph was in with the Druids,
Like Arch druid Bran the Blessed
And King Aviragus of Wessex
Gave him and his disciples
Twelve hides of land, so say the texts
Which is wonderfully symbolic and also meant
That Joseph was really part of the establishment
He moved in circles of political influence
He also caused a spiritual conflunce
Ushering in the new age of the time
Though his pure message I think was undermined
Swayed by power and passage of years
Manipulation of people through fears
Pious highly driven men would later appear
And use their faith in a zealous career
Of evangelism combining state and religion
A recipe for cultural cataclysm
Saint Patrick I find to be ruthless severe
His was the kind of message I don't want to hear
Missionary conversion is a road to hell
The misery it causes I don't want to tell
But Joseph brought the Grail in attempt
To tell us in code what Christ's message meant
He was friends with the Druids and Holy Men here
In Albion, but with what he said he had to take care
I feel he was a bard and arbitrated well
Between different people on different levels
Bringing understanding between disparate men
So they could relate and remain
in spirit in the moving age
But it seems that Christdid it much the same
As twelve round huts and one large hut centering
Is the same symbolic numbering
As I understand from John Michell
Is a pagan numeric magic spell
Of change and turn of tide of time
-Look I am saying that they all had much the same rhymes
Across the seas
And held beliefs that
According to one's environs
Were the appropriate ones
To have
Christ's message must have been messed with
And in the crucible of corruption concieved
A tortured mind's poisoned concoction
Of false misleading lies
With a martyred man to idealise
Such genious device of mendacious minds
Carved it's will upon the world
And still we can see it's thrall
The Killer-Civilizer
But Christ himself and Joseph in his wake
Had the message we must take
Encrypted in the Grail he brought
From ancient times as Cauldron saught
Then converted to acceptable form
When a new religion was the norm
Introduced at Glastonbury
Where the spirit somehow still seems to be
And in Somerset one till recent would hear
"Sure as our Lord as at Priddy" or "Joseph was a Tin miner!"
Among the folk of the same area or town
As where this ancient stuff went down
I am writing this on my lap on the side of Wearyall Hill
Where the water would be lapping chill
In those days and most like to come
And so I think of Jerusalem
Of Joseph's traval and the One
He brought here in legend speak
With the same message of Grail to seek
Identified as the Body of Man
His Soul Temple, Buddha-Bodhi, Atman
The doughnut vortex torsion field of
Infinite and eternal energy
The correct way for our lives to be
Empowered through the Timeless Grail
Previously known in Pagan Tale