MANICS LYRICS

ALL of the B-sides!

SUICIDE ALLEY

I'm going down to Suicide Alley

'Cos the air I breathe tastes better down there

I'm going down to Suicide Alley

'Cos it seems as if it's the only place for me

And I'm going down to Suicide Alley

Where you can't get at me

And I'm going down to Suicide Alley

Where I can be what I want to be

You won't eat away at my mind

With your ideas of decency

I'll be in Suicide Alley

Being who and what I want to be

NEW ART RIOT

Vintage aromas and vintage ideals

Old men greying to a dying country's needs

Waiting for a knighthood to while away the hours

Listen and learn now it's time to kill your betters

Museums are dead take a new art stance

Paint mass suicide on the aspiration Diktat

Hospital closure kills more than car bombs ever will

But it saves money because people are expendable

You cold shoulder insurgens yet love arms dealers

Everybody's taking drugs as it makes governing easier

Revolution soon dies sold out for a pay rise

China, Russia, England all washed up in power abuse

Terrorism is an excuse that the ruling class use

Wipe out aristocracy now kill, kill, kill, kill, kill

England makes judgements of old school propaganda

The only threat to heads is silenced by dumb pleasure

Museums are dead take a new art stance

Paint mass suicide on the aspiration Diktat

STRIP IT DOWN

Ain't no fun at the government hall

Slicked back injustice sits nicely next to smiles

Paranoia at the heels of too much greed

Obedience an art form while the sad bleed

Success and love dictate while skin touches fashion

Consumerism beauty for cheap appeal

I don't wanna dance for people to watch

Smother my life in interest accounts 

Outside life brings down genocide

And consumer self-hate leads to designer bullshit

Hate is are and we steal cars

Decaying flowers in the playground of the rich 

You can launch sweetly and say nice things

But I ain't ever on the way up

My only way is down on disease that tries to suffocate

The pure ideals that turn to hate

LAST EXIT ON YESTERDAY

Dance to the Valentine, anthems that kill

Valium veins and eyes that sink

Lying down I want, want a brainwash trip

Don't wanna wake next to your stretched skin

Your screaming so much that I feel sorry to breathe

I wanna feel cold and I wanna bleed your disease

Hold your head up and pray for the sun

But rain keeps pouring on and on

Loveless, aloneless, life that just impales

As backs break thorns dig deeper in

Baby can't have her little bit of love

Cos it's wrapped up inside her lover's gut

Lazy fat executive seller

Sway to the sound of another dead lover

So dull and tired, of his pretty face

Makes the truth seem easy but you've lost

Laugh at the TV, empty sell of life

Mundane exile it's not of your choice

TEENAGE 20/20

I wanna wake to a shot parade of wealth

And take a spray can to my useless vote

I don't like your city Dresden dance

I'm drowning in a manufactured ego-fuck 

We're dead end dolls and nothing's moving

We're dead end dolls and nothing's moving

We're dead end dolls and nothing's moving

Speeding so lonely into wall after wall

Teenage 20/20 beat the in-call

Sick to the stomach of our fingertip scrawl

All your rebellion corporation owned

We're dead end dolls and nothing's moving

We're dead end dolls and nothing's moving

We're dead end dolls and nothing's moving

MOTOWN JUNK

Never ever wanted to be with you

All you ever gave me was the boredom I suffocate in

Adrift in cheap dreams don't stop the rain

Numbed out in piss towns just wanna dig their graves

Motown, Motown Junk

I laughed when Lennon got shot

21 years of living and nothing means anything to me

Motown Junk a lifetime of slavery

Songs of love echo underclass betrayal

Stops your heart beating for 168 seconds

Stops your brain thinking for 168 seconds

I don't want cos I just get

All you slut heroes offer is a fear of the future

Past made useless cos I'm dying now

Communal tyranny a jail that bleeds our wrists

Motown, Motown Junk

I laughed when Lennon got shot

21 years of living and nothing means anything to me

Motown Junk a lifetime of slavery

Songs of love echo underclass betrayal

Stops your heart beating for 168 seconds

Stops your brain thinking for 168 seconds

A VISION OF DEAD DESIRE

Primary prole MP judge general policeman

Figureheads sucked in as just another token

To sell your culture and tolerate another

Annihilation in the persuit of self-love corruption

Vision of dead desire - tune in reception control

Vision of dead desire - underclass coma zone

Don't pacify your life to suit dead law convention

White trash held up as just more gold chain icons

State fed lies charm empty eyes

Happy thoughts a unity death smile of acceptance

Vision of dead desire - mainline on a death fix

Vision of dead desire - bleed the thought of throwing bricks

Europe land, realise your thoughts

Kill all ruling class laws

SORROW 16

Cut your hair in front of business men

Kill yourself and censor health

Destroy words and ignore their truth

Wanna die and have never worked

I feel like falling

I feel like falling

I can't feel, no need to care

Narcotic of ambition poisoned my air

Wearing hate like you wear money

Spitting out Perrier and sucking down Vodka

Oh the road is beautiful

You live stoned on obedience

Your vanity kills people

Paint your ego in blood

The wall is a reason for you to believe

There's too many numbers for us to sleep

The wall is a reason for you to believe

There's too many numbers for us to sleep

WE HER MAJESTY'S PRISONERS

Jewels drip red and I don't sound proud

Treason is ambition I want dead procession

All we got unholy left-overs of a compromise

Leaving us like butterflies trapped in frost

England's glory lives on in world wide genocide

So celebrate Buchenwald as Her Majesty's heir

Now an obsolete face on a currency of illusion

No matter what we own we can't buy freedom

Ceremony rape machine

Love won't corrode you

Throw myself against you cos you ain't frail

Underneath silk riches sixty six million giving slaves

This needle of religions gonna rust my skin

Tear out and exit obeyance of created sin

Faces pressed onto gates of anniversary torture

Without these fake images we'd never bow down

Don't need this history but we still accept

Conscripted into a past that invents our guilt

Ceremony rape machine

Love won't corrode you

STARLOVER

Paint your lips, things fall apart

Flowers of hate caress my skin

Spend my time sucked up inside

Mutilation kick of all you believe in

Starlover you're just a souvenir

Starlover you're just another prayer

Starlover oh you touch me so

Feel like faces without kisses

Sterile wants spin in my head

Don't need culture, I spit it out

Twist and fall, wounds don't choke

Piss on records, wanna see you dead

A body voice born under torture

Leper cult disciples of a still born Christ

I worship stone so lance my eyes

Miles apart from anyone

Soma air waves of killing oxygen

We queue consuming anything

Hate all songs

Aesthetic slavery now

Starlover you're just a souvenir

Starlover you're just another prayer

Starlover oh you touch me so

A body voice born under torture

R.P. McMURPHY

Straight jacket your own beauty

Because it's just a breakdown away

From the gutter to the jewel

A symbol sold in investment days

Defenceless as the pages you burn

A baby drowning under a profit curve

Money bruises the skin at birth

I just wanna lie down in my bed

Make myself different from the rest

Use a thought to put myself to sleep

Collapsing in the fields where it feels free

Where it feels free

R.P. McMurphy

No more pills and no more drugs

This country pisses debris

Like ugly people made pretty

Underneath cheap make-up

Deformed, disguised mind decay

Buy, consume, get more credit

Learn to serve a life sentence here

Style yourself in sterility

I just wanna lie down in my bed

Make myself different from the rest

Use a thought to put myself to sleep

Collapsing in the fields where it feels free

Where it feels free

R.P. McMurphy

No more pills and no more drugs

BORED OUT OF MY MIND

I'm...I'm feeling too awake

I'm...I'm tired of what I see

Everybody's dreaming running for the scream

The media's stinking drunk nothing is at stake

All the faces I love

Their skin as soft as leprosy

Words choked on my lies

Repeating love till they cry

All the faces I love

Their skin as soft as leprosy

I'm bored out of my mind

And I'm too stoned lazy to see

The sun...the sun is leaving me

I can't...see it anymore

I tried everything to get along with you

The nights too lonesome when the heat doesn't care

All the faces I love

Their skin as soft as leprosy

Words choked on my lies

Repeating love till they cry

All the faces I love

Their skin as soft as leprosy

I'm bored out of my mind

I'm too stoned lazy to see

HIBERNATION

I got married cos you should

we both knew we should

you do at our age

this stage of our career

things get tight

a ring helps get a mortgage

to move out of daddy's home

get a bigger car

easy access to the city

I can read the papers in peace

and laugh at the homeless

I know my friends criticize

but we get by OK

so what if there's no emotion

we can wake up anywhere

there's never a row

no time for a kiss

when you've got schedules to meet

trivialities seem so cheap

this is above love

this is more than real

this is all there is

this is as good as it gets-

intense morality parades (and rates?) 

US AGAINST YOU

From journalist to video to channel 4 TV

my life is fulfilled so adequately

I love my dealer and I travel the world

from freelance to new dance

and I expect on the world I am

from Cantonese food to fashionable friends

the list of invites never seems to end

so bomb London and it's MPs

John Major Virginia Bottomley

so bomb London its music and its culture

acidic wit, beauty and charm

it doesn't take much to twist my arm

free trip free drink it all goes down so so well

maybe a Sunday supplement will come up soon

a documentary on censorship sounds real cool

its easy to see that I went to public school

so bomb London and its MPs

John Major Virginia Bottomley

bomb London its music and its culture

so bomb London and its magazine

time-out face and id.

bomb London its music and its culture

you ain't ever been a racist

but Tyson was guilty, man

he was guilty

DONKEYS

put some lipstick on

at least your lies will be pretty

a shadow on my face

and us donkeys wake up weary

sweating sickly donkeys don't allow their tears

no emotion never feel and drown themselves in whatever

find some meaning donkeys weight cracking a spire

sweetness bent double whole days making polite

never moving out of turn or ever trying to be natural

those with silence inside eyes bare piss holes in the snow

drained and burnt yellow and sunk in self-pity

Jerusalem saw off donkeys are only left with lies 

COMFORT COMES

Need someone to nurse me

Reach out for the first person I see

Comforts the helpless sole vanity

Caressing the broken heart of me

The difference between love and comfort

Is that comfort's more reliable and true

Brutal and mocking but always there

A crutch for emnity's saddest glare

I wish someone would hold me

Wrap their arms around a shrinking somebody

Comfort comes and ease me till the morning

Whispered words of sanctuary

Forgetting how I hate self-pity blonde

Comfort comes and smooths it over

Calloused hands turn a beautiful dress

Handcuffs now pearl bracelets

SOUL CONTAMINATION

Everyone is staring with the glaze of obsession

Interlocking cartels bypassing the bone

The empty statement of artschool dissension

Institutionalised expression of mass control  

And if when America flings in whole

Your pile of misery where centuries be

And he does win a holiday after a poll

One per cent interest stand up with glee  

Soul contamination spreads the germs of finance

Making weak minds think this is what they want

Power facts are brutally sold to worn darkened skin

Arise the new scum arise to the sound of a drum

With your desk degrees in civil engineering

They're drawing up plans for a future for themselves

And sweet daddy buys up a university

On a mission tied next to suits

Soul contamination - die because you crossed by fire

Soul contamination - poverty expressed in your heart

Soul contamination - arise, surrender, burn

Soul contamination - do you rise up

ARE MOTHERS SAINTS

If piss is yellow, than life must be grey

How come they smile when we throw it away

And if it is a colour than it must be sin

And you want to apologise but keep it all in

Why worship a god when a mother is a saint

Why worship stone

They give life and take it back

Spit you out but understand

And when their arms are dead how do they sigh

As gentle as the winter that fades by

And some kind of angel appears in their eyes

Or is it just the devil screaming inside

Why give into useless devotion

Truth and beauty, love and hate, mother and God

They give life and take it back

Spit you out but understand

Stay silent when you want to shout

Give when we piss it away

CHARLES WINDSOR

Charles Windsor who's at the door

At such an hour who's at the door

In the back of an old green cortina

You're on your way to the guillotine

Here the rabble comes

The kind you hoped were dead

They've come to chop, to chop off your head

Hundreds of bound big business men

Hacks from "the sun", military men

So many rich men weep in despair

On and on into Trafalgar square

Here the rabble comes

The kind you hoped were dead

They've come to chop, to chop off your head

These once peaceful streets

The scenes of revenge you had not wished to see

Revenge is sweet to those who have never known anything sweet

Here the rabble come

The kind you hoped were dead

They've come to chop, to chop off your head

SCULPTURE OF MAN

War censored, no blood on TV

Cheap entertainment

Sold like a new deodorant, world war three

A Sega dreamland, I'd take a whore to the funeral

Sculpture of man

Jesus descends, Dachau his father

Flanders is a corpse under flowers

There's more art in Burger King

Than the British museum today 

Sculpture of man

Wills and Harry, dressed in drag

Standing over the

Sodomised body of their mother

Would make a beautiful poster in Athena

TOO COLD HERE

Born in burial gowns, we say sex slowly

You soon wish you couldn't see at all

Tortured in the mind, six voices alone

Futile gestures and motionless groans

Everyone asks what's wrong, but what's right?

And a cute line makes everything uptight

To kill your dream before it's considered

To live in silence in this closet no vision

It's easier to make love to a stranger than to ask a friend to call

Suspicion knows nothing and is known for not much at all, much at all

Too cold here, ten years of bleeding inside

Always looked for walls to lean beside

Too cold here, ten years of bleeding, it's ice

Always looked for shade to cover your eyes

Self pity itself is so shallow

i am so sick in mind and body, heart cold as stone

Whisky my coral, my piece of mind

Hello Mr. Simpson you can clean my soul

Wake up sighing, mass for for the bleeding

Never share sadness mine a man prays painless

Coalescing mind, I hid in rooms,

Cannot give anything and never could

Prison it's only four walls but sometimes

the mind is the smallest prison of all,

I fear in there, I burn, I veer,

as a boy without touch feels

through his fall, through his fall.

too cold here, ten years of bleeding inside,

always looked for walls, to lean beside,

too cold here, ten years of bleeding, it's ice

always looked for shade, too cover your eyes.

LOVE TORN US UNDER

Everything's moving as you climb up the walls

(Heaven's wearing as you climb on the walls?)

Asleep I daydreamed I could change it all

Running from something too painful to face

Epitaphs torn into bare foot soiled feet

Ecstacy's columns decay in to night

Underneath hope she loves sedatives (sadder to?) die

Wasting my time on the shackles of her love

At night complete love's torn us under

Love is dragging me under

Betray my other self

The lost hours are over

Gentlemen's left me, a cataracts past life

Searching for something I'm unable to find

To weak to render a sorrows daily grind

I find too much grief in her chest and her eyes

Memory cannot choose where it wants to be

Love this sex, true pity as mangled sheets

The tenderness that climbs in the mind

At night complete love's torn us under, love is dragging me under

Betray my other self, the lost hours are over

THE DROWNERS

Won't someone give me a gun?

Oh, well it's for my brother,

Well he writes the line wrote down my spine

It says "Oh do you believe in love there?"

So slow down, slow down, you're taking me over

And so we drown, Sir we drown, stop taking me over

Won't someone give me some fun?

(and the skin flies all around us)

We kiss in his room to a popular tune

Oh, real drowners

Slow down, slow down, you're taking me over

And so we drown, Sir we drown,

stop taking me over!

MR CARBOHYDRATE

They call me Mr. Carbohydrate

It's the only thing I can digest

Then I focus a general disinterest

Mass culture with all this stuff

They call me a boring fuckhead, say I might as well work in a bank

I tell them I wish I was, they tell me that I'm sick in the head

They say that I'm sick in the head

They call me Mr. Carbohydrate

They call me Mr. Inadequate

They call me Mr. Paranoia

They call me Mr. Hypochondria

Have you heard of Matthew Maynard

He's my favourite cricketer

I would rather watch him play than pick up my guitar

Than play with my guitar

People tell me I should get out more

But the TV is my best friend

Cynicism is the only thing that keeps me sane

Only thing that keeps me sane

They call me Mr. Carbohydrate

They call me Mr. Inadequate

They call me Mr. Paranoia

They call me Mr. Hypochondria

Sometimes I just sit in bed

and think about the day

when I can retire forgetting everything

I'll forgive everything

Forget everything

Forever, but not today

When I cannot, cannot see

No more yesterdays

No more yesterdays

DEAD TREES AND TRAFFIC ISLANDS

Paralysis through analysis

Yellow moral ugly decay

Silent fear seems to help me now

The sunshine it fades away

Symbols have now disappeared

How could this happen to me?

How could this happen to me?

But now, I feel so weak

Dead trees and traffic islands

never need

Is this

Is this my defeat

Expected to forget in our

Dead trees and traffic islands

Tolerance slips away

Body shrugs his eyes hollow once more

Hate the walls within my mind

Clandestine brave finish period

Lips still cryin such a sound

I show little defence

But now I feel so weak

Dead Trees and Traffic Islands

never need

Is this

Is this my defeat

Expected to forget in our Dead Trees and Traffic Islands

BRIGHT EYES

Is it a kind of dream,

Floating out on the tide,

Following the river of death downstream?

Oh, is it a dream?

There's a fog along the horizon,

A strange glow in the sky,

And nobody seems to know where you go,

And what does it mean?

Oh, is it a dream?

Bright eyes,

Burning like fire.

Bright eyes,

How can you close and fail?

How can the light that burned so brightly

Suddenly burn so pale?

Bright eyes.

Is it a kind of shadow,

Reaching into the night,

Wandering over the hills unseen,

Or is it a dream?

There's a high wind in the trees,

A cold sound in the air,

And nobody ever knows when you go,

And where do you start,

Oh, oh, into the dark. 

Bright eyes,

burning like fire.

Bright eyes,

how can you close and fail?

How can the light that burned so brightly

Suddenly burn so pale?

bright eyes.

Bright eyes,

burning like fire.

Bright eyes,

how can you close and fail?

How can the light that burned so brightly

Suddenly burn so pale?

Bright eyes.

HANGING ON

Hold me down

I don't ever want to see the day

When my time will come

Is it ever gonna end

I'm not sure

(The wish that lasted the year ?)

Where do we go now

Another blackout

Hanging on to nothing, hanging on to nothing

Hanging on to nothing, hanging on to nothing

I'm not real

But I'd like to have a chance to feel

Before we reach the time

Is that what now is right

( I'm not sure ?)

( The wish that lasted the year ?)

Where do we go now

Another blackout

Hanging on to nothing (repeated x7)

Hanging on to nothing (repeated x7)

and nothing and nothing is nothing

BLACK GARDEN

There's a little part of me

There's a little part of you

Remember the feeling

of frozen embryo

There's a bigger part of me

There's a bigger part of you

Remember the place where

You don't want to go

Welcome into your own black garden

It's full of life but still too frightening

Can't open my eyes this whiteness blinds

All this whiteness blinds

Watch the swallows cloud the sky

Watch the swallows slowly die

I used to throw stones

But now I have none

Waiting to be bread in the black garden

Waiting to be muted and then chosen

White trash you're a swinger

Ugly to the end

Ugly to the end

NO ONE KNOWS WHAT ITS LIKE TO BE ME

To all the people who've hurt me

To all the life that has left me

To all the longing that lost me

To all the future that scares me

To all the words that have drained me

To all the questions that bored me

To all the people that believed me

To all the money that blinded me

No one knows what it's like to be me

No one knows what it's like to be me

To all the skies that have reached me

To all the oceans that drowned me

To all the rain that has soothed me

To all the sun that depressed me

To all the people who lived in fear

To all the life that is held so dear

To all the empty souls who still despair

I know it's the same for everyone

No one knows what it's like to be me

No one knows what it's like to be me

Doctor, dentist, housewife and thief

No one knows what it's like to be me

RAINDROPS KEEP FALLING ON MY HEAD

Raindrops keep falling on my head

just like the guy who's feet are too big for his bed

nothing seems to fit

oh raindrops keep falling on my head keep falling

cos I just done me some talking to the sun

and I said I didn't like the way he got things done

sleeping on the job

Oh raindrops keep falling on my head keep falling

There's one thing i know

The blues they sent to meet me,

Won't defeat me,

It wont be long

Til happiness comes up to greet me

To greet greet greet me

But raindrops keep falling on my head

but that doesn't mean my eyes'll soon be turning red

cryings not for me

cos I ain't gonna stop the rain by complaining

because I'm free nothings bothering me

because I'm free nothings bothering me

SEPIA

A framed adolescence,

Steeped in the history of you,

Stopped in there, so much for you,

Experience is lost on me,

I am melancholy eternally,

But I still smile so stupidly,

For the first time ever,

I don't understand my television,

And just like a moment in "Butch Cassidy and Sundance Kid",

I'm perpetually stuck in a sepia film,

Bleeding inside I managed to keep it all in,

I've spoken so much rubbish,

Don't need no time at all,

Feelings are so fatal in the fall,

No you never kissed me,

Never felt anything for me,

Sepia thoughts deemed that I remember,

And they don't read in diaries

That I could never breathe, never breathe,

FIRST REPUBLIC

You are so alone in

Kensington Palace

We should be content in

These damned terraces

Thank you for this view from

our council estates

I hope you have really

Guillotined your own head

I crown myself, myself a king,

And declare a first republic,

We wanna play, yes we wanna play,

In burnt out, palace ruins

You once gave us war

racism and slavery

cut out all our tongues

and fucked our industry

Now you've revealed something

You're human after all this

But let's clap our hands

And fuck our dear princess 

MONTANA/AUTUMN/78

luddite lover

forgiving father

unhappy forever

live it to where you can

those skies must drive you wild

this earth around you

this silence around you

be with the sky tonight

you've ruined more than you'll gain

know what you mean - but not what you do

nature will take care of itself

your ego will destroy itself

montana/autumn '78

 

your life into the future

maybe forty years

a life worth saving or lonesome ever more

the nothingness of truth

or everlasting youth

ideology or the ultimate thrill

 

you've ruined more than you'll gain

know what you mean - but not what you do

nature will take care of itself

your ego will destroy itself