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Poor Time

from Then, and Then: a memoir by DATSON

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    The album comes with a beautifully packaged book of poetry. The words on the page are satisfying enough, unlike most rock lyrics, but benefit from accompaniment. ... Like any collection of poetry, you can dip in and out, but listening to the story unfold is the way to do it. This is definitely not, as they might say in Star Trek, rock & roll as we know it. It will adjust your set. TOBY CRESWELL

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about

In one respect this song started in 1968 when I was in a production of Benjamin Britten's reworking of a miracle play Noah's Flood. I played a gossip, one of Mrs Noah's drinking mates swept away by the flood as the more climatically astute Noah family entered the safety of the ark, accompanied by the rest of the school dressed as 2 of every animal. The cast incidentally included a member of midnight oil, the previous leader of the opposition and one of Australia's leading rock journalists dressed as a rabbit.  I can still remember some fragments of our chorus "here is a pottle of marmsy good & strong, it will rejoice both heart & tongue". Recently writing to a an old friend from the punk era, he replied & yes there have been a few pottle since then too haven't there?.

A lot of the music on the cd started life as avant guard electronica, for the purposes of this library tour we've obviously had to strip the production right back , so the original Brittanesque deluge intro is dropped. The song has morphed much more into a homage to Dylan's Girl from the North country which I think has melodic roots back into Scarbourogh Fair, as stolen from Ewan McColl & Peggy Seegar via Martin Carthy by SImon & Garfunckle who turned into an anti war song. This aspect of which I think Benjamin would have approved.

lyrics

Poor time, riding down
stealth night on stolen horses

Road north runs right
runs right by her heart

It’s not what I think
that you should be believing

Old man, drunk fool
he was once king like they say

After the silk and gold
after silk and gold are stripped away

He got it so right then so wrong
Charlie sing that old song

‘Forgotten, forgotten, forgotten
but not gone’

God says, take no
living prisoners

So hard time is over
if they find us

It’s not my hope
that you should be breathing


Things past, future tense
back to the beginning

Poor time, stolen nights
on stealth black horses

credits

from Then, and Then: a memoir, released June 1, 2020
© Geoffrey Datson and Annette Hughes, Produced by Geoffrey Datson, Recorded and mixed at Greenroom Studio Cooroy.

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DATSON Australia

GEOFFREY DATSON is a sound artist, combining spoken word, electronica and instrumentation in his recordings. Many poets recite their work to music, but few are also composers. Datson's work is a synthesis of forms of sonic expression in which the voice and the sound field are interdependent. ... more

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