John Jones / Ian Telfer
Complete Music Ltd 1988
First released on: Wide Blue Yonder, 1987
[with thanks to Dennis Lee and Alasdair Gray]
I fall asleep with the TV on wake with an ache, it's another week gone consider how my light is spent and where it was that the real thing went I asked a wise man for advice I told him once and I told him twice my life is one long damage limitation he smacked me hard around the head he handed me a card that read work like you were living in the early days of a better nation living in the early days of a better nation play that tune again! I cried it's dead and gone, the band replied but as they slowly tried it through the hands remembered what they had to do give it poke and give it licks the name of the tune is Laying The Bricks let music be the people's sure foundation I stood outside the Albert Hall and wept and wrote upon the wall work like you were living in the early days of a better nation living in the early days of a better nation we take the water to the tree she says now do the same for me it takes your sweat as well as art to dig a channel for the human heart there is no garden of delight unless you weed it day and night don't leave your life a lifelong long vacation I hear her whisper when we meet and when I crawl between the sheets she says work like you were living in the early days of a better nation living in the early days of a better nation