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Heard It All Before

from Active Ingredients by Citizen Fish

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    put out by Polish label Nikt Nic Nie Wie, with lyrics in English and Polish, last copies discovered in the basement!

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lyrics

HEARD IT ALL BEFORE

I had writer's block I was put in the dock
By critics of lyrics said it had to stop
The time to whine had gone tick-tock
Too much too long and over the top

Too much too soon? Too little too late?
It was 'the same old tunes' and they 'started to grate'
Mere speech balloons this was never a debate
Why you still looking for the sell-by-date?

I'm feeling the cost of thinking
It's all been said before
Something got lost
You knew it already
Or just got bored
With all this social observation

Too much too soon? Too little too late?
Any old excuse to disengage
'Don't get so mad' - 'We get tired of hearing it' -
Have you seen where this picture fits?

Into the frame of parenthood
Sometime when it was understood
That parents knew 'nothing' and couldn't 'relate'
Now I'm hearing the same from people my age

And into the frame of teachers and school
Who always knew more but kept to the rules
Teaching the same as they'd been taught before
Never updating, no inner thoughts

And into the frame of governments
Who demonise our common sense
Distort our real experience
Democracy bows to its own pretention
It's in your reflection

Attention span at closing time?
Don't talk politics! Make it rhyme!
And catch the feet to dance a yard
But politics makes us think too hard!

The way we follow or lead or decide
To co-operate or just stand aside
The way we say 'What you doing today?'
Or couldn't give a shit, how we work and play
Is politics
What we each decide
To be true or lies
It's time to decide
Whether how we live is our own free will
Are we running our lives? Or are we standing still?

credits

from Active Ingredients, released April 1, 1999

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Citizen Fish Bath, UK

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