Henry
Cow's 'Nine funerals of the Citizen King' is a track on their 1973 debut album
'Legend' and signalled the radical critique which they carried forward until
breaking up five years later. The lyrics reference Lewis Carroll ('the Snark was
a Boojum' from his poem 'The Hunting of the Snark'), Gertrude Stein ('a rose is
a rose is a rose') and Shakespeare ('O, gentlemen, the time of life is
short!...An if we live, we live to tread on kings', Henry IV, Part 1).
The latter was also quoted in Guy Debord's 'The Society
of the Spectacle' (1967), and as the song refers to the 'spectacle of free' I
wonder whether Henry Cow had been reading Debord. If so they were ahead of their
time - the first English translation of 'The Society of the Spectacle' was made
by Black & Red (Detroit) in 1970, but it was certainly not widely known. The
line 'we'll work to live to buy the things we multiply, until they fill the
ordered universe' could have come straight out of Debord, or even
an Angry Brigade communique from the same period.
Nine funerals of the Citizen King
Nine funerals of the Citizen King
Down beneath the spectacle of free
No one ever let you see
The Citizen King
Ruling the fantastic architecture of the burning
cities
Where we buy and sell...
That the Snark was a Boojum all can tell
But a rose is a rose is a rose
Said the Mama of Dada as long ago as 1919
You make arrangements with the guard
Halfway round the exercise yard
To sugar the pill
Disguising the enormous double-time the king pays to
Wordsworth
More than you or I could reasonably forfeit the
while...
Double-time the king pays to Wordsworth
More than you or I could reasonably buy...
If we live, we live to tread on dead kings
Or else we'll work to live to buy the things we
multiply
Until they fill the ordered universe
Once upon a time my punky self would have dismissed this as 'prog'. But I was so much older then, I'm younger than that now.
Oh and they played a benefit for Brixton Socialist Club in 1978.
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