Hey CJ,

I've noticed that this song and your Jesus song go without comment. Because of your poetry, I'm not sure what the true meaning of these lyrics are. I recognize the pieces of scripture here, but I'm not sure whether or not it's intended to be wicked, blasphemous or just artistic and mysterious. I struggle to understand the context. I did learn that 'gaolbirds' translated to 'jailbirds' when I typed it into my dictionary.

Musically, parts of this remind me of the very old Cure when they were exciting, dark and sad. This is a frightening song without the Olde English lyrics. That crazy "Cher" vocal effect (bad description) is about the only element of the vocals that I'm not nuts about. It scares me quite honestly.

"Consider the ravens: for they neither sow nor reap; which neither have storehouse nor barn; and God feedeth them: how much more are ye better than the fowls?"

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I am glad someone care about these things.

These lyrics are lifted and edited from a pamphlet called "Fiery Flying Roll". It was written by a XVIIth century "ranter", Abiezer Coppe, a self-made-prophet. This is a sort of "antinomian" manifesto, that is the idea men could dispense with all religious or moral rules, either because God could not have created man a sinner, or because he did but for some reasons -end of times coming,for instance- all his commandments can now be abolished. You find this in many religious traditions (chi'ites muslim have had their own antinomian episodes, as well - the famous" nothing is true everything is permitted " sentence comes from there, allegedly). Out of its context, that could be understood as using religious language to advocate for total individual freedom, social egalitarism and the holiness of just everything on earth.

The idea of man as completely pure can be traced to some gnostic theories, hence the song at beginning of the "gnostic disco" album. At the times that was regarded as plain blasphemous and the man had to go to jail and retract. But for me these are just powerful and mysterious words, made to be howled in a megaphone.
This is very different from the "Even jesus don't love you" song, which is just a rather meaningless insult song - mean as a monggsongg. I'm often impressed with "jesus" song titles, there's always a ring to it.

Well, I didn't go without comments, after all. Sorry if this was too long.

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Sisyphus was a rolling stone

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Thanks for the explanation. I knew there was much more beneathe the surface. You're deep and so smart. How do you know all this stuff? Did you go to college or something?

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five extra arms must be STOPPED.

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is where I went. First time I read about Abiezer Coppe is in a book by rock-critic Greil Marcus. He compared the guy to a sort of XVIIth century Johnny Rotten.

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Sisyphus was a rolling stone

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