Danny Vogel is an artist from Chicago, Illinois, on the Discorporate Records label.
http://www.myspace.com/discorporaterecords
http://www.discoporaterecords.com
The Music Collection
To listeners of Hector’s show on Future Radio in Norwich – since he linked this site to the radio station’s earlier today – this message is for you! I have been listening to his radio show streamed while in Chicago, USA! Great show, isn’t it?!
You can reach me with any ideas or feedback or just to say hello at
danny.vocal@gmail.com
(the following songs were recorded by Danny in a corner of his apartment in a space the size of a fridge, playing all the instruments himself, with children running around half the time, in what little time could be stolen here and there from an otherwise busy life!)
MOURNING
Click play icon below for Mp3 of Mourning
The only instrumental on the website. I was at my mother’s in Kingston, England, in the summer of 2009 a few weeks after my father died, and I wrote and played this short piece on his beloved piano before my mother sold it. It was recorded on a cheap cassette player resting on the piano.
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WE COULD BE A RIVER (dedicated to Susan)
Click play icon below for Mp3 of We could be a river
LYRICS
We could be a river holding fish in our hands
We could be a giver back of all we took from these lands
You wanted a partner, not a hermit in a cave
I’ll crawl out on four claws, catch your plankton in the waves
(like a good merman)
We could eat as creatures on whom others will be fed
We could play for hours with our antennae on the sea bed
We could find a different beach, saves a fortune in mortgages
And play all day long with our two beautiful savages
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BLACK AND WHITE
Click play icon below for Mp3 of Black and white
(this song was the result of a brief reunion with “Southside Rich” and Brian of christ!)
LYRICS
Passing through the modern world
Its beautiful colors
People are amazed that I
Can only see it in black and white
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AVALANCHE
Click play icon below for Mp3 of Avalanche
(composed while asleep, then written down in haste upon awaking)
LYRICS
What’s the point in crying?
What’s the point in trying?
Every day less bathe under the sun
Less pollinate, less webs are spun
Avalanche Avalanche
Why oh why
Do we let them die?
What’s the point in crying?
What’s the point in trying?
Everyone’s on headphones or cell
Watching the world burning in hell
Avalanche Avalanche
Why oh why
Do we let them die?
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LONDON TOWN
Click play icon below for Mp3 of London town
(my Penny Lane inspired by attending the orators at Speakers Corner, London, as a lad, though the first half of the song is set over a century earlier, the second half in the present)
LYRICS:
(Victorian socialist street barker, advertising both a local meeting with William Morris and the journal the Commonweal)
When you walk through the rain of London Town
Can you hear voices of the empire going down?
Wallpaper designer on a soap box stand
Rousing hearts, pushing carts, to take back their land
“Commonweal!” Turning wheels In the rain
Clear the grime It is time In the rain
In a pub, Where’s the crowd plotting overthrows?
Just frozen pose Heads in rows In the TV glows
Lungs are clean It’s a time to detoxify
While around London Town Money gentrifies
Come beguiled Oscar Wilde Speaks tonight
On how life Can be part Of what goes by art
When you walk through the rain of London Town
Can you hear voices of the empire going down?
“Commonweal!” Turning wheels In the rain
Clear the grime It is time In the rain
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RIPPLES
Click play icon below for Mp3 of Ripples
(this song is dedicated to Diana Gordon and Joyce Carpeneto, who perished in the first tower on that terrible day of 9/11. It was written and played for them 14 years earlier in Hotel 17, New York, where they shared a room)
(A song about the burden and shadow of the past in the present that can never be run from or that never erases itself)
LYRICS:
Father, I need to learn Why eagles fly away, never return Son, the eagles know That when the land is cursed, it’s time to go Father, it’s not too clear What curse should fall on us, after these thousand years Son, the Shadow falls The mountains ring with death; hear the bugle calls Oh, but the Great Spirits watch us and judge From the Great Plains they store with our love Without trace the white man will deface All the hills and fields to replace With his fear of the wide open space He will offer us sickness and war ‘Til their souls have been moved to deplore For their spirits to teach them again How the earth came to live with its men And how men come to live with them
Diane, how high we sit Like Gods that watch below, to treasure it Daniel, see those motorways Twist smoke upon the green, cut earth like cake Diane, why do I think That each time we seem to have less earth to drink Daniel, it’s ours to steal The earth returns in full for each joy we feel We yearn ever outward and ever beyond Past the footmarks we left by the pond Past the skin that we peeled when we both First tasted our days of full growth Ever outward we lose sight of here Lose the touch of the contact we fear Is that not why the elders marched on Never clinging to Truths that could save Like the white men who came from the waves Their self-oppressed souls to escape, never face
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SQUARE TIMES
Click play icon below for Mp3 of Square times
(written in 1988 in Manhattan about the prostitutes of Times Square – could apply to any today)
LYRICS
The rush, the hush of breath, she’s come this way all by herself She’s pale; the lights, the rain all beat her brow, she’s by herself The girls all laugh at her, she’s new but they know her well Time, you hold me back like this folded and fading picture of them Pushing my swing in the days before broken bottles broke bones This man who smells like a sewer loves her These men old enough to be Dad hurt her, but less than Daddy did
The siren loud and bright came for her friend, took her away Not just from the syringe but from the puke in which she lay “Mama, will you send me dough to take the bus back home No, I’m really fine, it simply gets to be much too much sometimes I’ve got a job, oh did I really ask you for money now? Oh no, I couldn’t go back to school I wouldn’t care to be pulled by my hair no more, Mommy… The money’s not for drugs, it’s to take care of my big round tummy”
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TIRED, LIFE BEGAN
(My A Day In The Life, about the life of routine that is often the life of employment)
Click play icon below for Mp3 of Tired, life began
LYRICS:
her day started as usual, alarming bell breaking the dream, a dental drill through the skull, clambering half-awake to set table, blue plastic bowl, his favorite Chinese soup spoon, multicolor cereal box, 5-year-old boy wiping the sleep from his eyes, skating down the hall in slippers to table holding bunny, good morning little man, [kiss], showering while he ate, putting on makeup, work suit, running to school with the boy, pacing a few more blocks to train station, others looking eerily similar, dressed for work, underslept, the checking watch tics, sitting near window, new sun bathing face, employees shuffling in large numbers off train at city center, codename for site populated with employment offices, lucky to have my job, lucky it has me, always on time, they like my work, sure to move up one day, lunchtime, coworkers gathering around boxes of fast food, opening her lunch-box, removing bean salad, eating it quietly while watching the crowds outside mulling about downtown streets, all on their lunch break hour as well, off the leash at the same time, after work, stopping at supermarket on the way home, half an hour to select items, fifteen of them to check prices and ingredients, balancing nutrition and cost, Librans are good at balancing they say, if you believe them, boy ran to the door welcomingly to give and receive gigantic hug, I am the world to him but a speck of dust to the world, relieving babysitter and handing her the last forty dollars in her purse, life traded in paper, “goodbye, see you tomorrow!” Tired, life began, warm rich aromas of dinner, music, board games, laughing, dancing, snuggling, little boats in the bath, stories of magic, lights off, little one asleep, safe in sheets, dreaming, oblivious to the world, the last hour, undressing, jumping into cozy pea green bedclothes, nauseously paying bills, tv show, dishes, lights off, eyes closed, we’ll make it somehow, might meet a handsome man one day, her day started as usual.
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WAR TO THE RHYTHM OF W.H. AUDEN
Click play icon below for Mp3 of War to the rhythm of W.H. Auden
(A christ! song about what the many here do while people across the ocean are being murdered for the profits of the few – christ!’s anti-Iraq War song written by two psychologists, Danny Vogel here in the States and Matthew Gibbons in the U.K.)
LYRICS
Stop your donations, turn off the news
Ignore the killing and your oil hungry views
Silence the children, pay your tax for a bomb
Deny your involvement, let the guilt come.
They are men, women, children and unborn,
They were already suffering from our concern.
Little food, no medicine, no soap, just song,
I thought Babylon would last forever: I was wrong.
Watch the promises rain down on the city,
Be shocked and awed by skies so pretty.
Put extra ketchup on your fish and chips,
Worry about your career and your flabby hips.
Monitor the markets and enjoy the Oscars,
Alternate your celebrities with military maneuvers.
Stock up on petrol, buy water and more videotape,
Feel better for marching as the excuses take shape.
Wish our lads a good fight, they’re the best, be proud,
Killing thousands of Iraqis will bring peace we’re told.
Forget that Bush and Blair
Have lied and lied and lied,
To sell us the coalition of the bullied,
The terrified and the bribed.
We are the North, the South, the East and the West,
We are the strong, the weak, the killers and the rest.
We are the scared, the poor, the confused; the gone,
Hell on earth we are told is just a taste of what’s to come.
Games and circuses are now needed; turn one on,
Pack up the books, go to the gym and read the Sun.
Play with your toys, clean your car and do some D.I.Y.,
Soak up the war coverage with a beer but don’t ask why.
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UNSETTLEMENTS
(Picture of Palestinian refugee camp by Nasr Abdul Aziz, who himself grew up in one)
Click play icon below for Mp3 of Unsettlements
LYRICS
I can hear the sounds of war But I don’t hear no songs of angels Man of earth and God no more Now that the kings have been felled I see you building on the sand Upon the stolen Arab farmyards For Russians and Americans There’s profits in the Promised Land Oppressors always talk of rights Do violently cut foreskins cut it? To think my Jewish brothers once dreamt Of Semites classless and free Tell me who feels at home On either side of the fence? Unsettled lives in settlements Oh does it really make sense? The stars are shining bright tonight The sand beats with the feet of children The Dead Sea is alive with light Oh could this be heaven? How easily visions get bent When fashioned by the power hungry To think my Jewish sisters once dreamt Of Semites classless and free Tell me who feels at home On either side of the fence? Unsettled lives in settlements Oh does it really make sense? I can hear the sounds of war But I don’t hear no songs of angels Man of earth and God no more Now that the kings have been felled
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GETS IN THE WAY
Click play icon below for Mp3 of Gets in the way
LYRICS Internet, the net caught us tight The net of stars wrapped Earth in its light Our children played for hours at the screen Outside the leaves fell down unseen Our children sat still, bored in their class While sun and rain and wind came to pass A human tribe with eyes dead as meat A market monster’s jaws drooling to eat What hungers of men in their towers Dividing life in dollars and hours What waste in work and love and in play When the need of the market gets in the way, gets in the way Gets in the way, gets in the way _______________________________________ LIFE AS
Click play icon below for Mp3 of Life as
(me in the living room singing holding my guitar while a drum machine sets a beat in the background)
LYRICS
Life as a stand up comedy routine – The crowd laughs contagious though the jokes are boring Life as a soap opera everyone sings While trying to live in other people’s skins Life as a flower that promises to bloom As a party you arrive at as the guests leave the room Life as a politician’s empty rhetoric Promising the skies but making you airsick
Life as an office job with upwards prospects A sentence for life of meetings and traffic Life as the news that repeats the same stories Selling the banal as old gories and glories Life as a pop band riding on its hype One hit on the album and the other songs shite Life as a xmas present from the in-laws Your sixth box of tools and a pair of oversized drawers
Life as a coworker sickeningly joyful Being robbed blind in a theft that is lawful Life as a line in the supermarket counter Your daily dose of “can’t pay, can’t have” encounter Life as a dream that you scream with your lips sealed Life as a horror show you view through your windshield Life as a hand that comes to stroke your genitals As you come apart daily petal by petal
Life as sarcophagus they closed before you last breath Life as a desperate flee away from a living death Life as a giggle in between a day’s serious… Rules and regulations wrap around deleterious Life as art, life as color, life as song Life as sex, life as play, life as living daylong Life as your place where you’ll work by the window With a view of the train that takes the others to and fro
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ECOLOGY FOR THE PROFIT MACHINE
Click play icon below for Mp3 of Ecology for the profit machine
(also played with the band christ!)
LYRICS
Well I sweat to stay alive working nine to five
Come home in my bubble down Lake Shore Drive
With the others who think they’re so middle class
But they all get paid for licking arse
They ride a different car, makes them feel unique
But they’re in the same traffic every day of the week
And the fumes from the system choke the ecology
And the Mayor’s solution is grow more trees, more trees!
Ecology, Keep the air clean, For you and me and the profit machine,
Ecology, Ecology for the profit machine
In the city there are those who live in the slums
Kids alone in garbage waiting for their moms
Kids wondering when will dad return
And flog them with a belt, give them cigarette burns
There’s suffering and boredom in the big city
And the Mayor’s solution is making it pretty
Renovate the stadium, paint more bicycle lanes
Give us all a facelift when we try to complain, complain!
Ecology, Keep the air clean, For you and me and the profit machine,
Ecology, Ecology for the profit machine
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RICHEY JAMES EDWARDS
Click play icon below for Mp3 of Richey James Edwards
LYRICS
This close, that far from non-being but these feelings give such a fright, where’s the love, where’s the light? I have led myself to some gorgeous places before so why not again? My art, their tart, they squeeze I fart, this is my business, their business, my soul, and maybe I’ll plant a seed for millions of pop fans to read, my dialectical cross. I wanted to just waste away, contracts with labels, with friends and myself to kick the Spectacle world in the arse, a thing of beauty this life, I want to meet it head on, and rock it for all it’s worth ‘Caus the revolution ain’t coming today and Richey James Edwards has plenty to say even after following the lovers who meet off the Severn Bridge And it’s hard to be the voice that no listener sees and Richey James Edwards tried so hard to please but he stayed in the crowd while the band played aloud his poetry to empower these kids This close, that far from non-being but these feelings give such a fright, where’s the love, where’s the light? I have led myself to some gorgeous places before so why not again? I wanted to just waste away, contracts with labels, with friends and myself to kick this capitalist world in the arse, a thing of beauty this life, I want to meet it head on and rock it for all it’s worth ‘Caus the revolution ain’t coming today and Richey James Edwards has plenty to say even after following the lovers who meet off the Severn Bridge And it’s hard to be the voice that no listener sees and Richey James Edwards tried so hard to please but he stayed in the crowd while the band played aloud his poetry to empower these kids Yeah the revolution ain’t coming today oh and Richey James Edwards has plenty to say oh even after following the lovers who meet off the Severn Bridge And it’s hard to be the voice that no listener sees and Richey James Edwards tried so hard to please but he stayed in the crowd while the band played aloud his poetry to empower these kids Yeah the revolution ain’t coming today and Richey James Edwards has plenty to say
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GOLDEN RULERS
Click play icon below for Mp3 of Golden rulers
(another great song from the band christ! which was Danny Vogel, Brian Rudd of Discorporate Records (www.discorporaterecords.com) and “Southside” Rich)
LYRICS
Is it school or is it boot camp
As I pledge allegiance
Spirit in surgical clamp
To this flag romance
Every school in every nation
Is molding eager minds
Stifling imagination
But my fingers are crossed behind
I refuse to bow
I refuse to serve
Though they are training me how
To be a worker in a herd
Won’t lose my nerve
Is it school or is it mind control
The adults in friction
If I’m a child of the animals
Or of a feudal fiction
Curriculum just politics
To pacify the masses
The ruling ideas are the ideas of the ruling classes
I refuse to bow
I refuse to serve
Though they are training me how
To be a worker in a herd
Won’t lose my nerve
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THE COLLECTIVE
Click play icon below for Mp3 of The collective
LYRICS:
You spend Your days from beginning to end Window shopping for a friend For friendships ‘Caus when relationships are getting stale You might hunt one down that’s on sale If you get good tips ‘Caus in a world that will pry us apart We seek some comfort for your heart And what it can give Yet do we feel as buoyed up in twos As we might if we would choose The collective You love me I love you What more can I ask But for the rest of what lies in the flask Both need total commitment to the task If it’s to win the girl Or win the world With our love Until the workers start to band My love and I we can hold hands And make a quorum I hear my love doth protest too loud They tell me that two makes a crowd Not a protest forum I pledge my love for all eternity Knowing full well that it won’t wait for me Is our love simply solidarity? A premonition of what will be Between everyone?
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I CAN BE HAPPY
Click play icon below for Mp3 of I Can Be Happy Alive
People are always asking me if I can be happy. This is my reply to them!
I can be happy in a moment of time when I’m least paying attention to the state that I’m in when I’m far from the rules and regulations and the imbecilic customs that drag me into my skin I can be happy in the grey of day with a light rain washing my fears away happy that the strangers who ignore my face and vanish without trace might be fellow comrades one day speed the day I can be happy when I give up trying and accept that the face of love that hides the lying builds a hard shell around the naked souls who pay their tolls in trade and masquerade and crying and fighting instrumental middle I can be happy on the monster’s back Digging my heels, bruising it blue and black Picture of the pillar of society Pushing the pillars down to let the slaves free You and me I can be happy but you’ll be the one To catch the joy lifting in me like the rising sun In moments like cracks that set into the years Shocking surprises and yawning bores and sneers Crippling fears I can be happy trying to pretend The spaces are free and all the strangers friends And fellow neurological branches Slowly awakening from work life trances Taking chances ________________________________________ALIVE
Click play icon below for Mp3 of Alive
A christ! song about politics, pure and simple (okay, impure and simpleton).
LYRICS
Politic’s dead
Republican’s dead
Democrat’s dead
And the liberal’s dead
The Greens are all dead
The Fascists are dead
The Left Wing is dead
Religion is dead
Work is so dead
Shopping is dead
What we want is a world fit for human beings instead
What we want is to feel alive Alive Alive Alive
What you gonna do with your eighty-two years?
Waste them in the office of your empty careers?
Watching out the window all your life drift by
Wishing you could play under the bright blue sky
Wishing you could live as master not as slave
Live by the dictates of the fancies you crave
Wake up overjoyed by the brand new day
It’s free, nothing to pay, just feel alive Alive Alive Alive
