Watch where you're going
if you don't want to fall
Seeds you've been sowing
bearing fruit, growing tall
Like the bright scarlet blossom that erupts from the face of your enemy.

Clubs rise and fall
to the pulse of the hot surging blood in your heart.
Eyes that stare
as your brain splits apart
Like the egg of a cock that has lain in the sun for too long.

The air is heavy with the smell of fear
By your faces I can tell where you are
A thousand shining eyes will never shed a tear
And the Man inside his fortress doesn't hear a sound.

Shadows are born,
and they crawl like the serpent that lives in your breast
Broken bodies
that lie on the ground
Like the discarded toys of an idiot child.

The air is heavy with the smell of fear
By your faces I can tell where you are
A thousand shining eyes will never shed a tear
And the Man inside his fortress doesn't hear a sound.

6/67 - Austin Street

Richard Griggs

In June of 1967 President Lyndon Johnson was atteding a $1000-a-plate fund raising dinner at the Century Plaza Hotel in Los Angeles. A large anti-war demonstration was organized outside and the Los Angeles Police Department were called in to put down the crowd. They did this in a most brutal fashion. Shortly before the police attacked the annoncement went out over the bullhorn: "In the name of the people of the City of Los Angeles I order you to disperse." The crowd was a normal mix of the local pacifist citizenry, people of all ages and walks of life, so in resonse they took up the chant, "We are the people. We are the people."

I was in Cambridge at the time, but I read about it in the L.A. Free Press. Having lived for five months in Los Angeles during 1965-66 I was privileged to have several run-ins with "the city's finest" and I was no fan of their thuggist ways. I wrote LAPD as an immediate response to the news report. Ill Wind performed it with an extended fuzz solo at the end, and when we recorded the song for our album I decided to add a multitracked "we are the people chant" as a bit of texture behind Carey's solo. Unfortunately Tom Wilson elected to treat this as if it were a lead vocal, much to my displeasure. Never give up the right to participate in the final mix!

A few notes on the lyrics: "the egg of a cock" is a reference to the mythical basilisk, "a thousand shining eyes" refers to both to the windows of the hotel and to TV screens, "the Man inside his fortress is LBJ himself, "the serpent that lives in your breast" refers to Nathaniel Hawthornes story The Bosom Serpent, "the discarded toys of an idiot child" is a very obscure reference to the monster from the id in the movie Forbidden Planet.

<RZ>