Get all 10 John Ludi releases available on Bandcamp and save 50%.
Includes unlimited streaming via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality downloads of The Quiet Earth Orchestra-World Without Words 2, Mistakes Have Been Made, Rage (Remastered 2022), Obsolescence, The Quiet Earth Orchestra, Soft War, Rise Above or Fall Below, Hell's Laughter and Heaven's Ache, and 2 more.
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Kings (The Depopulation Song)
We thank you for your contribution,
but the time is due for a new solution.
Your reward for services rendered?
Your needs ignored and a system dismembered.
You stumble around barely conscious
while we aim for the stars.
So we'll just replace you all
with robots and self-driving cars.
(Chorus)
Pulling the plug. Yanking the rug.
Cleaning you bugs out of the whole damn thing.
Cleansing with fire, the widening gyre...
you filth that aspire to be like us, the Kings.
Wise and free (you really are neither).
You peasantry, we've filled you with either
despair or hate (and fake populism).
Now take the bait of the call to fascism.
Useless eaters bred as slaves,
unaware of your captivity.
Dumbed-down and disaffected
and mired in disunity.
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2. |
The Traveler
05:36
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The Traveler
Your spirit whispers like a draft in a moldering tomb.
You eye the dusty suitcase lying in the corner of your room.
To don your wings once more and pretend you are free,
as Autumn's wind again compels you to flee.
The parade of novelty for now keeps you engaged,
but the night leaves you pacing an empty stage.
Though the faces may change, the motivations remain the same.
All the traveling you do takes you to the same old place.
It's like thousands of writers coming up with the same old play:
the dream's consistent though the food has a different taste.
After a while you outpace even your favorite regrets...
you're a wandering ghost in a world of marionettes.
Every time you think you've found a home
it's just a place to fly away from.
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3. |
Wild is the Wind
05:09
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Wild is the Wind
(by Dimitri Tiomkin and Ned Washington)
Love me, love me, love me, love me, say you do
Let me fly away with you
For my love is like the wind
And wild is the wind, wild is the wind.
Give me more than one caress,
satisfy this hungriness.
Let the wind blow through your heart.
For wild is the wind, wild is the wind.
You touch me, I hear the sound of mandolins.
You kiss me.
With your kiss, my life begins.
You're spring to me, all things to me.
Don't you know you're life itself.
Like a leaf clings to the tree.
Oh my darling, cling to me.
For we're like creatures of the wind,
wild is the wind, wild is the wind.
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4. |
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Everybody Here's Getting Stupider
So it's come down to this apocalyptic abyss,
where sentience of any kind can barely exist.
And we find ourselves led by hearts that are dead...
for the suffering they cause, not one tear do they shed.
Their addiction to greed, pushing perpetual need:
the base desires of stunted minds where vultures do feed.
It's all led to a hell of buy and sell, buy and sell,
where everyone's reduced to a pale broken shell.
The dead eyes of the young whose futures are hung
upon the endless lies of a million forked tongues.
On their flickering screens, visions sick and obscene
forge their souls into something small, dark and mean.
And the hearts of the old, once adventurous and bold
slowly molder in the remnants of the principals they've sold.
For once you give in an avalanche will begin,
and then you'll find that YOU are why those pricks always win.
Take back your brave new world and book me a flight to Jupiter...
'cause I don't wanna be human no more: everybody here's gettin' stupider.
The blind rage that you feel. The “Art of the Deal”.
The inexorable turning of a big f**kin' wheel.
And the strong eat the weak, the wise grow flaccid and meek,
and the rich feast on all the fruits of the power they seek.
If there's a future at all (after all of this falls)
it will not be if we heed the same darkness that calls.
The human heart it yearns for the path that does turn
towards the place where all good virtues bake, boil and burn.
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5. |
Frozen Souls
06:24
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Frozen Souls
I'm under the ice, trapped within your frozen soul
The quiet voice of your spirit pure and whole
I'm eternity laughing at your minor mortal role
The twist of fate that shutters all your tiny goals.
Daylight daylight...throw off your chains and step out
Outside outside...the warm summer rains quell your drought
Rise up rise up...constraints are all of the mind
Waken waken...this illusion where all are confined
In your core are stars, down where the frost can't grow.
The ageless spark, those embers still do glow.
Below all the weight and the ever-mounting toll,
Waiting for sunrise to escape this sorry hole.
Daylight daylight...throw off your chains and step out
Outside outside...the warm summer rains quell your drought
Rise up rise up...constraints are all of the mind
Waken waken...this illusion where all are confined
To the sleepers in their nests, to the slumbering soulful best
in the breaking of the day, another path, a clearer way.
To those silent amidst the din, to those who never join in
to the ritual puppet's dance, the contrived consensual trance
To the ones who watch and doubt as the many revel and shout
in praise of their conditioning and their owner's positioning.
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6. |
Go Along to Get Along
04:01
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Go Along to Get Along
You tried to find your way in this sad and wicked place
but all your good intentions got thrown back in your face.
Everyone eventually gets pulled into the race,
gets swallowed and digested if they don't keep up the pace.
Climbing up the ladder in this sad and wicked time,
how to get ahead is all that's on your mind.
Honesty and ethics abandoned on the way...
the payout makes it worth it: you're a richer man today.
Take the money and run, you whore. Grab what you can, find the back door.
Presidents do it, so it's ok. Deal with your conscience some other day.
[C] And go along to get along, it's what's done...right or wrong.
Don't rock the boat and don't make waves, while you're digging your own graves.
Now you are a leader in this sad and wicked land
raking in the rewards of all your greedy plans.
Rolling in the spoils of all that you could steal,
and no one dares to ask you, how do you really feel?
There is no center, nothing can hold and all your futures are bought and sold.
It doesn't matter what the rich folks do, 'cause just admit it, you'd do it too.
Do it for the money all that awesome money tasty yummy money happy happy money
you're worthless without money bad people don't like money what's wrong with them anyway?
They should get with the program.
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7. |
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Goodbye Catbird
I can't let go of you,
can't admit that it is through
it all seemed so strong and true.
(“Everything is change.”)
Saw you leave and shed my tears,
thought about our happy years
life seemed so bright and clear.
(“Everything is change, everything must fade
into that good night...tears in the rain.”)
You would sing to let the day begin,
I'd draw the curtains, let the sunlight in
meet your voice with a grateful grin...
and smile and smile again
So charming in your sweetly rasping way,
filling my world with a sense of play
comical bird greeting the day...
oh, please don't go away.
Spring brings you less and less,
something dark has caused distress
I think it's called “progress”.
I don't think it's nature's way,
this blight and this decay:
Earth has become our prey.
All this greed, rapacious need.
The way we feed, the world we bleed.
Words we don't heed sew poisoned seeds.
Now watch us beg and plead.
The holes we drill, coffers we fill,
species we kill, lives that we still
The lack of will persists until
It's time to pay the bill.
Use it up for profit's sake,
bend it all until it breaks
Just take and take and take and take...
then take a little more
Feed on it until it's just a shell,
take this Eden and create a hell
treat nature's bounty like an endless well:
leave hope outside the door.
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8. |
This Time
05:39
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This Time
Down through the ages go you and I.
On history's pages, hints of you and I.
So who are you to me, this time?
And will I recognize you this time?
We nearly pass upon the street, pigeons fleeing from our feet,
the wind troubled and cold, yet I feel within my soul
the spark I know as you burning in someone new...
a heart that beat with mine in other places, other times.
Through peace and through warfare traveled you and I.
To dirges and fanfare, listened you and I.
So once more descending into these times.
Once more the veil's rending into these times.
We embrace as lovers do, all else fading from our view
for a moment we are free from the world's calamity
but around us is the sound of it all breaking down
and distant sirens cry as the missiles start to fly.
Through cycles and stages...tried you and I.
Were we saints, were we sages...was that you and I?
But we spoke and stopped nothing, even this time.
Bigger fools for that knowing, even this time.
Again I gaze into your eyes, fire starts raining from the sky
and the air grows thick with smoke and we begin to choke.
We came, we saw, we wept as all around us slept
But we'll pass with conscience clear from our final moment here
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9. |
The Caretaker
04:18
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The Caretaker
A tired old man of kindly soul
watches the broader world lose control
Pondering needs of a future unknown:
What can be learned, what can be grown.
The toll is great and the efforts ignored
and incremental things are all he can afford.
Those seeds need saving, put those books in a crate...
protect this knowledge before it's too late.
A dark ages monk scribing history,
fading words lay on a wrinkled page
the present world becomes a future mystery
found by error in a wiser age.
He tends to the smaller things:
the green ones, four-legged ones, the ones who have wings.
His own time is short and the road harsh and long,
his pride but a memory, ambitions all gone
He does what he can do
and hopes it makes a difference when all this is through.
He fights the tide, shines his tiny light
against the spreading darkness, against the growing night
The thoughtless and cruel become conventional:
barbarians squat on squalid seats of power
the damage becomes increasingly intentional,
corrupted hands ring out the darkening hour.
The cycle repeats time and again:
tidal forces beyond the weak vision of men
Unseen patterns, the ebb and flow,
all that rose so high crash below.
He will be as a ghost in the haze:
no one will remember him,
he'll pass without praise
I hope he's still out there...we need more like him
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10. |
Whisper in the Wind
05:09
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Whisper in the Wind
I thought I heard a voice last night
maybe the breeze was just right.
A whisper in the wind, do I let it in?
Amidst the patter of the rain
I thought I heard it sigh again.
Hushed words into my ear, the promise was unclear.
Who are you, you half-remembered dream?
How dare you wake what rests in me?
You beckon, into my soul you creep.
You tempter: I wanted only to sleep.
And in my waking mind
it rises up to claim its time.
A thing I can't forgive: daring me to live.
Who are you, you half-remembered dream?
How dare you wake what rests in me?
You beckon, into my soul you creep.
You tempter: I wanted only to sleep.
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11. |
Weightless Saint
05:49
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Weightless Saint
He's falling up, come hold him down.
Why must we keep him around?
Is it his belief or his piety,
or is it something else entirely?
Unclever soul, a dullard's eyes.
Is he a witch...a thing of lies?
Sacred mystery or hyperbole?
With his vacant stare what does he see?
He foams, he shouts...stumbles about.
He can't be trained, he's barely sane.
Oh, but he can see and know eternity,
God bestows those gifts unevenly.
A false history? Religious sophistry?
Or a rough-hewn mind setting a soul free?
Only a glimpse of farther shores and deeper tides.
Only a hint of hidden meanings.
Just out of reach of solid certainty:
a dream where promise wakes up empty.
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12. |
Mistakes Have Been Made
04:40
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Mistakes Have Been Made
You’re in the desert, the hot hot desert,
but it don’t matter ‘cause you’re dead.
And it don’t matter just what desert,
‘cause it’s all desert and it’s dead.
No one’s there to remember where you bought that t-shirt
or your last two-week vacation, they’re all dead
But you got to party and you had spending money
And you were kinda special, and now you’re dead.
There used to be oceans full of plankton and fishes,
now they’re full of plastic and they’re dead.
And there were verdant meadows with animals aplenty
only fading books remember what is dead.
The end, it started slowly and then it came on quickly
the masses, they were clueless…now they’re dead.
The experts, they did warn them…but no one paid attention
And politicians dithered, and they said
“Mistakes have been made”.
Some people made a fortune while others toiled and suffered.
One thing they have in common? They’re all dead.
The wealthy had their money and lawyers did their bidding
they all just kept on lying, now they’re dead.
The planet they did break it for trinkets and tokens
and everybody bought it, now they’re dead.
The last rich man expired on a mattress full of dollars
in a mansion cracked and crumbling, and he said:
“Mistakes have been made”.
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13. |
Afterlife
05:11
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Afterlife
I'll see you in better places.
Far from the strife, smiles without faces.
Wondrous sights, no eyes for the seeing.
Home in the joy, a realm of pure being.
When all you have left is your last dying breath
and all of your thoughts are devoid and bereft
of hope and the wish that time will forgive
all of the mistakes and dramas you lived.
Didn't you live?
I'll see you, my sisters and brothers
in unity where there is no “other”.
Beyond space and time, beyond the search for meaning.
Beyond material, beyond illusions and dreaming.
When your time comes and your reflex is fear,
the world grows dim and you regret all your sins.
Your eyes focus on a distant glint of light,
the flesh fades away and the passage grows bright.
Isn't it bright?
They will meet you there. They will grasp your hand.
They will pull you out of this troubled land.
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John Ludi Madison, Wisconsin
John Ludi is a musician/singer-songwriter with a wide array of influences and lyrical interests who was "Indie" before the term even existed. Working outside of the music industry by choice has given Ludi the ability to release songs of a level of lyrical depth that are anathema to the minds of the "suits". Ludi lives off-grid in a yurt in the woods of WI and will "fight the power" til he dies. ... more
John Ludi recommends:
Part The Second
by maudlin of the Well
An absolutely stunning album with more dimensions that I can list in 200 words. Moments of pure transcendent beauty commingle with outbursts of manic energy & lyrics about astral projection. A fave!
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Sing To God Vol I & II
by Cardiacs
RIP Mr. Smith. An incredible work of absolute musical genius by one of the greatest musical visionaries in rock. Dirty Boy in particular is a spiral of twisted melodic intensity with few equals.
go to album
A brilliant collaboration between two talented musicians with some fantastic guitar and keyboard work.
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The Long Island metal band's third album etches arena-sized hooks into their jagged compositions, deftly balancing experimental and poppy inclinations.
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Michelle Blades - Visitor
by Michelle Blades
Wrenching indiepop heavy on synths and stormy melodies make for an LP that feels profound in its vision.
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