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.
1. |
Everything
03:30
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Everything
I'm not a demagog, a power freak,
but controlling everything is what I seek.
Ultimate power deserves no better hands,
why not omnipotence for such a brilliant man?
Everything, all or nothing
tighten my reigns upon the world.
Make me president and sign my praise.
Vow all your loyalties, no doubts I'll raise.
Lay all your problems in a basket at my feet.
My trivialities will make your life complete.
Everything, all or nothing
draining the juices from the world.
Just crown me god, just for one day
all the world's flaws I'll wipe away.
Give me power over life and death itself
and surround me with donations and wealth.
Call me a genius and devote your souls to me.
Sign all your names in blood, I'll laugh with a tyrant's glee.
Everything, all or nothing
choking the life out of the world.
Everything, all or nothing
eternal night for all the world.
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2. |
Shanty
04:31
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Shanty
I have got nothing and you want to take it away
you'll feed off my labor til I meet an early grave
I'll work forever so all of you wealthy can play
you'll find what I've hidden and tax away all that I've saved.
I'm down here and you're up there
and I can see your mansion from here...it's pretty clear.
I'm in debt and underpaid
with nothing for the effort I've made...and I live in fear.
You educate me with just enough to work your machines
you entertain me with the stunted, profane and obscene
you've taken my mind and my will and still you want more
in the system you've designed I'm little more than a whore.
Born to be nothin, born to be a slave
dirt under your boot heel from cradle to the grave.
I labor along with millions so you can up the ante
I'm invisible to you and I live in a shanty.
I'm down here and you're up there
and I can see your neck from here...it's pretty clear.
I've been your tool and I've been played
but I've got a rope and a torch I've made...and you should live in fear.
When this whole thing falls apart I'll be come lookin' for you
without your billions they'll be nothing that you can do
but for now you can sleep and contentedly dream
but rest assured someday you'll be waking up with a scream.
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3. |
Puppet
03:36
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It's puppet's day with the press corps,
they've written a speech for the people.
They cover him with cosmetics
to make him look less evil.
They fill his eyes with cue cards
and pray he won't ignore them.
Advisers he can't fathom
surround and try to coach him.
He's been acting strangely
there has been some concern
there's talk he might be reworked
before he ends his term.
The teleprompter's humming
as puppet, he sits staring.
The faces of his cabinet
observe with vices glaring.
As anchormen announce him
the sleazy sitcom ceases.
He'll tell us pleasant untruths
and anything that pleases.
Alive he does his act now
pretending that he leads us
the strings that keep him moving
held by corporations that bleed us.
All is going well now
his speech is very clever
yet somewhere in his framework
a single nerve has severed.
In the corner of a dead eye
a drop of oil is dripping
and suddenly he's twitching,
he's contorted and he's slipping.
Then out of his mouth-hole
(full of rust and errant springs)
in a cracked and unused true voice
he speaks revealing things.
The plainclothes cops around him
hear the words and block the way.
They bind puppet and gag him
and drag puppet away.
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4. |
Beggar's Cup
04:50
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There's angels dancing on the heads of pins
while the reaper cleans off his blade
and the tired silhouettes of stale cliches
slip past our lips in peasant's praise.
Don't break down and don't give up
as long as breathing fills your beggars cup.
All black stains of gods flushed from the skies
sunken shadows with dead newsprint eyes
greet the advent of dawn with despair...
every bridge closed for repairs.
There's a game being bet upon
and we're too busy playing it.
There a lie we're not hearing
as we're all busy saying it.
There are graves being dug to be filled
with the ashes of our failed wills.
And the endless dance of futility
cycles on and on through eternity.
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5. |
Generous God
05:02
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Generous God
Be fruitful and multiply, in fact...breed like rats.
You know your god's a generous god, he is that.
10 billion-plus mouths to feed, with wants and needs,
so satisfy your gene pool's greed and spread that seed!
Populate every square foot of land
for god is merciful and god is grand
he never gives out more than you can stand
(well...maybe once in a while, but he hopes you'll understand...understand?)
Spread poison randomly around, air and ground.
For the bible says we're salvation-bound, it's all comin' down.
So pump and dump and then say “amen”, why make amends?
Who cares what is left when we ascend, 'cause god's our friend.
Toxify every single drop of water...
the sacred draught of simple lambs marching to slaughter.
Taint everything you touch in the name of the prince of peace
thumping on your bibles, growing wretched with disease.
What a generous god he is.
Your generous god don't exist.
When the air becomes toxic and thin, will god descend?
With nothing left to breathe in but your sins, can life begin?
Will your empty stomachs all ten be filled with divine will?
Will god come down and replace all you've killed?
(Silent and still...forever still...)
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6. |
Earth
05:23
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Earth
Fast asleep we lay dreaming
underground far from the gleaming
of the sun, seemingly stronger...
I hear its call to rest no longer
My breathing quickens, the air has thickened,
I'm slightly sickened
Open my eyes inside my chamber,
somethings awry...a sense of danger.
I read the screens then wake the others,
all my kin, sisters and brothers.
Embraces, greetings, a wordless meeting,
all too fleeting.
Consensus reached in milliseconds,
the fault was ours was what we reckoned.
Our sense of time clearly in error,
and while we slept there grew a terror.
Beyond their station without cessation, our fell creation...
multiplied far and wide and climbed too high
with witless pride,
devoured the land, forests to sand, with greed so grand,
a plague called Man.
We rise above the miles that hid us,
the Earth itself, her sufferings bid us.
In shock we see her torn and soiled...
our verdant Earth toxic and spoiled.
We watch them break her, watch them unmake her...
and they could take her
all the way to her grave, all her fields paved
and nothing saved.
The air has turned and she could burn. There's no return
once life is spurned.
Hovering above all cloaked and silent,
we can't adjust a beast so violent.
A vote is held...not one dissension,
to cleanse the world of our invention:
“Man the builder”...the poison-spiller,
the planet-killer.
We will break them, we will unmake them...
we will take them...all away.
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7. |
Frozen in Amber
05:17
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Frozen in Amber
Upon a beach stands a lonely figure
wore threadbare cloths adorn his weary frame.
Watching the waves break upon the shoreline,
pacing aimlessly and wincing from the pain
of his aching hands
from scrounging in the sand
to what extent he can
The shore is shorn of fish or bird or seaweed
just things that look like some mix of them all.
The man he sings a song from years forgotten
and shivers slightly as the rain begins to fall
upon the spoiled ground
no man or beast around
his is the only sound
He longs for touch, he longs for comfort
a friendly face...but he knows that no ones coming.
The man he takes a stone out of his pocket
and ruminates upon a world gone quickly wrong.
He stares upon the tiny things embedded
inside the amber he's carried for so long
The wrinkles on his skin
the pestilential wind
biological sin.
He holds the stone to hazy sunlight and sings his song...
the last living standard human.
He skips the stone upon the water watches it sink...
frozen in amber, insects.
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8. |
World of Denial
03:25
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Everything is relative they say
and nothing here was really mean to stay.
Is that the ground shifting under your feet,
distorting all your flimsy conceits?
Solidity grows scarcer every day
ambiguity has swept it all away.
It's hard for you to know just what to feel:
someone forgot to tell you what is real.
It's not that everyone's lying to you
it's just that everyone's lying to themselves
and you just happen to get in the way.
World of denial.
Every day the messages shift
'til you're left philosophically adrift
by media's relentless happy whores
whose viewpoints change too fast to be absorbed.
Proprieties fading veneer
leaves you with little more than fear
and bodies piling up outside your door.
This is the future, couldn't ask for more.
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9. |
Sheep
03:45
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Sheep
Sheep, sheep, go to sleep,
watch TV, there's fast food to eat.
A case of beer makes the day complete...
or maybe a football game.
I'm amazed you can even spell your own name.
Sheep, sheep, suspicions creep
Ugly words, something quiet and deep
that says that what's been sown will soon be reaped
Barbarians behind the gates
I regret to inform you that it's too late
did you think that your mindless ease
could keep you from slavery and disease?
© You never thought about tomorrow
now it's far too late to feel sorrow
as the world it crumbles around you
and your vanishing freedom astounds you
Sheep, sheep, I hear you bleat
I hear you cry and entreat
as you're lined up and shot
against the concrete
walls of a fascist state
with no one left to commiserate
the death of a common fool
a happy consumer so happily ruled.
© While you were neglecting tomorrow
some monsters led, the rest followed
and created a world quite like hell
with no space left for much else.
You're medicated and tamed
and you'll fall into place when they call your name.
And there's no one else you can blame
it's what happens when everyone thinks the same.
© So cling to the thoughts that they feed you
and repeat the cliches as you need to
and march down the road that they've paved
with the ground up bones of your fellow slaves.
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10. |
One Way Train
04:02
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I woke up this morning to the sound of my heart
beating out irregular time.
I woke to the laugh of mortality
whose pale whispered words did remind.
I though about all the time that I've lost
ignoring those sage words inside
of intuition and the sound of my heart
on the one way train I ride.
One way train take me far away from here.
I thought about all the people I've known
and just how many are real
and how many are ghosts in search of a host
not knowing how to think or to feel.
When we act like we believe in all the lies that we spout
while all but our shells is gone
those lies last a short while 'til we lose our forced smiles
on the one way train we're all on.
Everyone has a flag to wave
and some neat package to sell
denying that what disgusts us in others
lives deep in ourselves.
The dull sheep will bleed
and the wolves they will feed
heeding the ritual's call.
The best game to play's not to play one at all
on our one way train's mortal crawl.
Pretend to be honest
pretend to be good
pretend to treat others
the way you know you should
while sheltering your own fragile ego
behind a wall
never knowing when
your own end will come and call.
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11. |
Trust
04:19
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Trust
Plaster's falling from the seams of cities cold and mean,
death rattles of a terminal American dream.
Our money's painted green and so are we it seems.
Without a future...without ways or means.
Ghettos extend their chains and swell like wounds inflamed
millions of lives slip unnoticed down the drain.
Never trust people who live better than yourselves
who dazzle with delusions of fame, freedom, and wealth.
"Trust in us" they said, "we'll plant our dreams in your head".
"Trust in us" they hissed...beautiful lies you can't resist.
They try to tell us there's a reason for the wait
why we all languish at the starting gate
while pointless expenditures bear bitter fruit
and dark enmities lay deeper roots.
Our wheels keep spinning as we get nowhere
some hearts get harder, some just despair.
"Lies are just the truth in a different light...
and truth's as elusive as a thief in the night".
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12. |
Crucified
03:28
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There is a scent the vermin sense
a subtle word, a difference.
No hue and cry when vultures fly
to mark the deed, foul creatures feed...
on the bones of those who care the most
more than the host of nameless hopeless ghosts.
Beyond the ken of common men,
in the pursuit of hidden truths
those souls progressed above the rest
will fall to sand as foul creatures stand...
Pacify the crowd with the deaths of those endowed
with the gift of sight (it's the common man's delight).
Burning at the stake once more to calm the angry hoard.
Rabble satisfied: another sage was crucified.
On deaf ears all learned words will fall.
Nothing will change: a future out of range
of minute minds, the common kind.
Content with lies, foul creatures die...
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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!
go to album
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.
go to albumIf you like John Ludi, you may also like:
Echo Dancing
by Alejandro Escovedo
The legendary Alejandro Escovedo returns with another country-rock scorcher.
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Nothing not to love about the jangly sounds of the Vovos, who blend catchy melodies with whip smart lyrics.
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The Australian indie-pop duo's latest album is centered on strong friendships and common struggles.
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