Get all 18 Jim Bryce releases available on Bandcamp and save 35%.
Includes unlimited streaming via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality downloads of Nearly Now, Pictures, Moon and Water Song, Rosie's Song, Creepy-crawlies, Liaison, The single (Pay Day), A Kind of Circle, and 10 more.
1. |
The Alopecia Stroll
03:18
|
|||
|
These are the roots of Alopecia:
Your models, they all seem to disgrace you,
Slap your face and then they praise you.
No wonder you're soiled! Your head has been boiled!
These are the first drops of dysmenorrhea:
You want to make society freer.
You pay in endless hope and fear,
and in the way of the West, you pay up with interest.
You've had advice, be nice, think twice, poltergeists injected in your brain.
Free love, Pavlov, bog off, Molotov - And that's what you call sane?
This is society's affidavit:
Find your goal and try to save it.
The more you reach, the more it depraves.
You know what happened to that cause? Everlasting menopause!
©James Bryce
|
||||
2. |
Joshi's Song
03:17
|
|||
|
Once upon a time in Midlothian: Gorebridge or Hunterfield.
You never can tell 'cause the geography's hell. It's a postie's battlefield.
There was a small shopping centre. Two or three shops maybe more.
The builders arrived and it came alive as Mister Joshi's store.
Oh, Mister Joshi! What are we gonna do?
For all those years, you've been the hub. we have relied on you.
Oh, Mister Joshi. Whatever you're gonna do
We hope it leads to whatever is good. s we wish well to you.
Most days there's Tommy and Jimmy and Neil, the other Jimmy and oor Annie
in Joshi's social centre. They even provide the tea.
There's many things we'll miss: the chat, the battles wi' the fridge,
but the thing we'll miss most is Tommy our host: the worst jokes in Gorebridge!
It's inspirational, educational, a local university,
for Jim in a heap in the corner asleep is a fount of history.
For culture and entertainment, now it's all bye-bye
It's the end of the song and soon will be gone our local U. C. I.
|
||||
3. |
Talkin' 'bout You
03:17
|
|||
|
I'm talkin' 'bout you, my love, how I never get close to you.
But when we're in the street walkin' hand-in-hand,
All I want to be is you lovin' man.
All te reasons disappear and it all seems so clear again.
We just gotta pack our bags and go away for a while.
Just rest our heads and rest our beds just once in a while
Instead of talkin', always talkin',
Forgetting all the rules we made and wanting answers ... always answers.
Sometimes I wish that this would end and time would disappear,
But you put on your magical smile and confusion reappears,
So we just start talkin'.
Just to keep this voice from drivin' us crazy:
It says "Answer!'
|
||||
4. |
Eli Kazan
04:52
|
|||
5. |
Chompy Thing
03:24
|
|||
6. |
Susie
04:20
|
|||
|
Susie's sitting by the fire at midnight, flames in her eyes.
Tears kiss her lips no matter how she tries.
Susie's wondering as sleep slinks out the door. She seems unsure.
“Daddy, why do ghosts and spirits haunt me so?”
Susie, I'll take you to a castle where the flowers lie dreaming,
to a wonderful land.
I'll take you to a meadow where the river's gleaming,
to the waves and the sands.
Susie's snoozing in a room where only queens have lain before,
with gold and silver playthings at her door.
Susie's running to a diamond river glistening in her dreams,
where unicorns and lovebirds drown her screams.
Susie, I'll take you to a castle where the flowers lie dreaming,
to a wonderful land.
I'll take you to a meadow where the river's gleaming,
to the waves and the sands.
|
||||
7. |
Oh, Yas!
03:35
|
|||
8. |
The Waterways Fiddler
01:56
|
|||
|
I'm a jolly jack tar from Iver. I'm Ivor the jolly jack tar.
I'd sail the seven seas with you, but me boat don't go that far.
I wet me sails with Buxton ale as the taxman's drying it out.
On the British waterways, I'll end my days before they pull the bung right out.
I'm a jolly jack tar from Iver. fiddling under the Iver sky.
As I lie in the light of the western night, there's none so noble as I.
Oh, I play me tunes to the Iver moon and me cats they all join in.
Oh,I'll spend my days on the British waterways till me resin's all done in.
And every week, I bung the leaks and raise a "yohoho"
push and pull the engine trying to make the bugger go!
I'm a jolly jack tar from Iver. fiddling under the Iver sky.
As I lie in the light of the western night, there's none so noble as I.
Oh, I play me tunes to the Iver moon and me cats they all join in.
Oh,I'll spend my days on the British waterways till me resin's all done in.
But in the day, I pay me way, earn a straight bawbee,
For in the hold, I've got real gold; it's my fair lass from Tralee.
I'm a Jolly jack tar from Iver. I'm Ivor the jolly jack T.
I play my airs and jigs down low cause I can't reach high C's.
Afore the mast,I'll play my last as I draw to the final Quay.
On life's waterways, I'll spend my days cause Life plays tunes on me.
|
||||
9. |
Rap 2
02:43
|
|||
|
(two singers, A&B)
A: I'm not the kind to complain that I've never known the score before.
I'm sure I'm fairly realistic:
Toss me a question, I'll give my impresh on this mortal lot: philosophically got, religiously undershot,
so frank it would make you hot, Right to the point.
And when it's all been made clear, I will go and decompose in style
B: That's vile!
A: I really must admit it.
B: It's just the result of some morbid conditioning in your youth!
A: Ah well, the main thing,it's truth.
B: Oh, yeah? Remember when we could stand the strain of thirty?
A: When doubts refrain!
A/B: But oh! You should have seen us in our long johns
Jogging ourselves to the ground in the heat of the day.
And oh! You should have seen us dirty weekend,
flushing away our frustrations in Ilfracombe Bay.
A: It's a drag those passing years:
slowly shrinking our frontiers.
B: But don't worry! No more fears!
Come tomorrow, no more
A/B: tears!
And so we'll all sail away to our happy haven in the sky.
Byebye! We won't live to regret it.
A: It's one of those syndromes you find in retirement
with chits and bowls,
B: Tea
A: Double U R V S (W.R.V.S.) roles.
B: clean shirts to disguise the moles
A: Grandchildren to make us old.
B: Too bad the cost!
A/B: And when our trous have rotted away, you'll hear us from the grave
A: Do what you like!
B: Be what you like!
A/B: It's only Life's Sweet Song!
A: Stop me if I'm wrong!
|
||||
10. |
Ivan's Troika
01:46
|
|||
11. |
Oink!/Rosie
05:55
|
|||
|
A) Oink!
[Three singers; Narrator, Government, the Populace.]
NARR: Oh, the KIlburn ladies sing this song “Hoodoo! Hoodoo!”
The Kilburn men are never wrong, they tell you every day.
GOV:“Gonna kill the reds! Gonna kill the I.R.A!
If we don’t stuff this country soon, somebody’s going to pay!”
NARR: Piggy stands by the byre watching the fields get plastered with manure:
GOV: "Impure stuff I always think It stinks!"
POP: "But not as much as Mabel Thorndike*"
NARR:Watch her stuff you in bins without a hint of compensat-i-on.
POP: "Not on! What the hell they at? No fat?"
GOV: "Don’t care ‘cause it don’t matter to me!
Give us the coffers and we’lll make you an offer that you can’t refuse.
Trade you in dues.
Cut you in easy [pieces
Fry you in queasy greases qv EEC. So easy!"
NARR: Piggy says:
POP: "Stab me with morphine, enbalm me in margarine.
Kick all the old ones out on their face.
Cleanse me with Stergene! Pregnant me with blue genes!
Anything you like, get me out of this place!"
GOV: "Na! Na! Na!
Ooh! Tasty bacon!"
NARR: Piggy stand by the byre watching the fields get perfumed with manure
GOV: "Na! Na! Na!"
NARR: How can we be sure?
[Note: *Mabel Thorndike=Maggie Thatcher. These days I use whoever is the Prime Minister, or at least the most objectional of the Government.
|
||||
12. |
Piscatorial Blues
02:57
|
|||
13. |
||||
|
It's a hard old life, and it's a crazy world to live in
and sometimes I get so tired I just can't see,
But there's a light which shines always when my soul is faraways.
It's the old religion Papa taught to me
When I was just a little lad, my papa said to me
"Now's the time, my little lad to decide what you wanna be.
don't take no stick from Bibles or from slick philosophy.
Just play you moments as they come."
So I hung around for sixty years for gettin what he said.
I dabbled here and dibbled there till I dang near lost my head,
and when I'd more or less decided life was better dead,
my papa's words came joggin' back to me.
"Don't suck the stones on the railway, 'cause you don't know who's sucked them stones before.
If you don't wanna fall, better not to suck at all, but if you got to suck the pebbles on the shore.”
Now here's the time to shoot my line.
Here's what you gotta do: shoot no lines but spend your time just as it comes to you.
Don't take not stick from noone but don't give none in return.
Just play your moments till day you burn.
"Don't suck the stones on the railway, 'cause you don't know who's sucked them stones before.
If you don't wanna fall, better not to suck at all, but if you got to suck the pebbles on the shore."
|
||||
14. |
Murphy's Song
06:00
|
|||
|
Isn't it enough to make you sick?
No matter how their change their moral, all the labels seem to stick.
They say the ultimate pariah always has to climb up higher,
but they don't say who or how or where or when.
Till then, my furlined friend, please give this poor old duffer some relief -
Just one cast-off smile will do and I'll make my one brief.
Assure me there's a god in Burton's and I'll keep my Oxfam shirt on
Till you've sorted your priorities, your needs and your beliefs.
When the stars hang dimly over Brixton,
When the street lamps lighten up in Penge,
When the light of the day drops its pink negligée,
Will you still make no amends?
When the "War Cries" echo to a murmur,
When your good shepherd's sheep are all shorne,
When all your intent and your goodwill's been spent,
will you still cry out for more?
Your old labels and old scores bring me lower and lower.
Please don't leave me waiting at your door.
Isn't it enough to make you spit?
You get so smothered up with charity, your body just won't fit.
The say the Western panacea's daily getting that bit nearer,
but they won't say what it is or why it should or who it fits
Oh! Never mind you morals and your pap!
If you haven't got the heart, then just fling tuppence in my cap.
It won't upset your Christian conscience.
Christ's too busy for that nonsense,
Slugging White Tornadoes* on his own beneath Westminster Bridge.
*Ginger Beer and Hairspray.
|
||||
Jim Bryce Edinburgh, UK
Jim Bryce's music ranges from rockish to folkish to jazzish to music-hallish, to material which doesn't tick any boxes. He has also written for theatre, concert hall (squeaky and non- squeaky), film and radio programmes for the under nines.
If you like Jim Bryce, you may also like:
The Chicago duo marries post-punk and indie-pop sounds on their charming debut release.
go to album
Snowflakes in July - EP
by Alex Henry Foster & The Long Shadows
Three renditions of “Snowflakes in July” explore all aspects of the song’s stunning beauty, including a mind-blowing 17-minute live version.
go to album
The spirit of the Canterbury scene is alive and well across this groovy, harmonic psychedelic suite.
go to album
Irmão Victor
by Irmão Victor (Florianópolis, Brazil)
featured on Bandcamp Radio Sep 18, 2018
go to album
Before The Day Has Gone
by Bellini
Ten years may have passed since the last Bellini record, but the math rock group sound as fierce as ever.
go to album
Variety of Rhythm
by Samuel Hällkvist
featured on Bandcamp Radio Dec 5, 2017
go to album
On their latest LP, Mogwai broaden their palette with rich synths and icy grooves.
go to album
