Crossing the Red Sea With The Adverts
Album - 17 febbraio 1978 - Debaser id 57498

I wonder what we'll play for you tonight.
Something heavy or something light.
Something to set your soul alight.
I wonder how we'll answer when you say.
"We don't like you - go away"
"Come back when you've learned to play"

I wonder what we'll do when things go wrong.
When we're half-way though our favourite song.
We look up and the audience has gone.
Will we feel a little bit obscure.
Think "we're not needed here"
"we must be new wave - they'll like us next year"

The wonders don't care - we don't give a damn.

We're talking into corners.
Finding ways to fill the vacuum.
And though our mouths are dry.
We talk in hope to hit on something new.
Tied to the railway track.
It's one way to revive but no way to relax.

We're just bored teenagers.
Looking for love,
Or should I say emotional rages.
Bored teenagers.
Seeing ourselves as strangers.

We talk about the whys and wherefores.
Do we really care at all?
Talk about the frailty of words.
Is rarely meaningful.
When we're sitting watching the 'planes.
Burn up through the night like meteorites.

We're just bored teenagers.
Looking for love,
Or should I say emotional rages.
Bored teenagers.
Seeing ourselves as strangers.

Bored teenagers.

Maybe - maybe a fool for trusting.
Maybe - maybe a fool for following.
The God of wisdom not of love.

But I'm riding with the new church.
I'm riding with the new church.
Relying on the new church,
And a new word.

Hang on - if you hang on to faith and meekness.
Before long it's power for the strong.
It's twisted into something evil,
something wrong.

So I'm riding with the new church.
I'm riding with the new church.
Relying on the new church,
And a new word.

So long - goodbye to the blind and the weaklings.
Be strong - I'll do what I want.
I'll follow my feelings,
I'll go where they lead me.

Strength within you, not without you.
The new church needs you.

Blank-faced,
Was this what our elders taught?
Dim the lights and live like story book.
I can't focus for the pinball.
I'm all shook up and I think I see it all.
But I know that it ain't that simple.

I got loose.
Up on the roof.
Waiting for you.

Two-faced,
Was this was out elders taught?
We're human too,
indulge in small talk.
I take a walk down the alley.
Some drunk half-kills me.
We're fighting on the floor for a ha'penny

I got loose.
Up on the roof.
Waiting for you.

Well, I guess I'm waiting for the punchline.
I'm a refugee with a rare find.
I've got a place where I can unwind.

I got loose.
Up on the roof.
Waiting for you.
We'll hide

We're out on a limb.
Should we let the newboys in?
We think they can't do no harm.
Let's humour them.
But they need some passion inside.
They take it like a cigarette.
They feel it when it breaks their minds.
In their lungs and in their chests.
No regrets.

They didn't tell me.
They'd been there for so many years.
I don't know what to do.
I think I love you, you love me too?
Is it really true.

You can't want me.
You can't need me.
You can't love me, see.

You can't want me.
You can't need me.
You can't have me, see.

Well, I feel like I'm at sea.
The plank's beneath my feet.
Inevitably we two must meet again.
But they're going to extremes.
They're feeling quite at ease.
They fight with brain instead of power.
And no-one wins.
There's no answers.

Now newboys quarrel,
They're bitching, they tangle.
A tendency to intellectualise,
They won't let things be.
Your conversation locks my door.
Then throws away the key.
You can't help me.

Leapfrog over fences.

Little time, less senses.

Here by this railway cutting.

Life goes quick and it goes without warning.

That's how life is in my bombsite dwelling.




But I don't believe you have to be an idiot.
To get somewhere these days.

I don't believe you have to sell your soul,

And do what everybody says,

Or get carried away.


Nowadays I fall among the empty shells and pray.
Give thanks - I'm happy where I am.


It's just as well.

Well, I thank God I never closed my eyes.


Thank God I never compromised.


Bombsite boy, the bombsite boy.
Thank God I wasn't mesmerized.

Bombsite boy, the bombsite boy - the bombsite boy.



There's a killer in your subway.

An anarchist on your street.

There's a breakdown on your T.V.

You can't find no relief.

In fact no feelings at all.

Your war is totally internal.
At least I'm sure that mine is - on the outside.



I can thank God I never closed my eyes.


Thank God I never compromised.


Bombsite boy, the bombsite boy.
Thank God I wasn't mesmerized.

Bombsite boy, the bombsite boy - the bombsite boy.

Life's short, don't make a mess of it.
To the ends of the earth, you'll look for a sense in it.
No chances, no plans.
I'll smash the windows of my box.
I'll be a madman.
It's no time to be 21,
To be anyone.

Hold back, see what you miss of it.
Out of the shadows, into the thick of it.
No maybes, no guessing.
I'm getting wound up.
The plot sickens.
It's no time to be 21,
To be anyone.

Strip down to the bare facts of it.
Into the cold heart, no hope and all that shit.
No chances, no plans.
I think I'll be somebody else.
Or else a madman.
It's no time to be 21,
To be anyone.

We'll be your untouchables.
We'll be your outcasts.
We don't care what you projects on us.
It's no time to be 21.

What are you going to do with your new ways?
What are you going to do with your new wave?
Maybe it's that you no longer care.
Now you're so great.
You've just got to stand there.
Or were you never even bothered anyway,
About the new wave.

What about the new wave?
Did you think it would change things?

Here we all are in the latest craze.
Stick with the crowd,
hope it's not a passing phase.
It's the latest thing to be nowhere.
You can turn into the wallpaper.
But you know you were always there anyway,
Without the new wave.

What about the new wave?
Did you think it would change things?

It's just safety in numbers,

When it's tricky, when it gets tough,
When you need to feel that you're good enough,
All you pretty people who've been taken over.
Had better start looking for your own answers.
'Cause there's no safety in numbers anyway,
Or in a new wave

What about the new wave?
Did you think it would change things?

It's just safety in numbers.

Uncharted wrecks of wonder.
In deepest gloom down under.
The drowning men are drawing near.

We're the subterranean vandals,
Tying air lines around door handles.
Adventures don't venture here.

We're the drowning men.
We're the drowned men.

The mutant freaks fantastical.
Knife's edge, unreal or actual.
Ambition stunted, the future fated.

Shall we rise from sunken places.
Walk the streets, unnatural, graceless.
Wipe the smile from your faces.
If we can make it.

What's left in the wheelchair?
Who bothers what's in there?
Who worries what life's like on wheels?

No body to speak of.
No willpower, voice, love.
Who intends to steer us?

On wheels.

I'm some new kind of great explorer.
I sink the lowest, I go further.
I'm sailing on the 'Lucky Dragon'
I'm ready for whatever happens.
Living out the life unstable.
Men like animals, untameable.

On wheels

What's left in the wheelchair?
A taste of life and death together.
I wish this embrace could last forever.

The great British mistake was looking for a way out,
Was getting complacent, not noticing
The pulse was racing.
The mistake was fighting.
The change, was staying the same.
It couldn't adapt so it couldn't survive,
Something had to give.
The people take a downhill slide into the gloom.
Into the darn recesses of their minds.

I swoop over your city like a bird.
I climb the high branches and observe.
Into the mouth, into the soul.
I cast a shadow that swallows you whole.
I swoop, I climb, I cling, I suck,
I swallow you whole.

String out the drip-feed, they're losing their world,
They're losing their hard boys and magazine girls.
Advert illegal, T.V. as outlaw, motive as spell.
They'll see the books burn. They'll be 451,
It's people against things and not against each other.
Out of the pre-pack, into the fear, into themselves.
They're the great British mistake.
The genie's out of the bottle, call in the magician.
They didn't mean to free him, devil behind them,
devil in the mirror, chained to their right hands.
They're the great British mistake.
They'll have to come to terms now, they'll take it out somehow.
They'll blame it all on something.
The British mistake - when will it be over?
How can they avoid it?

The great British mistake.
The great British mistake.
The great British mistake.