There's no bread, let them eat cake
There's no end to what they'll take
Flaunt the fruits of noble birth
Wash the salt into the earth
But they're marching to Bastille Day
La guillotine will claim her bloody prize
Free the dungeons of the innocent
The king will kneel and let his kingdom rise
Bloodstained velvet, dirty lace
Naked fear on every face
See them bow their heads to die
As we would bow as they rode by
And we're marching to Bastille Day
La guillotine will claim her bloody prize
Sing, oh choirs of cacophony
The king has kneeled, to let his kingdom rise
Lessons taught but never learned
All around us anger burns
Guide the future by the past
Long ago the mould was cast
For they marched up to Bastille Day
La guillotine claimed her bloody prize
Hear the echoes of the centuries
Power isn't all that money buys
If you make a point of playing it in the morning every July 14th, you're a geek. Welcome to the club. :)
For some strange reason, whenever I listened to Geddy Lee hit his high notes in Caress of Steel, Fly By Night, or 2112, I thought he was either a castrati or a runaway from the Vienna Boys Choir.
ReplyDeleteHis solo My Favorite Headache seems to have given his vocals more bottom end.
What, no Al Stewart?
ReplyDeleteThe wands of smoke are rising
From the walls of the Bastille
And through the streets of Paris
Runs a sense of the unreal
The Kings have all departed
There servants are nowhere
We burned out their mansions
In the name of Robespierre
And still we wait
To see the day begin
Our time is wasting in the wind
Wondering why
Wondering why, it echoes
Through the lonely palace of Versailles
Inside the midnight councils
The lamps are burning low
On you sit and talk all through the night
But there's just no place to go
And Bonaparte is coming
With his army from the south
Marat your days are numbered
And we live hand to mouth
While we wait
To see the day begin
Our time is wasting in the wind
Wondering why
Wondering why, it echoes
Through the lonely palace of Versailles
The ghost of revolution
Still prowls the Paris streets
Down all the restless centuries
It wonders incomplete
It speaks inside the cheap red wine
Of cafe summer nights
Its red and amber voices
Call the cars at traffic lights
Why do you wait
To see the day begin
Your time is wasting in the wind
Wondering why
Wondering why, it echoes
Through the lonely palace of Versailles
Wondering why, it echoes
Through the lonely palace of Versailles
Now you've done it. That video was so bad, I'm going to have to fire up the Dual 721, wait for it to stabilize, and pull out the vinyl. Not saying that's a bad thing -- I can pull the lever on the Rockchucker a few times while I'm waiting.
ReplyDeleteIn those more strait-laced days of ahalf-century gone by, the "official word" in La Belle Paris" was that there is no such thing as sin on Bastille Day.
ReplyDeleteMade life nice for a young, single GI.
:D, Art
I love that album. I think listening to it on this date makes one not so much a geek, as a true liberal. Unlike Geddy Lee, but like Neil Peart.
ReplyDeleteThe Necromancer doesn't mention Frenchies getting frogged, but I'm a sucker for the middle part where Alex Lifeson rips the Universe a new one.
ReplyDeleteMy Bastille Day musical choice for the past several years has been Jimmy Buffet's "Frenchman for the Night".
ReplyDeleteI don't listen to this every Bastille day, but I rather think my geekery was sealed when I wore 2112 threadbare circa 1980.
ReplyDeleteNice, this inspired a long bout of surfing youtube for Rush vids. I watched Bastille Day, YYZ, Red Barchetta and a few others... Awesome!
ReplyDelete