Paul J Penton – Songwriter

Che Guvara T shirts adorn pre-revolutionary teen bodies, do they know the meaning? Rifles in the air, the crush of people in the square all one body, the shouts of triumph and off with the head of the dictator, Saddam’s statue being pulled down by an Abrahams tank, all in the air, revolution, revolution, people power, storming the bastions of power. Perhaps once the people in the bastions of power were themselves revolutionaries, but soon they became the status quo, became too complacent in there fat cat way, eating off the hog of luxury until class warfare shot a salvo at them through rigged elections,then the common people have had enough and it’s time for revolution, upset the apple carts, cast out the sellers in the temple and all that pallaver.  

Eastern block countries have seen it recently. Iran has tried – a gathering of the masses on the street, used to be so easy before the bullet, before tear gas would make unwelcome streams of water flow from hopeful eyes, rubber bullets, lead weight truncheons soon put an end to ambitions there. In the former east more successful, less people being mutilated but still a struggle, the new order replacing the old in a heirachical, leader of the pack fashion, flaky leaflets handed about to the groundswell in rough printed paper, 1917 Russia, the beggining of the ideal soon over taken by corruption and the headyness of power and dictatorship, no secondary protests or you’re locked up, Gulag, Prison, Ivan Desonofabitch, the novel, inside a work camp, probably run by Mr Stalin himself, black mouldy bread, work parties trudging through blinding snow with rags for shoes, high school library 1981, refusing to learn it all, but feeling some affinity with the struggle, wishing for revolution.