Songs about historical events

Roads To Moscow-Al Stewart

(About the Siege of Stalingrad)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BAqP35A9Oi8

 

Link to the lyrics:

http://www.alstewart.com/lyrics/roadstomoscow.htm

If you like that, you should also listen to the song Rosselson wrote about Gerard Winstanley's(the leader of the Diggers) archrival,Abliezer Coppe, who led a more urban, free-love based 17th century radical group, The Ranters(and whose personal manifesto was called "A Flying Fiery Rolle")

 

1)Abiezer Coppe, did away with sin

"my body is my church" he said, "God's dwelling is within."

"All I do is holy" Abiezer cried,

Gave his loving freely, a Ranter 'til he died

 

Chorus:

So drink a loving cup, to Abiezer, Abiezer,

He's a drinking dancing roaring Ranter,

Abiezer Coppe, Abiezer Coppe.

 

2)"A pox upon the pious, and on what the Scriptures teach,

I'd rather hear a Tinker curse than hear a vicar preach

Shameless in his pleasures, drank and smoke and swore,

Embracing as his fellow creatures beggar, thief and whore

CHORUS

3)The righteous said "The Devil will take Coppe and his kind".

"The Devil is God's backside", said Coppe "and Hell is a state of mind"

"Women are the only heaven, marriage is the only Hell"

Abiezer Coppe knew it very well.

 

CHORUS

4)Through the streets of London, Abiezer came,

heard the hungry cries for bread, he was a soul in pain.

When the nobles in their coaches passed, he charged with wild eyes

And gnashed his teeth in anger and then roared up to the skies

5"hark, ye rich, ye nobles, ye shall reap soon what ye sow

For the day of doom is coming that will lay the mighty low.

And your property will canker, and your houses will decay

And the rust upon your silver will burn your flesh away

CHORUS

6)"Community in all things, Abiezer said,

The naked shall have clothing, the hungry must have bread

The great man jails the cutpurse, the rich man starves the poor"

"Without property", said Abiezer "theft would be no more"

 

7)Condemned by Church and Parliament, attacked on every side

They banned his books and burned them, and he was seized and tried

The magistrates condemned him, for vile Blasphemy

He pelted them with nutshells, cried "will you my judges be?"

8)To Newgate jail they took him, the Ranters' dream was dead.

He had no taste for martyrdom "I will recant", he said

"I banished sin, but I have erred, it cannot be denied

that THESE are sins...greed, tyranny, hypocrisy and PRIDE!"

CHORUS

*

9)Abiezer Coppe did away with sin

"My body is my church," he said, "God's dwelling is within"

History disowned him, but his ghost it cannot kill

Haunts the rich and the righteous, drunk and dancing still.

 

CHORUS.

 

 

"The Writing of 'Tipperary'" by Bill Caddick

(sung here by June Tabor):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6ZHLv0ffeRA

Link to the lyrics here:

http://www.tomlewis.net/lyrics/tipperary.htm

About the writing of "It's a Long Way to Tipperary", the Great War love song, and more importantly, about

the events of the last years before that insane mass sacrifice of human life.