When the Empire Falls

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Between 1964 and '67 color television and FM radio gained a foothold in the American household. The hypnosis of television was galvanizing as color changed the look of fashion, and "modernity" was made synonymous with color. To young bohemian types, color was a symbol of freedom, the freedom to dress as you pleased, with no restrictions on fashion or style. This alone was a form of consciousness raising.

Similarly, between 2004 and 2007 witnessed the creation of new internet giants: Google, Youtube, Huffington Post, and Facebook. The effect the internet had on world culture was instantaneous, seismic in nature, revolutionary in changing work and play habits, and, to me, very similar, in a strange way, to the effect LSD had on me back in the 1960s.

Insofar as the model used for this album, before it dissipated into other areas, was the Beatles Revolver album of 1966, each of the first six or seven songs is a direct or oblique response to the sequence of songs on the Revolver album. The contrast between Tax Man and When the Empire Falls, speaks to how things have changed since 1966.

When the Empire Falls

The internet trips the world, digital lsd.
First trip I took, it was the weirdest place I’ll ever be.
Shut off all my filters, receptors opened wide,
thinkin’ I never knew I had, blowing up in my mind.

The universe is in my body like an eagle gazing down
on the world’s imagination. What it wants is on the ground.
Yesterday is never what it was. Tomorrow never is,
and now’s the time, here’s the place where it all begins.

When the empire falls who’ll be alive to tell
of the days of shame and glory, before the devil sold the gates of hell.
Who will drink the koolaid, make the promise once again
to make right all that’s wrong, when nature’s way is payback,
when the empire’s gone - when the empire falls.

Freedom’s days are always numbered, angry weather, too much debt.
You take what you have time for, what your body won’t forget.
Freedom’s mind is open, your weapon is your brain.
Your hands be on the heartline. Your words be wet as rain
when the empire falls.

Tears in the desert, that’s all you get to drink.

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