Cat Empire and Kansas

[Proginoskes]

Cat Empire is an Aussie band with lots of fun songs.One Four Five:

Oh listen doctor I've a pain

That grows inside myself

So help me please

I just can't ease the pain

I need some drugs to help

Ah pollution fills my lungs

And convolution fills my mind

Ah my legs do ache

I contemplate

That living's less than fine

My spine does tingle

When I think of being

Freed from this curse

But what is worse I feel

Life is a bubble

Blown until it's burst

Oh doctor I am desperate

To get rid of this feeling

Oh doctor I am desperate

For some good soul healing

The doctor turned and gave a grin

And reached into his bag

But instead of an injection

Got a record with a tag

That said listen to this daily

With hip shaking and such things

Then he puts the record on

Grabs a mic and starts to sing

You need some

One four five

To make you high to make you high

To make you high to make you high

When heaven falling from the sky

To make you high to make you high

Oh, doctor I am feeling better

What was that you sang

Did you write it or recite it

Or just steal it from a band

Ah my bones are feeling stronger

And my spirit's feeling fresh

Ah that dose of 145 has put the life

Back in my breath

'yes yes yes' the doctor said

Then he sat me down and say

'young man don't think I wrote

These chords they're written in your brain'

And when you hear them

There's a shakedown that begins within the mind

Cos these three chords make people

Feeling better all the time whah-oh

They keep repeating

Like a scratch on a CD
But it's quality cos these three harmonies

Breed positivity

Protecting against insanity

Of modern insecurities

Believe me when I tell you

All you need is to be hearing all that

One four five

To make you high to make you high

To make you high to make you high

When they said what and you said why

To make you high to make you high

The doctor turned and gave a grin

And reached into his bag

But instead of an injection

Got a record with a tag

That said listen to this daily

With hip shaking and such things

Then he puts the record on

Grabs a mic and starts to sing

You need some

One four five

To make you high to make you high

When you could not count to pi

When you're told you can't fly

To make you high to make you high

Times like these you need some

One four five .... Hmmmmm

Power: for 24 hours, songs that feature the I-IV-V chord progression lift the mood of any number of targets in addition to their other effects.
The Wine Song:

Songs and melodies change and change and sway

But they still stay the same

The songs that we sung when the dark days come

Are the songs that we sung when we chased them away

If I ever found a pot of gold

I'd buy bottles untold of the nectar of the vines

I'm going to die with a twinkle in my eye

'cause I sung songs spun stories loved laughed and drank wine
CHORUS:
Tomorrow is another day

The cats are out to play, to play

That old rusty spaceship wants to sail

Into the milky way again

On a river of red red wine
Run (x13)
Let's have some
Fun (x15)
We'll
Drink (x13)A toast to theSun (x15)(Repeat from "Run")

In summer the bushfires rage and rage and rage

On such beautiful days

And we fight them with water that runs through the cracks

Water we're desperately trying to save

So I'll just live on wine and water my vines

And sleep on the wind with the fires right behind

And sing on the beaches and swim through the night

Oh we'll cry 'pass the wine, pass the wine, pass the wine'

CHORUS

Oh what a beautiful day today!

Today's a day to celebrate

Grab your bucket, grab your spade

We're heading down to Half Moon Bay

I saw a plane go into a cloud

I'm drunk I'm happy I'm singing and loud

Two o'clock in the arvo, but hey that's allowed...

I'm having a good time and of that I am proud

Power: This could go in any number of directions: bottomless bottles of wine, Area Effect: Happy Drunkenness, allowing spaceships to run on wine instead of their usual fuel, water-to-wine transmutation...
The Crowd:

[Chorus:]
Lord unchain my hands
Let me sing inside the crowded trams
Let me dance among the traffic jams
We're going to sleep on the St Kilda sands
Lord unbind my feet
Let me mingle with the good people we meet
Water rising up into the street
Unbind my feet

'The apparition of these faces in the crowd;
Petals on a wet black bough"
Ezra Pound found the formula
Our houses are rectangular
But life is curved not angular
So when things start to strangle ya
Remember
Rain still falls on the halls of power
New babies being born every hour
And the eagle keeps watch on the old clock tower
Over me...
[Chorus]

On the train I refrain from sitting with head and shoulders bowed
They told me time is of the essence
No wandering allowed
But then I saw a pretty girl
Whose features stood out in the crowd
Went ten minutes past my stop waiting for her to look around
I'm just another clown kicking around in Melbourne town
Cooling out, relaxing, watching the world go round
So if you ever got the time
And you want to go drink some wine
I'd rather greet you with a smile
Than greet you with a frown...
[120% more bombastic chorus]

Power: everyone in AoE becomes friendlier and more outgoing: pedestrians smile and say hello to strangers, passengers of public transit strike up conversations and maybe make friends with their commute-buddies, that kind of thing. Despite the bombast of the tune, the lyrics don't suggest a flashy or unsubtle power.

---

I've posted Kansas songs before. This thread was originally going to be just Cat Empire, but I wanted to post this song without spawning another thread or necroing an earlier one.
Portrait (He Knew):

He had a thousand ideas
You might have heard his name
He lived alone with his vision
Not looking for fortune or fame

Never said too much to speak of
He was off on another plane
The words that he said were a mystery
Nobody's sure he was sane

But he knew
Knew more than me or you
No one could see his view
Where was he going to?

He was in search of an answer
The nature of what we are
He was trying to do it a new way
He was bright as a star

But nobody understood him
"His numbers are not the way"
He's lost in the deepest enigma
That no one's unraveled today

But he knew
He knew more than me or you
No one could see his view
Oh, where was he going to?
And he tried
But before he could tell us he died
When he left us the people cried
Where was he going to? Oh....

He had a different idea
A glimpse of the master plan
He could see into the future
A true visionary man

But there's something he never told us
It died when he went away
If only he could have been with us
No telling what he might say

But he knew
He knew more than me or you
No one could see his view
Where was he going to?
But he knew
You could tell by the picture he drew
It was totally something new
Oh, where was he going to?

Power: gives Doug access to senses normally restricted to Celestials.
(Edited to fix a minor error in the lyrics for One Four Five, and more recently to change the link for The Crowd, because the old video had been made private.)

[Proginoskes]

More Cat Empire! The Chariot:

This is a song that came upon me
One night
When the news it had been telling me
About one more war and one more fight
And 'aeh' I sighed but then
I thought about my friends
Then I wrote this declaration
Just in case the world end

Our guns
We shot them in the things we said
Ah we didn't need no bullets
Cos we rely on some words instead
Kill someone in argument
Outwit them with our brains
And we'd kill ourselves laughing
At the funny things we'd say

And bombs
We had them saved for special times
When the crew would call a shakedown
We break down a party landmine
Women that so sexy
They explode us with their looks
Ah we blowing up some speakers
Jumping round till the ground shook

And missiles
They were the roadtrips that we launched
T-t-tripping across this island
Starting missions at the break of dawn
Yawn and smile say
'what direction shall we take?'

'Somewhere where it warm and wet'
This be the route we'd always take and

Our weapons were our instruments
Made from timber and steel
We never yielded to conformity
But stood like kings
In a chariot that's riding on a
Record wheel

And our airforce flying
When the frisbee in the sky
Have a session while we're smoking
Now we're feeling extra high
And we'd sneak into a carpark
With the skaties on our back
And we're flying down the levels howling
'on the attack now on the attack'

And battles
They happened in these dancehalls
See we'd rather fight with music
Choosing when the rhythm warms
Battle at these shakedowns
And we battle at these gigs
We do battle in our bedrooms
Made some sweet love to the beat

Then our allies grew
Wherever we would roam
See whenever we're together
Any stranger feel at home
In a way we are an army
But this army not destruct
No instead we're doing simple things
Good loving find it run amuck

This be a declaration
Written about my friends
It's engraved into this song
So they know I'm not forgetting them
See maybe if the world contained
More people like these
Then the news would not be telling me
About all that warfare endlessly and

Our weapons were our instruments
Made from timber and steel
We never yielded to conformity
But stood like kings
In a chariot that's riding on
A record wheel

Power: creates a large van or small bus suitable for transporting a band of 6-8 people and associated instruments. It's a pretty cushy bus, with integrated sound system; one that has a turntable incorporated. The bus comes into existence with a 45 of The Chariot on the table and playing, which is a good thing, since it refuses to move if no record is being played. If Doug replaces the default 45 with an LP of Cat Empire songs, the bus will persist for the entire duration of the side. (This is instead of, not in addition to, any other effects those songs may normally have. A bit of a pity if one of them is The Crowd, but definitely a good thing with The Wine Song: happy drunk driving is still drunk driving.)

How to Explain:

When a room becomes an altar
And what beast that must exist
It flies with music from our lips
And steals a kiss and blows it
Out into the mist
Where castles stand on cliffs
And cobbled streets they wind and drift
And moods are made and set but shift
This place where skies are low
And birds are big

We went to sleep in day
And woke again the same day
We have learned to cheat the time
And find the hours
That the clocks cannot define
As I looked up from that stage
I felt the thing that had been made
And how it raged
And how it raged

How to explain?
Something makes me howl
And shiver to the core
Ah outside if it was raining
Then inside there'd be a storm
We've got a pair of hands for climbing
And a pair of knees to spring
And a pair of balls for strength
And a pair of lungs to sing
And these simple chords
That say: music is the language of us all

To write these songs is to be written
Ah the chorus always knows
What is in store
And what is more the thing that sings us
Is the thing that makes us roar
I felt that beast 'kisso my neck
We clapped our hands
And heard them spread
There was a trumpet and a call
A pack of Spaniards screamed for more
Music is the language of us all
Music is the language of us all
Music is the language of us all
Music is the language of us all

I find it hard to speak emotional
Cos these things are the things that
Can't be said
And when it's struck it strikes
The memory from our heads
Once I wrote to play's
To be immortal for a night
And despite the unknown hours
Something happens
When the light turns out the lights
Then we fade and yawn
To music that's the language of us all

This song definitely does something to do with communication, but whether it's a help or a hindrance is anybody's guess. I'm certain that it should be area-effect and indiscriminate, whatever it does.
((Edit comment: Can you not inline-video those YouTube links, Yuku? plskthx))

[robkelk]

Music is the language of us all
Music is the language of us all
Music is the language of us all
Music is the language of us all

This song definitely does something to do with communication,

Whatever message you want to get across, sing it and there's no language barrier.
--
Rob Kelk
"Governments have no right to question the loyalty of those who oppose
them. Adversaries remain citizens of the same state, common subjects of
the same sovereign, servants of the same law."

- Michael Ignatieff, addressing Stanford University in 2012

[DHBirr]

robkelk wrote:

---

Whatever message you want to get across, sing it and there's no language barrier.

"What's Opera, Doc?"  "Why, it's the ultimate translation tool!" (To the same tune as Elmer's first reference to his "spear and magic helmet!")
Edit to clarify the music.
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Big Brother is watching you.  And damn, you are so bloody BORING.