.."sitting on a barbed wire fence, racing the clouds home" That's the line that gave me goosebumps when I first heard it on the Friday Rock Show in 1987. That's the line that still does it in 2017.
I'm a LONGTIME Marillion fan and this is one of their best ! Powerful and poetic, and, as others here have said, still relevant so many years later, Marillion at their best !
I was there... Best concert ever! We were visiting relatives in East Berlin and didn't know Marillion was playing there. Our realtives had got tickets for free and didn't want to go... Did we want them? The most bizzar part of the whole concert was "White Russian" with it's very political lyrics. Fish sang "where do we go from here?" in a country where noone could go anywhere without reporting it to the police. It was a very stange feeling to hear that there. We could go, they couldn't...
Where do we go from here? Where do we go from here? Where do we go from here? Where do we go from here? They boarded up the synagogues Uzi's on a street corner You can't take a photograph Of Uzi's on a street corner The DJ resigned today They wouldn't let him have his say Surface scratched where the needles play Uzi's on a street corner Where do we go from here? Terror in Rue De St. Dennis Murder on the periphery Someone else in someone else's pocket Christ knows, I don't know how to stop it Poppies at the cenotaph The cynics can't afford to laugh I heard in on the telegraph There's Uzi's on a street corner Where do we go from here? Where do we go from here? The more I see, the more I hear The more I find fewer answers I close my mind, I shout it out But you know it's getting harder To calm me down, to reason out To come to terms with what it's all about I'm uptight, can't sleep at night I can't pretend every thing's alright My ideals, my sanity They seem to be deserting me To stand up and fight I know we have six million reasons They're burning down the synagogues Uzi's on a street corner The heralds of the holocaust Uzi's on a street corner The silence never louder than now How quickly we forgot our vows This resurrection we can't allow Uzi's on a street corner Where do we go from here? Where do we go from here? We buy fresh bagels from the corner store Where swastikas are spat from aerosols I sit in the bar sippin' iced, white Russian Trying to score, but nobody's pushin' And everyone looks at everyone's faces Searching for signs And prayin' for traces of a conscience In residence Are we sittin' on a barbed wire fence? Racin' the clouds home Racin' the clouds home We place our faith in human rights In the paper wars, tie the red tape tight I know that I would rather be Out of this conspiracy In the gulags and internment camps Frozen faces in nameless ranks I know that they would rather be Standing here beside me Racin' the clouds home Racin' the clouds home You can shut your eyes, you can hide it away It's gonna come back another day Racin' the clouds home Are we racin' the clouds home? Racin' the clouds home
And everyone looks at everyone's faces, searching for signs and praying for traces. Of a conscience in residence - are we sitting on a barbed wire fence?
The racing the clouds home and the musical box tune at the end as the box shuts goosebumps. Sure I read somewhere that fish got the idea for this visiting one of the concernation camps could be wrong.
