FEELING A LITTLE ALIENATED FROM THE MEANS OF PRODUCTION?  We're here to help.  This is the part of the website where you get to go backstage, discover lyrics and setlists scribbed on little scraps of paper, and get right inside the minds, bodies and sweat stains of the Consumer Goods as they truly are.  It's just like that dream that Comrade Rutherford had, where he was suddenly thrust into the role of lead singer of the Consumer Goods, but he didn't know any of the words... only now, you'll never have that problem.  Which is good, because in the aforementioned dream, Shipley reamed the good comrade out after the show and told him to 'learn the fucking words,' which is exactly the sort of thing he would do, knowing him.  'Dictatorship of the Proletariat,' indeed.  More like 'treat your web designers like shit so that they have to sneak these rebellious statements into the middle of large text blocks where you'll NEVER find them, motherfucker!  Yeah, suck it!'  Sorry, hey look, can we get back on topic here?  God, you're always distracting me.  So it's all here for you, although really, you could just as easily listen on our myspace.  But then you wouldn't be able to read the words as you were singing them, and you would have to do that thing where you sort of mouth the words so it looks like you know them, and then just chime in on obvious words like "love" and "you" and "imperialist bastard."  The choice is yours - either way, we hope the experience will bring you one step closer to the revolutionary way. 

THE ANTI-IMPERIAL CABARET

AVAILABLE JULY 26, 2008

Tyler Shipley - singing, guitars, harmonica, melodica

Ryan McVeigh - bass, singing, guitars, percussion, production

Matt Hildebrand - drums, percussion

Matt McLennan - guitars

Ian Jeffrey - guitars, keyboards

Andrew Workman - percussion, singing, the clap

Ken Phillips - singing, the clap

Billy Western - pedal steel

Mat Klachefsky - trombones, keyboards

(All words by Tyler Shipley)

Day Job at the DND (Department of National Defense):  well i need a short haired girl and i need some therepy, and i need some mid-tempo rock 'n' roll as i go to work for the DND... where i'll be making plans to orchestrate the overthrow of some state i don't know.  well i get a decent wage and everyone looks up to me and i feel OK about myself some of the time as i go to work for the DND... where i'll be making plans to orchestrate the overthrow of some state i don't know.  if we blow off your arms or legs it's for democratic aims.

Aliens Have Feelings Too:  every day i read the things they say about me: "illegal and alien, they steal our jobs and money."  stupid fucks - they don't know how much they're not paying us.  it's not enough that we clean up your shit and pee, cos while you're shaming us and calling us names we're inexpensive inputs for your middle-class products (even though we'll never try them cos we can't afford to buy them.)  i used to want to kill you, but now i don't have the energy.  you'll get yours someday and i'll get what's coming to me.

Matt Said I'd Get Mangled And Gods Damn He Was Right:  i'm jealous of the sky cos it can't be bought and sold.  i'm jealous of the lies cos they never get old.  i'm jealous of the truth cos it does not exist.  i'm jealous of the rich cos they've got nothing to resist.  and all of the time i'm wasting on my own hoping that you die alone.  i'm jealous of your mind cos it's out of my control.  i'm jealous of the night cos it's so goddam cold.  i wish that i could float without a rubber ring.  i'm jealous of a stone cos it don't feel a thing.  and all of the time i'm wasting on my own hoping that you die alone.  i take my pills, i swallow them whole.  i lay in bed, i try to let go.  chain reactors and thinking patterns and why do i have to hold closer, tighter, like a cigarette lighter, always ready to explode.  gimme back my head.  gimme back my head.

Ideology of Improvement:  a three o' clock date with a therapist i hate fixin' shit i didn't think was broke.  but nothing gets good - i don't get over it like i should - so what say we celebrate the taking of this earth from the folks who got here first cos we really turned things around (chopping up the land so white men in wigs could take a stand about their private, stolen, property.)  but why should they complain?  hell, it's too late!  we came!  and we even let a few of them live!  may even come a day when we don't make 'em feel ashamed for thinking "this land is ours, we never gave up this land when we signed those treaties."  every day i get sober, i get a little bit older, and it gets harder to laugh.  i'm so commercialized that i don't even think twice about a bottle of water and a private golf course and a bus shack made so the walls don't reach the pavement so the folks inside sleeping there at night get so fucking cold that they'll change their mind, i suppose, and stop 'choosing' not to have a home.  "they say we have freedom of assembly, they say we have these fundamental rights and freedoms.  but when we try to exercise them, this is what happens - they arrest our people, they handcuff them, they pepper spray them, they throw them in jail... and then the kill 'em!"

Hockey Night in Afghanada:  fuck don cherry!  there, i said it.  how long are we gonna let it be okay to turn hockey skates into recruitment gates for the army?  'beautiful boys' on the screen, white faces shaved so smooth and clean - noble hearts in the noble arts of war and occupation.  there's nothing about pucks in nets, skates on ice, sticks on skin that says "it's okay if some brown person loses a limb."  there's nothing about ron maclean, the CBC, hits from behind that say "it's alright to bomb a few foreigners from the sky."  fuck the anthems that celebrate the ass we kick on a foreign stage - the only leaf i see is losing 6-3 and that's fine with me, oh i know... it seems a harmless thing as we stand and sing, but in afghanada it's another thing.  there's no peace to keep when you ride up in a jeep and you blow the bleep out of some children. there's nothing about pucks in nets, skates on ice, sticks on skin that says "it's okay if some brown person loses a limb."  there's nothing about ron maclean, the CBC, hits from behind that say "it's alright to bomb a few foreigners from the sky." 

Serve and Protect, Uh!:  i give my taser a woman's name.  i call that bitch 'veronica.'  and if you step out of line again, my ronnie's gonna send one hundred fucking volts through your skull, uh!  oh yeah!  oh yeah!  oh yeah!  oh yeah!  i like to stroke my taser at night, so i can trust her when the shit goes down.  imagine if some kid tried to read without his library card... my ronnie snaps in line, sends a shock into his spine, and it gets me hard.  oh yeah!  oh yeah!  oh yeah!  oh yeah!  i'm such a big, big man and i do it cos i can, yeah, i do it cos i can.  no, no, that's wrong, just wait.  i'm just keeping people safe.  yeah, i'm keeping people safe.

The Lord's Not On My Side:  snow is falling down on this suburb of a middle class town and the TV is off so the world is nowhere to be found.  and that's just as well, you see, cos i'm tired of the misery.  if a bomb goes off in the desert and i'm not there, well, it doesn't make a sound.  and your hands in my hands make everything else so abstract.  and i drink imported chai tea cos i don't believe in fair-trade coffee, and my back is really sore so patting some more won't do anything for me.  but a fire would be nice... here's a newspaper picture of condoleeza rice asking god to forgive all the terrorists, without a hint of irony.  but the lord's not on my side, so you don't have to fear for your life.  and it's so hard to fix everything, so i'm fixing a song to sing, to inspire someone else.

The Terminator Rules:  well i'm moving to a town where the faucet water's brown, and you can stand in the center and look all the way around and not a single blade of grass is pokin' through the broken ground.  every mornin' i wake up and cross the valley in a broken bus, for the old, fat, white men who piss on us if we don't keep their gardens greener than the sneer on a hundred bucks.  oh god, it's good to be in the land of the free!  cos i don't need my dignity - the impoverished-alien-scapegoat's life for me!  oh the terminator rules for the folks with swimming pools.  and our overcrowded schools have more metal-detecting tools than textbooks.  oh god, it's good to be in the land of the free!  cos i don't need my dignity - the impoverished-alien-scapegoat's life for me!

Back of a Bank Letter:  putting prints up on the wall of my apartment on the tenth floor of a building in toronto.  far away from the fights and the resistance that i wish i could stand beside instead of always being so fucking useless.  i write these words on the back of a letter from the bank which i'm so powerfully opposed.  see, i can tell you what they're doing with my money in argentina and i don't like it.  but i'm still sitting, self-absorbed and paralysed.  what's the matter?  am i spoiling your night?  cos i'm guilty of inaction and you know i'm right?  and if i'm right about me i'm probably right about you - what are you gonna do?  what are you gonna do?  why don't you tear me to pieces?  why don't you step on my teeth?  why don't you fuck all of my friends where everybody can see?  why don't you see?  why don't you see?

The Ungrateful Volcano:  the ungrateful volcano spits on the hand the frees it from it's backwards tranquility - we land upon and seize it.  the ungrateful volcano expodes in shards of metal fear.  it simmers in resistance that civilizing eyes can't hear.  the ungrateful volcano should be shitting down your throat to stem the flow of freedom you deliver with a lock-n-load.  the ungrateful volcano would like to thank sir winston churchill the brave for gassing folk who refused to pay for services he never gave.