THE FATIMA MANSIONS--Bertie's Brochures [Lyrics attempt]

Released 1991.
File collated by Dave Watson/SHLF. Send updates and corrections to him here.
Corrections gleaned from The Hive archives at the now-missing Valhalla Avenue web site.
Samples are in ("round brackets with quotation marks.")
Questionable phrases are in [square brackets.]
All songs written by Cathal Coughlan and published 1991 Mucho Loco Music except where indicated.

To avoid an empty feeling of mild irritation and pensiveness, it is recommended that the listener refrain from reading the lyrics as the album plays. However, it's your excessive sum of money that's been paid...

SONGS:
Behind the Moon
Bertie's Brochures
Shiny Happy People
Mario Vargas Yoni
Smiling
Long About Now
The Great Valerio

Behind The Moon

Green bed of bottles, open to the sky
Bare head of drunk man, the beads of sweat go dry
He says he's sorry, tender as a lamb
she says, "go," meaning, "stay," meaning, "You have to pay"

Behind the moon, in the dead zone
in the darkness where lovers all are blind

Sources of light in this land of the dead
are electric shocks and blows to the head
The silence broken by his voice alone
saying, "yes," meaning, "no," as he tears down their home

Behind the moon, in the dead zone
I'll still be calling, calling out for you
Behind the moon, when all hope has gone
Well, what else would you have me do?

Green bed of bottles
Green bed of bottles and bottles and...

Bertie's Brochures

August the 20th: Yes, folks, it's another cold, clammy day in England. A large crowd has gathered around the police station. Everybody--EVERYBODY--wishes to have contact with a certain little Irish writer within. Not to discuss his works, though the works are known to them; they've been published in the tabloid papers by the police under the heading "Barbaric Butcher's Brochures". No, they want to tear his very head from his body, for what it is alleged he did in the way of mortal damage to two soldiers in a nearby public lavatory. The night draws in. Nobody would say a word about him, except a fool like me [(and his skin)].

In rainy Ireland in the 50's
There outside a pink farmhouse door
A small Bertie, playing at digging trenches,
asks, "Daddy, what's the blowtorch for?"
He said, "The torch will cut the cars to turn them into sculpture
so I can express what I feel. The college men may laugh,
the farmers persecute me, but I do for myself. So should you."

Come look at Bertie's brochures
You'll be enchanted, I am sure
The whole world's in Bertie's brochures:
All the wisdom, the smiles of dear friends

Through freakshow Britain, through the Eighties
Bertie works in labs, though his father's aims still endure
though only at night does he do his real work
Learning, writing his brochures...

for he still believes that everyone's a poet
and that all he has to do is to set it down
and so transform the milkman,
the waitress and the gunman into immortal ART!!

Now they're laughing at Bertie's brochures
Detectives with crowbars and skewers
They see things in Bertie's brochures:
Their own hatred of all other races and their fear

Don't laugh at Bertie's brochures
He would not if they were yours
So what if your enemy is there?
Bertie's an artist, so why should he care?
It's the north European peasant experience

Shiny Happy People