TV Smith: Thin Green Line (1995)

TV Smith (more here), formerly of The Adverts (more HERE) has never lost his knack for penning songs with cutting lyrics that assail the privileged with unforgettable tunes that can rouse almost anyone. "Thin Green Line" isn't so-called folk-punk but a blazing punk song hammered out on an acoustic guitar. How TV Smith keeps his energy and passion burning so hot is a mystery I'm not sure I want solved:

Thin Green Line

We're faced with mile-high piles of money
Sitting in banks
Gold bars, credit cards
Aeroplanes and tanks
Buy, buy, satisfy
Call me when you're rich
Cheap food, cows dying in a ditch

We're having a hard time
Holding the thin green line

We're faced with out-of-town shopping malls
Suburban housing boom
Inner city empty lots
Damp in all the rooms
Bulls and bears, speculators
Marks, francs, yen
And the baby's crying again

We're having a hard time
Holding the thin green line

So come on down to the bottle bank
Make your deposit and relax
Nothing's going on behind your back
We'll make all the big decisions
You just watch the television
Smash the brown!
Smash the green!
Smash the clear!
It won't happen here

We're having a hard time
Holding the thin green Line

We watch the last of the species
Vanish from the screens
And get replaced by killer dogs
And their man on the scene
There are peeping toms, pop songs
Crime and sin and sex
All spewing out on newsprint
While the forest dies a death
They're cooling down reactors
While the natives die of thirst
They say let's all pull together
You first

We're having a hard time
Holding the thin green line

They say let's all pull together - you first
But they never pull together
No wonder we're having a hard time
Holding the thin green line

This Tom Robinson fortified E.P. also includes a sturdy version "The Lion and the Lamb", a pile-driving take on "Runaway Train Driver" (both originally from March of the Giants) and a hard-strumming attack on the Adverts "Gary Gilmore's Eyes". Like the album, the single is way-out-of-print.

(Image courtesy of Record Collectors of the World Unite)

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