Plus a memory came back from 6TH FORM - MARY YARDLEY telling me about our new English tutor who was going to run a supplementary studies course - a sort of cultural studies number...whereby you brought in your favourite records - he played them...you then analysed the songs and discussed the lyrics..."it'll be a DOS" said YARDLEY (I wonder now - a computer DOS reference - although it those days it meant 'playing around and not working')...and it was much funnier than it sounds...particularly as the first record up was COPACABANA by BARRY MANILOW...a student told us that she and her mother had gone to every concert in the UK...strange new English tutor (who had been recruited without a teaching qualification by FRANKLIN the principal - and whom YARDLEY referred to as the 'teddybear') collapsed into giggles after that bizarre SCREAM some way through the song and was incapable of speaking, for some while - after the song had finished on the turnstyle...

We all had to sit there in silence and try not to giggle too...it was a very strange first 'lesson'...and I now know that TODDY had set it up...you see we then got BLACK SABBATH and the two male students handed round the photocopied lyrics of this song:

Black Sabbath Paranoid Lyrics

Finished with my woman 'cause she couldn't help me with my mind
People think I'm insane because I am frowning all the time
All day long I think of things but nothing seems to satisfy
Think I'll lose my mind if I don't find something to pacify
Can you help me occupy my brain?
Oh yeah
I need someone to show me the things in life that I can't find
I can't see the things that make true happiness, I must be blind
Make a joke and I will sigh and you will laugh and I will cry
Happiness I cannot feel and love to me is so unreal
And so as you hear these words telling you now of my state
I tell you to enjoy life I wish I could but it's too late

After that song had played out…I was thinking in terms of BARRY MANILOW - gay S/M freak (look at the hair and why else would he be singing about women getting murdered?) and BLACK SABBATH - dead-head meatheads (and their followers who have never had a girlfriend in their lives)…so I can see that as the lesson progressed - you began to get a good idea of the influences upon us as young students and how potentially damaging they could be…

Anyway, STAIRWAY TO HEAVEN was then played and two female students told everybody that it was DEMONIC and that if you played it backwards you got some sort of Satanic message/feedback…they were the most sensible of the lot…well-informed…I cannot remember much about the other songs played that day but I can remember TODDY telling me to play the TRICK OF THE TAIL album by GENESIS because he wanted to gauge reactions…nobody particularly liked or disliked it…

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Trick_of_the_Tail_(song)

Like much of the A Trick of the Tail album the songs lyrics focus on a specific character; the "Beast" who leaves his own kingdom and enters the world of humans. He is captured and put on display in a freak show after his captors refuse to believe in his kingdom. The Beast laments his decision to leave his home, describing it as a paradise covered in gold. His captors then release him in exchange for leading them to his world. However, just as they see what appears to be a "golden spire", the Beast has vanished, leaving only his voice (singing the refrain of the song). The title of the song likely refers to the appearance of the beast who is depicted as a Devil-like character with the hoofs and tail of a horse, a humanoid upper-body and goats horns.

Anyway, MARY YARDLEY played her ‘folksy album’ which had been handed down to her, by her parents…and this caused a really big stir in relation to strange English tutor asking if he could borrow it in order to copy it…I have no idea who the group was or the album…nobody had ever heard of them before…and also the two young women who had complained of the demonic in relation to ‘Stairway to Heaven’…so this particular ‘hippie’ folksy group had interested those who appeared be quite genned up about the ‘demonic’ in pop music…and I have no idea why. I simply looked at the cover - heard the song - thought ‘folk’ and immediately tuned out. YARDLEY told the class that the album was a ‘story’ of sorts…about a family or a community…it involved a large group of people…but she hadn’t quite worked it out…there were loose ends that she had to tie up, in relation to the lyrics…she had obviously been puzzling over it for some while…an enigma, of sorts and she had asked her parents and relatives to help her decode it…

I now have to type in RED code: luchumpo