Frank Turner - Love, Ire And Song - Live lyrics

A teacher of mine once told me that life was just a list of Disappointments and defeats and you could only do your best And I said, "Well, that's a f**ing cop out", you're just washed up And you're tired and when I get to your age Well, I won't be such a coward But these days I sit at home, I'm known to shout at my TV And punk rock didn't live up to what I'd hoped that it could be And all the things that I believed with all my heart when I was young Are just coasters for beers and clean surfaces for d** and I've packed all my pamphlets with my Bibles at the back of the shelf Well, it was bad enough, the feeling, the first time it hit When you realized your parents let the world all go to sh** And that the values and ideals for which so many fought and died Had been k**ed off in committees and left to die by the way side But it was worse when we turned to the kids on the left And got let down again by some poor excuse for protest By idiot f**ing hippies in fifty different factions Locked inside some kind of sixties battle re-enactment So I hung up my banners in disgust and I head for the door Oh, but once we were young and we were cra** enough to care But I guess, you live and learn, we won't make that mistake again But surely just for one day we could fight and we could win And if only for a little while, we could insist on the impossible Well, we've been a good few hours drinking So I'm going to say what everyone's thinking If we're stuck on this ship and it's sinking Then we might as well have a parade Because if it's still going to hurt in the morning And a better plan's yet to get forming Then where's the harm spending An evening in manning the old barricades So come on, old friends, to the streets Let's be 1905 but not 1917, let's be heroes Let's be martyrs, let's be radical thinkers Who never have to test drive the least of their dreams Let's divide up the world into the damned and the saved And ride to the valley like the old Light Brigade And straighten our backs and not be afraid And they'll celebrate our d**hs with a national parade Leave the morning to the morning, pain can be k**ed With aspirin tablets and vitamin pills But memories of hope and of glorious defeat Are a little bit harder to beat