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Rigs Of The Times (Roud 876) is a traditional English folk song about profiteering, corruption and greed, dating from the early 1800s. There are some amazing versions by Shirley Collins, Sandy Denny and more recently Bellowhead. The ‘rigs’ in the original are tricks used by a butcher, a baker, a publican and a miller to swindle their customers, blaming the Napoleonic Wars. In 1999, Maddy Prior sang of the rigs of our times: transnational corporations, political bungs and privatised utilities. Twenty years on, Brexit and COVID have given the perfect cover for accelerated profiteering – asset stripping the nation, dodgy contracts for Tory donors, criminalising protest. Honesty’s all out of fashion, and the game is still rigged.
We’re releasing Rigs on May Day, aka International Workers’ Day. Traditionally, a spring festival of renewal, where people take to the streets and stand up to the fatcats. The May Day festival is in decline in Britain. The land is under a spell, fixated on the spectre of colonial glory. Our Maypole is surrounded by seven scarecrows. The victorious Brexiteers, puffed with sovereignty: Lord Gentry, Karen Fury, Master of the Hunt, Lady Chelsea, Para Dave, Mister Gammon, and Captain Football. A heptagram of paranoid patriotic fantasies, sexualised rage and shame, misogyny and xenophobia. And us in the middle of it all, singing our hearts out in a folk song, because what else is there to do? What else but cut to some of the kids we know, standing on the streets of Margate. Holding their empty signs of protest, freshness and clarity shining in their eyes.
lyrics
Well first it was spending too much on campaigns,
Saying out with the foreigners, the EU's to blame.
Using Facebook to sell propaganda to us
And a ten foot high lie on the side of a bus.
It seems honesty’s all out of fashion
These are the rigs of the times
Times me boys
These are the rigs of the times.
Let’s take Brexit and COVID-19 on the chin;
Every issue’s a battle that we’re going to win!
Coz its always the billionaire winners who choose
The value of life that we all stand to lose.
Because honesty’s all out of fashion…
Now it’s clap to say thanks to the brave NHS.
Well we may as well clap to save Tinkerbell next.
No more pay for the nurses, no visors or masks,
Just millions in contracts for the boys in first class,
Singing honesty’s all out of fashion…
Here’s to all the small businesses falling apart;
Living on credit’s a delicate art.
For three hundred a month on the dole, many thanks,
Pay the rent, pay the mortgage: it all pays the banks.
Honesty’s all out of fashion…
Now the very best dream that we could find
Is to pop them all off in a high gale of wind
And when they get up there, the cloud it will burst
And the biggest old rascals come tumbling down first
Singing honesty’s all out of fashion…
credits
released May 1, 2021
Music and Lyrics: Clair Le Couteur & Carli Jefferson
Recording, Mixing, Mastering: Julian Whitfield, SpaceSequoia.com
Broken folk experiments by Clair Le Couteur (vocals, drones) and Carli Jefferson (vocals, percussion). MOJO Magazine Top Ten Folk Albums 2019 & 2021. Weird musical performances in the Anglo-Celtic tradition.
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