If You're Going Through Hell

Track Title. 0. 0 These Are My People. 0. 0 About The South. 0. 0 Watching You. 0. 0 Cleaning This Gun (Come On In Boy). 0. 0 In The Middle. 0. 0 Man On A Tractor. 0. 0 Wasted Whiskey. 0. 0 Invisibly Shaken. 0. 0 Angel's Hands. 0. 0 If You're Going Through Hell (Before The Devil Even Knows). Rodney Atkins spent nine years in Nashville struggling to make it as a singer and songwriter. He grew up poor and while he always wanted to be an entertainer, he worked his way through Tennessee Tech before heading to Nashville. He got signed to Curb in 1997, but his first singles failed to make a dent in the charts. He finally hit number four in 2004 with the song "Honesty" and followed it up with an album by the same name. The album was a modest success, and set the stage for If You're Going Through Hell. Wanting to make an album with a less produced sound, Atkins cut the vocals for If You're Going Through Hell in his small home studio. The song was the album's lead single and shot to number one on the charts; it was also the most played country single on radio in 2006. "If You're Going Through Hell (Before the Devil Even Knows)" is a big, anthemic song that tips its hat to everybody who's ever had a hard time. Its soaring chorus is as much pop as country, as is the production, which featuring bagpipes, a thumping drumbeat, and a wall of fiddles and banjos. Other hits include "Cleaning This Gun (Come on in Boy)," the tale of an overprotective father trying to intimidate his daughter's first date by showing up on the front porch with his rifle. Atkins sings it first from the perspective of the young man, then as a new father with a young daughter of his own, and strikes the perfect balance between love and aggression. "These Are My People" is a celebration of growing up country. It's a string of clich s, the kind of song that can sink under its own sentimental weight, but Atkins delivers it with a sly humor that makes it believable.

East Tennessee singer-songwriter Rodney Atkins scored a chart-topper with the title track of this second release, reframing the Irish drinking toast ("May you be in heaven five minutes before the devil knows you're dead") in a modern context and tying it all up in a Celtic/banjo wrapping fit for Keith Urban. It's a solid effort, and performed with unusual aplomb for a newcomer. But as the rest of the album shows, Atkins seems torn between being a thoughtful, poetic craftsman ("Angel's Hands," "Invisibly Shaken," "A Man on a Tractor") and a hero for redneck simpletons. On the opening "These Are My People," he works the family-values-and-small-town stereotypes to death, continuing with "About the South," a Charlie-Daniels-as-God number on which he's backed by an irritating group of chorines that sound suspiciously like the Hee Haw Hunnies. Which path will Atkins ultimately choose, NPR or Wal-Mart? His second single, "Watching You"--a doing-everything-like-Daddy paean--probably tells the tale. --Alanna Nash

Part of a great Remembrance display in the Mod shop Jump The Gun, in North Laine.

Sadly somebody has had a go at the window on the left side, hence the square crop.

Green Fields Of France; lyrics by Eric Bogle

Well, how do you do Private William McBride?
Do you mind if I sit here down by your graveside?
And rest for awhile neath the warm summer sun
I've been walking all day, and I'm nearly done

And I see by your gravestone, you're only nineteen
When you joined the great fallen in nineteen sixteen
Well I hope you died quickly, I hope you died clean
Or poor Willy Mcbride, was it slow and obscene?

Did they beat the drums slowly?
Did they play the pipes lowly?
Did they bugles carry you over as they lowered you down?
And did the band play 'The Last Post' in chorus?
Did the pipes play 'The Flowers Of The Forest'?

And did you leave a wife or a sweetheart behind?
In some loyal heart is your memory enshrined?
And though you died back in nineteen-sixteen
In that faithful heart are you always nineteen?

Or are you a stranger without a name?
Forever enshrined behind some glass pane
In an old photograph, torn and tattered, and stained.
And faded to yellow in a brown leather frame.

Did they beat the drums slowly?
Did they play the pipes lowly?
Did they bugles carry you over as they lowered you down?
And did the band play 'The Last Post' in chorus?
Did the pipes play 'The Flowers Of The Forest'?

Well the sun's shining down on these green fields of France
The warm wind blows gently, and the red poppies dance
The trenches have vanished long under the plow
There's no gas, no barb wire, there's no guns firing now

But here in this graveyard that's still no-man's land
The countless white crosses stand mute in the sand
To man's blind indifference to his fellow man
The whole generation was butchered and damned

Did they beat the drums slowly?
Did they play the pipes lowly?
Did they bugles carry you over as they lowered you down?
And did the band play 'The Last Post' in chorus?
Did the pipes play 'The Flowers Of The Forest'?

And I can't help but wonder young Willy McBride
Do those that lie here know why that they died?
And did they really believe you when you told them the cause
Did they really believe that this war would end wars?

Well the suffering, and the sorrow, the glory of pain
The killing and dying they were all done in vain
For young Willy McBride it's all happened again,
And again, and again, and again, and again...

Did they beat the drums slowly?
Did they play the pipes lowly?
Did they bugles carry you over as they lowered you down?
And did the band play 'The Last Post' in chorus?
Did the pipes play 'The Flowers Of The Forest'?

By season 342 in the year 2338, Cambridge-Smythe's new "showtime" direction for Doctor Who had led to a complete absence of tension, fear or peril in many episodes.

One story in particular saw the Doctor and Millicent star in a musical adventure with the Daleks in a largely nonsensical plot that nonetheless bore more than a passing resemblance to the Rodgers and Hammerstein story “The Sound of Music”.

The episode saw the Doctor and Millicent arrive in Salzburg, Austria, where they became embroiled in the lives of the von Trapp family who were being hounded by a squad of Daleks. The Dalek task force had, in turn, been sent back in time and disguised themselves as Nuns in order to persuade the family to come and sing for them on their home planet of Skaro.

Although suffering heavily from Venusian flu, the Doctor was able to discover that the Daleks’ evil plan was to stage a concert in the distant future featuring thousands of kidnapped musical acts from throughout time.

This once-in-a-lifetime “ultimate concert” was to be broadcast simultaneously by hyper-wave to every planet in the known universe, and whilst everyone was distractedly viewing their telemonitors in excitement, the Daleks would then stage an invasion and conquer all of space in an instant and without resistance.

Featuring such classic tunes as “So Long, Farewell, Exterminate”, “Hover Over Ev’ry Mountain” and “How do you exterminate a problem like Maria?”, many viewers wondered how the BBC were able to get away with such blatant plagiarism. However this was easily achieved by changing several of the lyrics to the songs, such as the opening lines of “Do-Re-Mi”:

“Dough - some cash, a lot of cash
Ray- a beam from a gun”

And so on…

The song “Edelweiss” was also altered significantly and renamed simply and inevitably to “Exterminate”:

“Exterminate, exterminate
Ev'ry morning they flee me
Small and white
Clean and bright
Humans don’t look happy to meet me

Explosions grow
Ash falls like snow
Bodies pile up forever
Exterminate, exterminate
Bless the Dalek race forever”

The episode concluded with the Doctor inadvertently assisting the von Trapps as they fled to Switzerland by infecting the Dalek squad with his Venusian flu and causing many of the mutant creatures to explode inside their casings.

Alas, the Daleks’ final plan was merely delayed, not thwarted by the Doctor, who had gone back to bed, and several thousand years in the future, the universe fell to Dalek oppression amidst the nasal tones of Bob Dylan.

Dr. S.