This was my first song.  It started out as a campaign piece to support the opposition to the Aramoana Aluminum smelter can you imagine how mental that proposal was?

Building such a thing in close proximity to the only albatross colony that is close to a city it would have snapped the golden thread of Dunedins environmental appeal.  It would have been an environmental catastrophe; like the one in bluff that exudes lethal toxins over a massive area and kinda puts the kibosh on other potential industry and all for what?

We run at a loss to support the vandals – enough said.

Anyway, the song became more about comparisons between man & machine vs nature. We can fly high and fast but the envirocost is incalculable.The albatross is loyal and faithful and at one with nature and entwined with mystery.

We by contrast are living by logic and tempered by greed. It’s not logical to shit in our own nest but the ghastly fiction of LTD is our operating system and our psychopathic justifier.

It’s totally nuts but because it’s common practice sanctioned by a crooked legal mechanism – alls well that ends badly.

It’s a good song, tho i say so myself and in fact probs my best song; I should have quit while i was ahead ha ha. Here is a live version from last year. Played on a baritone guitar (Tacoma Thunderhawk) rebuilt by Steve Barkman.

The line that i was proud to find was “every day is your judgement day”.  I feel that a good song is there to be found. It’s like it existed already. All i had to do was chip away the junk around it and reveal the message that was waiting to be found.

It’s like that playing live also the audience can draw new things out of the performer and link their search (with the song.)

Anyway the campaign to stop the madmen from building a smelter was a huge success and I wasn’t directly part of it.  The leader of it was some years later gunned down by David Gray.

I really want to know more about this Save Aramoana issue and write more about it.  Anyone out there remember anyone who was involved with the movement to stop the smelter? (Comment below please.)

The people involved deserve the equivalent of the Victoria cross for environmental heroism.  Dunedin owes them a huge debt of gratitude if only there were more people willing to front up and appose the Licence To Destroy (LTD) merchants.

Listen to another version of the song and buy if you like it ( below.)