Sunday 28 February 2010

Death Planet Commandos: Jesus Stole My Skateboard


( This one's for my mate Glenn. )

When I was a crap guitarist in the almost-legendary Death Planet Commandos I wrote the occasional lyric for the band. One time I set out to write a deliberately trashy, surf-punk kind of song with the dumbest lyrics I could dredge up from my feeble brain. Cool 12 feet-tall bass-player Jon provided the music, as well as the above artwork for a cassette sleeve ( remember those? ) for one of our official bootlegs. Please look away now if you're a Christian or easily offended, or both.....

Jesus stole my skateboard
He's cruising down the Gaza Strip
Taking speed and LSD
He's on a Holy Trip

Chorus:
You'd better ride that skateboard, Jesus
You'd better ride that skateboard fast
'Cos if those Romans have their way
You know your skating days won't last

Jesus stole my skateboard
But thieving is a sin
As sure as my name is Judas
I'm gonna turn that Hippy in

Chorus

Jesus stole my skateboard
But I don't give a toss
He's gonna find it hard to skate
When he's nailed upon his cross

( Repeat Chorus until false ending, then once more and we're outta here )


This was always a popular song for some reason and was good fun to play, with a very basic, crunchy guitar riff and a false ending nicked from The Who's Won't Get Fooled Again. Good times!

6 comments:

Saranga said...

ha! you were doing alright on the inoffensive front until the last line!
I can imagine it got you a lot of applause!

Simon B said...

Yeah, it always went down well. It's a very adolescent lyric really, which is damning 'cos I was about 22 when I wrote it. But, as I said, it was deliberately dumb :-)

Glenn Lander said...

Absolute class - always a favourite. Good sleeve too mate...

Simon B said...

Cheers, Glenn, thought you'd like it! I can't take any credit for the sleeve - that was Jon's - but I have got at least one more gig poster to put on here.

Mark said...

Actually, Jon didn't write the music, it was based on a couple of riffs I'd come up with. A bit of tweaking at a rehearsal, and there it was.
I also designed the sleeve, using a photo in the local paper carefully altered with tippex and biro.
I'll let you off though, as Jon wrote 95% of our stuff, and people were always confusing me and him anyway. At least I managed to spell "commandos" right.

Simon B said...

Hi Mark, thanks for commenting. Sorry about the credit mix-up: it was a VERY long time ago! I know Jon designed our backdrop and a few other things, so I assumed the cassette sleeve was his too.

I've got some old band photos to post on here, once I get my act together and scan 'em, so we can see how young we used to look :-)

Good to hear from you, mate.

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