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Great Wall Of China

from Speak When I'm Spoken To by Roy Møller

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about

A song with a long gestation period. My friend Gary helped finish the tune and added some of its catchier elements a good fifteen years after I wrote the bulk of it while living in one of the many bedsits which housed my twenties and thirties.

These are the days before mobile phones Kinetic Kinardo from Meth O.D. calls me up presistently, which must annoy the other residents. My room's at the opposite end of the hall from the phone so they often have to answer the manically enthustic drummer's calls and knock on my door several times a day or evening. One time he ring me up to whisper down the line from East Kilbride as if confiding a vision of a certain future. “Roy, we are going to be bigger than U2!" Often when he calls I'll be oblivious to the phone ringing, playing music or working on a song with scant regard to what others can hear.

Some January teatime while I’m playing my guitar there’s a knock on the door as my room darkens to the shouts, and strains of Great Western Road . I’m just off the line to Kinardo, but hardly surprising he’s phoning back with a coda. This is a visit from the landlord’s live-in handyman. Jack is spare and wiry, handy and habitual. forever sorting a navy blue woollen hat and roll-up tucked behind a ruddy ear. Salt of the earth, Jack. He bids me inside his door. He closes it. New situation. The first point he sets out is he’s tripping on acid. Second thing he tells me is he’s going to punch me. “Why?” I ask, wondering what odd job he’ll do on me. “Cos that prick phones you up all the time and you never hear it. I can’t stand it, fetching your phone calls while you play your shit guitar. That song of yours, The Great Wall of China, I really fucking hate it.”

lyrics

You can see the Great Wall Of China from the moon so they say
You can see the Great Wall Of China – I’ll hide behind that wall today
Oh – you’ll never know the way I’m feeling today
Oh – train running slow –it’s getting much faster each day
Moon shining bright makes me feel quite cavalier
And the love that I save is the love that I’ll save for her here
Don’t you know that it’s clear they’re no bigger than we are
And from here you’re no bigger than me
So if you want to know a secret that you oughta know come & see me
You can see the Great Wall Of China from any passing Saturn 5
You can see the Great Wall Of Chinna – makes you kinda glad to be alive
Oh – you’ll never know the way I’m feeling today
In the rain & the snow
Train running slow – it’s getting much faster each day
Moon shining bright, etc.
Come & see me, come, come & see me
Come & see me – come, come..

credits

from Speak When I'm Spoken To, released March 7, 2007
Written by Moller/Thom. Recorded at La Chunky

Guitars - Roy Moller, Zac Ware
Bass - Sporting Hero
Piano - Paul Napier
Percussion - Colin McGeoch
Backing vocals - Martin Gray, Warren Macintyre.

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Roy Møller Dunbar, UK

British-Canadian pop artist.

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