The History You Never Learned In School

Remember the first time you found out that some adult you'd looked up to had grossly misrepresented the truth?

I'm not talking about outright lies, but spin.

This is a song about spin. It's a song about bitter disappointment and heroes with feet of clay. It's also about the soul-crushing realization that you've been blindly yet blithely complicit in some incalculable evil.

Most of all, this is a song about anger, and the salvific realization that, if you don't get angry and stay that way -- at least in some measure -- you'll keep getting rooked until, one day, you're the one doing the rooking. One day, this song says without saying, if you don't look out, you'll be the one who's joined the ranks of the living dead.

Every one of these musicians understands that. Johnny Rotten wishes he could put anger across with as much skill and daring as lead vocalist, Julie Matthews, does here. Every note lacerates, every word accuses. This is utterly righteous anger, and it's impossible to deliver without musical and emotional integrity.

With Fairport Convention vets Ashley Hutchings and Simon Nicol, this is the Albion Band with "The Jewel In the Crown".