And. We. Are. Back!
Jam Mechanics returns for season 2 with our first guest prompter (Our longtime collaborator and artist, DeepBlueInk!). In our first episode back we reveal the fate of Jam Mechanics Mansion (Castle?) and reflect on the ocean that separates our two co-hosts
Jam Mechanics is a podcast hosted by Matt (The Narcissist Cookbook) and Bug (Bug Hunter) where we are challenged to write a song demo from scratch every episode.
If you'd like downloadable files for this episode (and the demos we showed off), you can go to our Bandcamp or website to pay-what-you-want to support us!
Our Music:
The Narcissist Cookbook
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-- SPOILERS FOR THIS EPISODE BELOW --
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Challenge: Transatlanticism
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BUG'S SONG
Title: Agamemnon
Lyrics:
I am aboard the Agamemnon, we are laying down a line
It's gonna cross the ocean floor, the greatest project of our time
A telegraph from Newfoundland will reach the Irish Shores
but by by the time this note arrives you will not love me anymore
I am aboard the Agamemnon, laying cables in the sea
For the purpose of the president to parley with the queen
As for me, I've got this letter that I'll send you in the morn
but by the time this note arrives you will not love me anymore
You will not love me by the time you read this note
You told me you would wait if I had to go
I keep your photo in a locket to remind me of my home
but while aboard the Agamemnon I have so much time to dream
of a world where I can reach you with no middle-man between
And maybe when we're done I'll get my turn, as a reward
but I never got that chance, now you don't love me anymore
When I made it to Niagara, you didn't love me anymore
You will not love me by the time you read this note
You told me you would wait if I had to go
I think of you so often with no way to let you know
This is only the beginning, this simple cable in the sea
Soon we'll have radios and satellites and waves we cannot see
No one'll know the pain of loving one they cannot reach
I'd commandeer the Agamemnon and I'd sail it back to shore
it's just a faster way to learn that you don't love me anymore
so I'll keep laying this cable for the lovers not yet born
so that they may never hear "No, I don't love you anymore"
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MATT'S SONG
Title: The Tollbooth
Lyrics:
When Britain's national health service was launched in 1948
it set sail in the wake of the second world war
when the country's citizens
the upper and lower classes both
the rich and the desperately poor
had served together, side by side
and the ones who survived the horrors
came home demanding
to no surprise
more
we did not fight, they said
in our millions
just for things to return to the way they were
we didn't die
they said
in our hundreds of thousands
just to save a country where the leading cause of death is poverty
and perhaps for the first time in british history
the aristocrats and the working class
agreed on something
largely
that arming the nation and teaching them how to fight and die for what they believe in
makes their demands somewhat more convincing
and so
barely three years after the soldiers had come home
on july 5th, 1948
the british health system was torn out by the follicles and rebuilt in a new vision
that it would be free at point of service, that no one, NO ONE, would be turned away or trapped into debt by lack of personal means
that it would be available to everyone who walked through the doors of a hospital or a GP's office
and that the well off wouldn't be able to skip the queue
this was radical beyond comprehension
a truly universal healthcare system
doctors across the nation barred their doors and hired personal security
...
[Out of room! For full lyrics, visit www.jammechanics.com]
