Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Festival of Light
From:
GUEST,A friend
Date: 10 Oct 20 - 12:46 AM
Robbie
Well Robbie, if you're still there after 21 years:
I too have a recollection of Reg Livermore singing this (in which show? Betty Blokkbuster?), but it's by Judy Small and appeared on her album "A Natural Selection" (1982).
Hear the track on Spotify
Music and lyrics in The Judy Small Songbook
Here's a version of the lyrics, and some notes, from a booklet by the Gay Liberation Quire :
FESTIVAL OF LIGHT
(Music: Judy Small
Words: Judy Small
Brideshead verse - Quire)
One of two Judy Small songs the Quire sings. First performed on Stonewall Day, 1981. It also appears on the Quire's first record - "Hormones and Jeans: The Gay Liberation Quire Goes Down On Vinyl". Verses 1,2, and 3 are fairly standard, though verse 3 can be a 'floating' verse replaced witli new ones as the occasion suggests. Verses 4 and 5 are examples of this, 4 being about the film Caligula, 5 being about the t.v. show Brideshead Revisited.
Verse 1:
I am a member of the Festival of Light
And I know what's wrong and I know what's right
Right is right and you're gonna be left
If you don't agree with me
Mary White.house is our guru
And we believe that we can cure you
Of every social sin and ill
From the Swan to Circular Quay
Chorus:
So come on in and close your mind
You can leave it at the door behind you
Come on in and. sit right down
We make the blind to see
With our hands upon the Bible
We commit all kinds of libel
So raise your hands up to your heart
And retreat after me
Oh I hate reds and I hate Women Homosexuals are sinnin'
child molesters And the Lord knows
that it just ain't right
I stand for Good clean wholesome family livin'
All my sins have been forgiven
I'm pure as snow as I do-si-do
With the Festival of Light
Verse 2:
We follow the lead of moral giants
Freda Brown and Anita Bryant
The media's behind us
We're committed to our cause
Women's place is in their houses
Looking after kids and spouses
Except for Anita, Mary, and Freda
They go by different laws
Verse 3:
There's topless bathing down at Bondi
Nakedness at Ladv Jane
Oh, perverts on the rampage
on the shores of Thompson's Bay
Moral outrage and indignation
Sweep across this Christian nation
If the Lord had meant us to bathe like that
We would've been born that way
Verse 4:
That fiim about the Roman emperor
Tries even the coolest temper
Filth, pornography, and trash
Perverting innocent minds
Take it off our screens I say
Take it off our screens today
And these aren't idle words I speak
I've seen it fifteen times
Verse 5:
Decadence prevails at Brideshead
Boys are holding hands they say
Bears in perverse coupling
on the ABC. …
(Rest of this verse lost in the mists of time)
------
Judy Small was a psychologist, a folk singer, a solicitor and a Federal Circuit Court judge. She retired in April 2020.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judy_Small
https://au.linkedin.com/in/judy-small-658b5551
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sj
