Lyr Req/Add: Rainbow Warriors (various songs)

Subject: Rainbow Warrior?
From: GUEST,Dylan O'Thomas
Date: 09 Sep 06 - 02:10 PM

A few years ago, I heard a guy at a folk club ( in the UK ) sing a song called " Rainbow Warrior" . I think his first name was Keith or Kevin, and I'm pretty sure he wrote the song; anyway, it was a beautifully crafted piece of writing. Does this ring a bell with anyone out there?

Subject: RE: Rainbow Warrior?
From: GUEST
Date: 09 Sep 06 - 02:22 PM

There are many songs that have Rainbow Warrior in the title. Do you have any words at all or can you recall the gist of the song? Anything at all? That would be a big help if you can.

Subject: RE: Rainbow Warrior?
From: GUEST
Date: 09 Sep 06 - 02:27 PM

For example, here are the lyrics from a song by Throes of Dawn to a song entitled "The Last Rainbow Warrior is Dead".


Bitter funerals in silence held
twelve coffins laid to earth
To dust all human hope to wither
The last rainbow warriors is dead
Ours is the world of tragedy
Ours is the world of grief
For countless,
gray days of dismay
It's been snowing black ashes
upon these devastated lands
Dreadful are the storms
that grind these mountains to sand
Hear the voice of destruction
as it screams through our souls
With the vast storms it walks
Proud destruction in human form
The last rainbow
warrior is dead!
Behold the rising
of the furious dawn
it's hollow black rays
kill the colours
and the meaning of life
The last rainbow
warrior is dead!
The spring yields
to winter neverending:
For silence will walk the earth
the silence of the stars above
a desolate world that snows under:
into dreams endless enter
city after city
continent after continent

Here also are the lyrics to "Rainbow Warrior" by a band named Buggles:


Run
Run for shelter
Hide from the wind
Further on
We may help you
In the end

Sun
Sun as always
Will guard where you lay
And the walls are down
And the waters drown
Where you stay

Waiting
Waiting
Waiting for the Rainbow Warrior

So
Son of logic
Boy born of light
Is the picture drawn
Is the harvest one
Step away

Waiting
Waiting
Waiting for the Rainbow Warrior



Any info you have would be great to get. Thanks, Dylan O'Thomas. BTW, is it you who wrote "A Child's Christmas in Dublin"?

Subject: RE: Rainbow Warrior?
From: Mick Pearce (MCP)
Date: 09 Sep 06 - 03:47 PM

Rod Shearman also wrote a song called The Good Ship Rainbow Warrior with chorus:

   Have you heard of the good ship Rainbow Warrior?
   The seas and the oceans were a home to her,
   The restless waves they murmur and roll over her.
   And sing the praises of the Rainbow Warrior.
  

It's on his Off To Sea Again CD (with a nice bit of guitar playing by someone whose name I'm too modest to mention).

Mick

Subject: RE: Rainbow Warrior?
From: Richard Bridge
Date: 09 Sep 06 - 04:06 PM

Is this likely to be the one about the Greenpeace ship - I thinkthe hook or chorus goes

"Ride on Rainbow Warrior"?

Subject: RE: Rainbow Warrior?
From: John on the Sunset Coast
Date: 09 Sep 06 - 04:08 PM

Rainbow Warrior, the mascot of the University of Hawaii.

Subject: RE: Rainbow Warrior?
From: GUEST
Date: 09 Sep 06 - 04:21 PM

Rainbow Warrior
Týr lyrics
Artist: Týr
Album: Eric, The Red
Year: 2003
Title: Rainbow Warrior

From the fields of concrete slabs, towers of
stone. 'cross an ocean before his bow
Came the haggard Warrior all clad in rust of
the Rainbow to tell us how

Our ways unchanged for centuries do dismay
concrete hearts
Wake emotions perfect for his confidence tricks
And though we may be human we are still animals
Weakling of the food chain, the only way
that I see is to

Curse the weak link, What's out
Come your down fall, Lights out
May your ship sink, Rainbow Warrior floats
no more, there are no Lights on
That obtrusive creep all, What's on

By the fields of good and green, mountains of
home, in an ocean beneath the sun
Stood the haggard Warrior, now his crusade,
fame and fortune it had begun

So holier than thou art, all marine mammals friend
Change your evil ways now or with terror I strike
Why can't you do like we do, pay your way
'round the blood
When it's on the table you won't know
whence it came, I say

Curse the weak link, What's out
Come your down fall, Lights out
May your ship sink, Rainbow Warrior floats
no more, there are no Lights on
That obtrusive creep all, What's on

To the fields of concrete slabs, towers of
stone. 'cross an ocean behind his stern
Went the haggard Warrior all clad in rust of
the Rainbow, when will they learn
That nature is against them, with that all
stands and falls
Weakling of the food chain, the only way
that I see is to

Curse the weak link, What's out
Come your down fall, Lights out
May your ship sink, Rainbow Warrior floats
no more, there are no Lights on
That obtrusive creep all, What's on

Subject: RE: Rainbow Warrior?
From: Lady Hillary
Date: 10 Sep 06 - 12:37 AM

There is also a Rainbow Warrior song to the melody of Gone, Never Rise again.

Subject: RE: Rainbow Warrior?
From: GUEST,hybridpicker
Date: 10 Sep 06 - 09:57 AM

I remember a guy called Kevin Littlewood who used to play in south Wales a few years ago. He sang a song called "Rainbow Warrior".

Subject: RE: Rainbow Warrior?
From: Chris Green
Date: 10 Sep 06 - 10:16 AM

I think you mean Mick Bisiker's 'Rainbow Warrior'? PM me for more details if it is!

Subject: RE: Rainbow Warrior?
From: GUEST,Dylan O'Thomas
Date: 10 Sep 06 - 01:21 PM

Thanks for all the replies. I think it might be the Kevin Littlewood version that I'm trying to recall as I spent some time in south Wales. I have remembered some of the lyrics:
    "When you walk with the Rainbow Warrior,
      at one with the earth and the sky"

Subject: RE: Rainbow Warrior?
From: LesB
Date: 10 Sep 06 - 02:27 PM

The writer of the song is indeed Kevin Littlewood. A resident singer at our folk club, The Bothy Folk Club Southport, Lancashire. Kevin is also the writer of 'Women of Greenham', which was sung around the clubs a lot.
Cheers
Les

Subject: RE: Rainbow Warrior?
From: GUEST
Date: 10 Sep 06 - 11:19 PM

The group attempted to blockade the transfer of spent/exhausted nuclear fuel from ports in France. They recieved an inordinate media coverage.

The ship was sunk (by French forces????) in Austraila several years later.

France's electrical supply is 50% plus nuclear. They have worked diligently towards a "Green World."

The green-party should consider France an ally not a coamitiuer

For a twisted liberal view of their ship consult: http://archive.greenpeace.org/comms/rw/pkbomb.html

Subject: Lyr Add: RAINBOW WARRIORS
From: GUEST,Kevin Littlewood
Date: 11 Sep 06 - 04:02 AM

Dear Mudcat, Les B told me that there was a thread on a song which I wrote, so I am replying to "Dylan O'Thomas" et al. I wrote the song a good while back -- maybe over twenty years now -- when I was living in Cardiff, and active in the peace movement. I recorded it for SAIN records on an album of my own songs which was actually titled 'Rainbow Warriors'; just after it was released Greenpeace came out with a compilation of big names which was also called 'Rainbow Warriors'. There's plenty of scope for confusion here, as there are numerous songs with the same title, tho' I think mine was among the early ones. (There are also several Kevin Littlewoods, one of whom is, I believe, a folk singer in an Irish band called Dry Country; another works in academia, I think as a physicist; another KL was imprisoned for life for killing a member of his family, in Doncaster I believe! Well, none of those are me; but I am also the KL who co-wrote a book called 'Of Ships and Stars; Maritime heritage and the founding of the National Maritime Museum', which you can get on Amazon, and which is still available through the NMM). I wrote the song after reading a poem from the Native American tradition, called 'In beauty may I walk', the words of which were reproduced in the Rattle Bag anthology by Seamus Heaney and Ted Hughes. In the end the song came out nothing like as lovely as the poem, but I kept the idea of walking, and I gave it a sort of muted war drum beat. The end of the chorus came from an epigram in a book by James Baldwin, which stuck in my mind, 'God sent Noah the rainbow sign, No more water, the fire next time'. Not being a religious type, I can't give you chapter and verse for the story of Noah, but you'll get the idea as you read the words, printed below. It may seem a little 'wordy';it needs to be sung fairly forcefully, and that sort of copes with the internal rhymes, etc.. Sorry I can't supply a music file; you may be able to download it somewhere on the net. You can hear one of my new songs 'On Morecambe Bay' on a forthcoming album from the Bothy Folk Club; more on that from Les, I guess, in due course. Thanks very much for all the interest, I hope you enjoy the song. I think it still stands up, the world's problems haven't gone away.
Best wishes,
Kevin Littlewood

Rainbow Warriors,

1. When the earth is sick and ailing,
And the grass sings a sorrowful song,
When the sand slips the glass
Of the hours as they pass
And your time does't seem very long.
When the rivers dry in the mountains,
And the sun sears the soil to its core
Rise up from your knees like the waves rise up on the shore

chorus
Will you walk with the Rainbow Warriors
At one with the earth and the sky?
Will you learn how to bend
Like the trees in the wind
As a hurricane passes you by?
Come and walk with the Rainbow Warriors,
And watch for the peaceful sign?
Hold fast to the rainbow
Or it will be the fire next time.

2. There where the white fire flickers,
Out in the midnight's glow
Where the icebergs wheel
And the blood of the seal
Runs crimson across the snow.
And where the Northern Lights lie lonely
On the blubber of a big blue whale
You will see them arrive
With a flash of their rainbow sail.

chorus
Will you walk etc.,.

3. Out where the good grain glistens
Where the white wheat waves in the wild
They are planting guns
Far away from the sun
Down in the depths they are piled.
And a harvest of hell will be harrowed,
As up from the dark they ascend,
Take a spade in your hands
Go and dig where the rainbow ends

chorus
Will you walk etc

Repeat last line and fade/ end

PS You can vary the 'Will you walk'/ 'Come and walk' as you feel.

Subject: RE: Rainbow Warrior?
From: Hrothgar
Date: 11 Sep 06 - 05:39 AM

There's another with a chorus that goes something like:

My peace is green,
My Rainbow she will fight for it,
My peace is green,
My Rainbow she will fight.

I'll have to do some digging.

The sinking of the Rainbow Warrior is the only naval battle the French have won in over 200 years, Why do they bother having a Navy?

Subject: RE: Rainbow Warrior?
From: GUEST,Sarcastic Pedant
Date: 11 Sep 06 - 09:34 AM

Quote, Guest: "The ship was sunk (by French forces????) in Austraila several years later."

Wasn't it in Auckland, New Zealand? (You know, those shakey little islands just off the Australian coast)

Subject: RE: Rainbow Warrior?
From: LesB
Date: 12 Sep 06 - 09:00 AM

refresh

Subject: RE: Rainbow Warrior?
From: Splott Man
Date: 12 Sep 06 - 11:17 AM

Blake's 3 (Hereford) did a song called Rainbow Warrior. I'll try and find out where they got it.

Subject: Lyr Add: RAINBOW WARRIOR (Blake, Strawson)
From: Splott Man
Date: 18 Sep 06 - 04:07 AM

Here it is:
RAINBOW WARRIOR - Martin Blake/Rob Strawson.
M.M.002 - "Crabs 'n' Chickens"
M.M.005 - "Blakes III, A Selection"

We heard the explosion at the waterfront
Went running down to see
A crowd had gathered at the waterfront
And the tall strung mast lies broken on the quay.

No-one could speak down at the waterfront
Aahaah
It took a tragic hour at the waterfront
Before we believed that the well-found ship was down.

Rainbow Warrior
Take to the seas again, Rainbow Warrior
Set your sails ahead for the wind and rain.

There was a stranger at the waterfront
He didn't seem a worried man
Turned and walked away from the waterfront
Counting dirty money, that could never come, from an honest hand!

There'll be a light and smoke over Morarah
The brightest this side of the sun
But the light doesn't shine for you or me,
It shines for the man on the other-side of the gun.

Rainbow Warrior
Take to the seas again, Rainbow Warrior
Set your sails ahead for the wind and rain.
Rainbow Warrior
Take to the seas again, Rainbow Warrior
Set your sails ahead for the wind and rain.

-----
Thanks to my mate Tom Hems for the words.
He's not a muso so I've no tune I'm afraid.
Splott man