Psychic Tv - White Nights

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JfEtWMD91is
Psychic Tv - White Nights

You know how much I love you
I give you all my life
No one may take my life from me
I lay my life down
The point is on this plane
Take the potion like they used to take
in Ancient Greece

No, there's no plane
There's no plane
We can't catch the plane
In time, I simply put my lot with you

The plane will come out of the air
There's no way you can fly
I will take your call
I'm part of you

Santa Claus is checking his list
Going over it twice, seeing
Who is naughty and who is nice

The sins of man
The sins of man
We win
We win when we go down

Born out of season, in due time
We give them our dead children
Our children
Our children are sublime

It's so simple, no convulsions
It's so simple, you don't know what you've done
You don't know what you've done

Santa Claus is checking his list
Going over it twice
Seeing who's naughty and who is nice

The night brings the moon
It's much more difficult
That's nothing, like stepping on another
Plane you have to step across

This world, this world
It's not our home
Stepping over to another plane
The next plane, free at last

Santa Claus is checking his list
Going over it twice, seeing
Who is naughty and who is nice

Video: "This Machine Turns Itself Off"
Deborah Harry screen test -Union City (1980)

* * *

Genesis P-Orridge adopts his wide-eyed innocent vocal
singing ambiguous lyrics which to the untrained ear could
be about all manner of things, or maybe it's simply about
"Santa Claus checking his list / Going over it twice /
Seeing who is naughty and who is nice".

The implication of threat in that last lyric and
throughout the song is chilling, particularly as the sound
of an Uzi machine gun starts to appear towards the end
cracking through the surface innocence.

The lyrics being, word for word, part of a sermon by the
Rev. Jim Jones prior to the mass suicide in Guyana.

The reason for the Uzi machine gun being featured,
presumably due to some followers of The Peoples Temple,
who did not drink the poisoned juice were reportedly shot
by those who were more willing to die for the Rev. Jim
Jones on November 18, 1978.

The Temple sometimes conducted what Jones referred to as
'White Nights'.

During such events, Jones would give the Jonestown members
four options; attempt to flee to the Soviet Union, commit
'revolutionary suicide', stay in Jonestown and fight the
purported attackers or flee into the jungle.

On at least two occasions during White Nights, after a
'revolutionary suicide' vote was reached, a simulated mass
suicide was rehearsed. Temple defector Deborah Layton
described the event in an affidavit:

"Everyone, including the children, was told to line up. As
we passed through the line, we were given a small glass of
red liquid to drink. We were told that the liquid
contained poison and that we would die within 45
minutes. We all did as we were told. When the time came
when we should have dropped dead, Rev. Jones explained
that the poison was not real and that we had just been
through a loyalty test. He warned us that the time was not
far off when it would become necessary for us to die by
our own hands".

The Temple had stored monthly half-pound shipments of
cyanide since 1976 after Jones obtained a jeweller's
license to buy the chemical, ostensibly to clean gold.

A total of 918 people died in the settlement, at the
nearby airstrip in Port Kaituma, and at a Temple-run
building in Georgetown, Guyana's capital city.