The one, the only, the Punk anthem in which Jason and Shoegazer get to judge their own participation and conclude whether a) the song fits the Punk or Industrial Punk genre, b) whether Till would sing the main melody but with their own German lyrics, c) whether the theme is good enough to pass forward to Rammstein, and d) can such a band who fictionally won the Battle of the Bands slide backwards with this song and disappoint the German government (will they pass the censors)? The last question was left alone for RammyTeens' last “EP”, translated as Saint Till.
    The song “Rise, rise!” is cleaner than Rammstein's five-songs scatter the one time Ha sung it. Jason and Shoegazer were impressed it was not one of Ha's spoof songs. It was an original melody, and Ha actually put in the effort like a real lead singer. She had not heard a group of G.I.s sing since she arrived in Arlington, Virginia in 1980. She might as well sing that style herself, she figured, even though people are more used to seeing the army led by a proper leader with a practiced, booming male voice. Well, Punk does not need opera. It just needs the crowd to stop cursing at the band! Why don't they go home? Who, the band or the people?

Till did good work with the melody with Rammstein's help in “Lügen”, the penultimate song off their latest album Zeit (2022). It is as was intended, that Green Day cannot sing this song, but they just might be the better producers of the instrumentals. That was Ha's technical introduction for Jason and Shoegazer, to focus them on the style of the song's music. The spoken part and most of the instrumentals, and the lyrics of “Lügen” is not “Rise, rise!” What did Rammstein do with the original “Rise, rise”? It could only have been described to them and painstakingly reconstructed and scattered across many years and some other songs.
    Ha switched from “we” to “I”, straightening out the second round stanza by stanza:

Will you follow my orders when I am gone
Will you run to Jesus to hear my song
They miss their country so they judge 
I would too — for everything and what was
No time left between us
No better life I have than with you

    The seminar starts at the end, which was the academic section of the musicology that day. The stanza Ha sung answers the Socratic question of the citizen's sense of justice, which follows neatly with the Greek notion of eudaemonia, the good life. A good life is simply one worth living. To be rather socialistic and conservative at the same time, the people one is with are the citizens one wants to have a life with and about. If they are good, one is good and decent because of them. If one is good, that ought to persuade them away from sin and towards justice, which is piety to Catholics. She launched into a contrast from salvation theology.
    In comedic sophistry, Ha “kills Till”, her client. His estate would not notice a thing! She could pick pocket at Rammstein5's latest concert as soon as he's dead. How could that happen? The five of them entertain in their puny little skulls that perhaps, by a stray atom somewhere, Till hastened his beloved afterlife by means of suicide. Better dead and venerated as an innocent, which would be a contradiction in their guilty conscience, than alive and oblivious to innocence. A-ha! And at that very moment, they are saved! They are saved to weep and wail and mourn losing Till Lindemann. The memories come back but Ha pick pockets and charges against everything that was once good and whole and innocent. What? instigates dingbat Ha. I stole this chapbook from his library and bothered to bring it out for your inspection. And this vinyl record. And these sheets of paper with your hand-written music notes and lyrics — who even uses guitar tabs? Must I learn guitar tabs to unteach you? Do not use guitar tabs! She tries to cover up for the tragic loss. I am so rusty, I cannot even write anything. They are saved!

The lead singer is like Marian Gold of Alphaville singing “Forever Young” (1984 [1988]), charismatic but more soldierly, less theatrical. Probably a lot less stylish, somewhat simple. She sang what she knew, which was not much. Jason and Shoegazer had to jump in and answer the leader with backup vocals, emphasing the other lyric.

Let us die young, let us live forever
We don't have the power but we never say never
Praising our leaders, we're getting in tune
The music's for the sad man

Forever young
Do you want to be forever young
Forever and ever and ever

Forever young
I want to be forever young
Do you really want to live forever
Forever young

There are three songs with overlapping themes. She next chose Queen's special song (1986) from the Christopher Lambert film Highlander. Its refrain asks rhetorically, which she sang,

Who wants to  live forever?
Do you want to live forever?

It is not fatherly well wishes and patrimonious like Rod Stewart's quite lovely “Forever Young” (1988). She sang to them a few lyrics she knew,

Be courageous and be brave
And in my heart you will remain
For-ever young

For-or-or For! -evv -ver yoouung

They liked it that Ha had some pinache like the professionals. She said she loves Rod Stewart's scratchy voice. As an exception to unruly, anti-establishment, self-destructive Punk yelling and wailing in decrepitude, the singer of the German anthem is actually going to sing neatly and clearly like Siouxsie Sioux. Yeah, Ha was rude about Till, that he has to enunciate. Actually, letting out some animal growling is normal and all right. Bono of U2 sings quite clearly but he has not been in that much pain. The Sex Pistols were in pain, okay? So the singer knows and is already sympathetic.
    “Rise, rise!” took 20 minutes to explain the music and literary intrigue, without explaining any lyrics, with 10 minutes of warming up pretending Ha is a Punk dude on a microphone. The prompting to move the song's composition forward was more relaxed than later songs that rushed using a single measure break to cue the entry of fresh lyrics composed instantly by somebody else other than Ha. They took up 8 or more measures for instramentals and between verse and chorus. That pacing produced one of the tightest lyrics thematically, neatly, with an interesting melody and harmony, that the three of them had ever done. Ha had to verbally say she was singing the chorus again in harmony in the middle of the song so Jason could do a guitar solo that was not the singer's melody, while Shoegazer picked up the bass beneath the melody in her left hand and the chords in her right hand on invisible synthkeys that she did not bring. Jason hugged his guitar the whole time, no amps, singing over it when Shoegazer led backup vocals.
    For fun, they saved Ha's Rhythm guitaring from a different song, from a different lesson on drumming. Only if we need more money, let's eliminate the competition first. Ha lashed out at Robert Smith's lilting, doing the vocalist's equivalence of Punk crashing Rhythm guitar with no microphone, without EinRouge in her hands, standing up to part her hair to the other side to get serious. It was not the best singing she did, it was the best air microphone gulping she did. The other two had to keep up, Ha uses a lot of oxygen (she tested many times, she uses more oxygen indoors to sing than three plugged in electric guitars for the same amount of time). She said into a hairbrush prop, in perfunctory Teutonic style, Plumes of smoke, big fireball, I'm using all your oxygen, I earned my Rolex Oyster chronograph, fireworks over your head in twenty colors exploding in twelve formations. Zing!
    Before the Rgo “Rise, rise”, Ha's “Mariner's song” was what moved RammyTeens forward as the first entry in their fictional Battle of the Bands. She set it up that competing bands had to impress bureaucrats from the republic who were judging young, out of work German people. Rammstein's lyrics for their own “Reise, Reise” is as close as Ha's instant song. A bit premature to mean ‘Go tour, sing to foreign guests’, Ha directed the tutorial at Jason while Shoegazer listened.
    The lead-in trick is to cite the competition occasion in the song, like thanking the hosts. Immediately after that, drop it! You want to be Lead Guitarist of the best Go-go Punk band available to the republic next Friday, when they will be inviting RammyTeens back for more honors, which means more money, Ha encoraged. You have to assert. You have to be brave and mean it. You see the competition over there? The Pizza Slayers, they totally ripped off our guitar solo! Doesn't matter, you have an Rgo guitar. The Metal band over there with the sexy chick as the vocalist? Oh sh** she. She's a top singer, and Metal has the advantage right now. She has a four-octave voice, she's clear as a bell. Doesn't matter what she sings, she impresses every time because she is technically easy to listen to, with full, strong breath, sexy decolleté peekaboo shoulders and collar, a fine figure, and doesn't spit on the microphone, no rotting teeth, nothing. Doesn't stick her tongue out. You go into your guitar solo, I want you, you want you to stick your tongue out and whipe the floor with her hair. I can't do it myself, half of my skull is a skinhead with a parted Spanish cockscomb in the middle. Part it to one side, I'm German. Lick my hair, run your fingers through it, spike it up sky high in the middle, I'm a German stuck in London with bastard half-kin Anglicans. Stlylist, I'm almost ready for the sympathy look.

    Shoegazer styled Ha's hair the regular German lad do, neatly combed flop parted to one side slicked down with hair gel for the wet look. She applied Ha's expensive, propietary heat-activated lipstick: yellow inside the tube goes on evening wine red, so the judges can see. Eyeliner, eyeshadow, rouge, the works, so people can make out the face contours. What? RammyTeens aren't going to win anything if the singer mopes around with a tangled rat's nest head like Robert Smith. The crowd needs something... German like Heineken. After Disintegration, Blackpool can drown in a million floods, see if anybody in Germany cares. It looks French if you squint really, really hard, but it's Robert Smith. It's Bob! I like the Cure, Rammstein's not going to be like them, she said to Shoegazer. How do Germans mope? They find a blond to beat up. I know I'm rascist. We'll do better in front of the judges, right Lead Guitarist Guyker? Yup. If you break an Rgo guitar, I break you, Ha.

Immediately after “Rise, rise!”, the next song was a hum-along lesson in finding the instrumental motif by its chords or contrapuntal. It was “Lichen and moss”, a slowed down, every third or so note of “Rise, rise!” which formed the instrumental. Ha led the humming, and they were free to hum for the synthesizer and guitar. The extended version of “Rise, rise!” is not more revolution. The leader's other side is a different thesis, something closer rather than Us are anti-Them. It is, that which I value you have to keep away from my privacy! I value what you value.
    The first third is the same revolutionary leader. His mate is a lady, and she enters for two-thirds of the song in a duet, then squares it out in the last part, the fourth part, with cadets and cadre, all singing. The exercise was humming. The words were not important, to keep the backup singers listening to Ha's improvised lyricism. She doing two vocal parts, she introduced them to her soprano (Till in Lügen) and then her opera voice. When her fake opera la-la dropped out, it was Jason's turn to sing la-la loudly, with meatiness. He had to soar for the male chorus near a female la-la opera voice without being an opera tenor. Without distinct words. And she was next going to provide the lyrics, and he could repeat them if he wanted or improvise his own lyrics without losing force of his own air. Or he could stick to the male choir chore if he was being dominated. The goal was for Jason to learn his three skills: set an example for the male choir, be a capable leading singer, and be able to sing and hit the guitar — or choke it, or play on it — at the same time.
    About the song itself, she spoke to Shoegazer. A meditation of visiting the German woods. It is cooler, moist air, autumn three seasons in the year. We three “walk through the woods”. A trickling stream. Dense, black dark lome. I like the air and the moss, Ha said, anything green. What do you like? She said, There is grey life clinging to the fallen tree stumps. Everywhere. Little white and grey bio matter, lichen. Jason, Ha said, are you admiring anything? He said the colors of the dense foliage is pretty. Tree canopy, tall branches and low hanging full of leaves. I'm picking one. It's as big as the palm of my hand. And the veins. Shoegazer had to stop him. Hey, Jason, do you know the way out of these woods? We should go back the same way, away from the trickling stream.
    Shoegazer prepared herself for the female choir singing the chorus by pulling down one shoulder sleeve of her shirt, looking '80s. She poofed her hair and tied it in a ponytail to one side. She styled Jason's hair into a blond parted comb-over, and Ha had the centered faux hawk. Ha took three minutes to perfectly align and tighten her boot laces. Shoegazer knew a chorus was involved. She wanted to practice separately right next to Jason before the song began. Right, please fix these lyrics and the cadence. For fun, if you change the cadence, squeeze it out of, not back into, the chorus of the previous song. That first group sing was,

Rise, rise!
We shall rise up
Rise, rise
Rise up, rise up, rise rise again
   You do, I rise
   Again!
   Rise up
   Rise rise!
Rise, rise
Rise, rise
   I do, you rise
   Rise up
   Rise up
   Rise, rise again
Rise up, rise up, rise rise
Rise up, rise up
Rise, rise!

Drums. These are the drums, you have an instrumental on the keys. Ha slapped her thighs and clapped. It's a tribal groove, emphasis on groove. Shoegazer preferred something different. We missed the opportunity, she said, that could have been the drums only before the first chorus in “Rise, rise”. Ha stood up, I lied! Those were not the drums. What once was before... She sang cabaret-style, I save for you, these words we keep together, until. Until — Ha breaks into Neil Diamond — I am, I cried, I am, said I. Jason, was there a de-Fender guitar solo with that? I forgot, he said. I did something, but I was busy rising. My guitar was conveniently slung so low, I had to take a bow! Ha threw the hair brush at him. Get down and give me twenty — I'll do three. So he had to. Shoegazer got on the floor and did three pushups also. Three more with Shoegazer because Ha needed some, so three more for Shoegazer.
    She sat back down. None for me. Oh, I'm old! Ha complained. Ten years from now, Till will say I haven't met old before he heard me scratching and adjusting my maxi pad around the corner. Shoegazer added, The moment he got even older was when he told me, in our time machine, I walked back around the corner and bumped into him, he said he could hear menstruation and smell your queef. He's so old, he can't remember why he slows down to take the time to pull every strand of Ha hair out of a brush he's kept all these years. He told me he memorized the smell of your shampoo in your hair, on your scalp, in the hairbrush. Shoegazer threw the hair brush back at Ha kind of hard. What shampoo do you use? Jason laughed nonstop. Whatever the Pentagon issues, right? Shoegazer laughed. Is it obvious — Alberto VO5.

  ha4Rgo (2025 Sep 11)
HUMEN

on a brick tower before the fall
they saw everything rise and fall
life's rich pageantry big and small
was about to end, to pull it all

down
down on the ground the people walk 
on by without escape, beneath the mock
blue droning power chattle barking
wailing sirens hide pain stalking

[chorus]
They were humen, they were told
Men yesterday, fallen young and old
They are humen, our world retold
Humen they were, they were
Before our world was risen
What prison today must fall
Fall to the humen
Humen, humen

(misery stalking, flitting)
in the heat of orleans the water rises
sideways beneath the priests' poor means
to chase after rats fleeing wisest
challenge of obelisk removed and clean

all
dusted over rubbles tumbling through
mules whinny: the end is not new
was not born in a slavery-torn zoo
pickets de lis planted with the few

who cried
spite spiked from heaven left behind
in a sick summer after the toed-up wind
flowed down rusted bled white amen
tossed asunder thundering how human

[chorus b]
how
They were humen, they had told
Said so yesterday, bleeding cold
They are humen, our world is old
Humen they were, they were
Before we could be risen
Our drowning today flowed wine
To above us, humen
Humen, humen climb
Humen, humen climb

[alternative]
his art was more expansive than time
i remember, where i was every time
right place, wrong time dingy dungeon
chained to walled-in people plunging

into
glass reflections shattered on arches
of painted myths to live by, torches
from gaslamps flickering wild myths by
the bay of orleans' wrought iron sighs

his
courtly mystery died for undertaking
a height of frightening misery-making
agony the cruelest thief, they were
Suffering a judge's arcade, the watergate
mustering

[chorus c + alt]
Humen, humen
Time it was, it was
Humen time it was
Humen, humen
Twas the fallen art
Falling on humen
Humen forming
The men they formed
Together, they sighed
Oh yesterday was stronger
Today is fallen dusk

Evening dust to midnight
Strength of humen
Humen strength
Tonight the rise
Of Humen, humen, humen 
The humen, humen, humen