I’ve included below the contents of my band Galaxia’s home page (at www.galaxiamusic.org):

You can now download Galaxia tracks from this website. Click here for details.

Hi!

My name is Steve Wallis, a revolutionary socialist mainly living in Manchester, England, but also a member of the Scottish Socialist Party in Glasgow.

I had been planning to set up a socialist band, which I hope will play a leading role in the world socialist revolution, for a couple of years or so, because it is possible to influence people greatly through music and I have acquired sufficiently strong singing abilities through karaoke to convince myself that I would be capable of singing in a band.

I decided to name the band “Galaxia” after the very left-wing future of the galaxy at the end of Isaac Asimov’s epic Foundation series, voted the most influential science fiction series of all-time. [The original trilogy had a right-wing plot to get past the censors in the 1950s, so read the last two novels Foundation’s Edge and Foundation and Earth for the left-wing ending.]

My first attempt at songwriting was a combination of snippets from existing songs, original lyrics and speeches (some of which were quite long), which I called The Revolution Starts Now!, inspired by the Steve Earle & the Dukes song and album entitled The Revolution Starts...Now. I originally intended it as a B-side for our first single (which I wanted to be a cover version of Queen’s Bohemian Rhapsody).

However, I came up with an initiative for a worldwide general strike at the time of the G8 summit (in Gleneagles, Scotland, during the first week in July), which I publicised via the internet and by handing out copies of a leaflet (which you can read by clicking here). I predicted that the G8 summit would be the time when the world socialist revolution starts, so it became urgent to rewrite that song and release it on the internet (and on the odd CD), in time for the events around the G8 summit, to make my initiative more successful than it otherwise would be. You can read the lyrics of The Revolution Starts Now! as recorded in June by clicking here, or as improved in September (to include some minor corrections to the politics) by clicking here. [The latter lyrics page includes full names of people referred to in the song, in brackets.] Unfortunately, serious general strikes (which could have led to a revolution) did not take off anywhere in the world at the time of this G8 summit. This was probably mainly because my call wasn’t backed up by any sizeable organisation (although School Students Against War were trying to get school students to strike in Scotland). This lack of action could also have been influenced by the violence that occurred at the Carnival for Full Enjoyment on Monday the 4th of July in Edinburgh and/or the terrorist attacks on Thursday the 7th of July in London. In my opinion, both violent events were instigated by people on the side of big business (whether in the police force, agent provocateurs among the Edinburgh protesters or terrorists) to divert the world’s attention at such an important time from doing something constructive to defeat the G8. Nevertheless, in my opinion, a G8 summit is the best opportunity for coordinated action around the world to try to overthrow big business, and (with far more time to organise) I am setting my sights on the 2006 summit in St Petersburg in Russia. I would like Galaxia to record improved and updated versions of the songs, as well as others, in time for that summit, and also have a world tour in advance of the summit, to publicise the call for a worldwide general strike.

I have a portable karaoke machine and had quite a lot of CD-Gs (CDs with graphics for display on its screen) until most of them disappeared recently, and I experimented with varying the lyrics while singing along to Do They Know It’s Christmas? on the 14th of June. I then modified lyrics to (the Band Aid 20 version of) the song which I downloaded from the internet, in order to come up with my first version of Do They Know It’s G8 Time? I distributed some photocopies in the Hulme and Moss Side areas of Manchester, and was such a threat to the state that the police arrested me outside Moss Side Leisure Centre!

I made some improvements to the lyrics of Do They Know It’s G8 Time? and distributed copies, encouraging others to make photocopies and distribute them themselves (especially during G8 events, and at airports to publicise the messages in the song and Galaxia itself around the world) – the lyrics can be downloaded and distributed by printing out the Microsoft Word file accessible here, or read on the internet by clicking here. I have subsequently updated the lyrics, to improve the politics in the song, at the cost of differing much more from Do They Know It’s Christmas? I sung the new version live at the Earth First! Gathering in August; they can be read on-line by clicking here and an explanation for the changes can be read by clicking here.

As well as those two tracks, I performed a version of the international song of the working class: The Internationale. I changed the lyrics and come up with (what I think is) a better tune; because my version uses the final line in French I call it L'internaçionale. You can find the lyrics by clicking here, or some improved (extended) lyrics by clicking here.

I put out a call far and wide on the internet for anybody who wanted to participate in Galaxia, either as a full band member or as a guest participant in one or more of our songs, to turn up to a recording studio (the Cutting Rooms, Abraham Moss Centre, City College, Manchester) on Thursday the 30th of June 2005. This was an extremely unorthodox way of getting a band together, and unsurprisingly nobody turned up. However, I already knew that a very good guitarist (called Adam) who works there could help out with the recordings, and he accompanied me on an acoustic guitar when we recorded two of the tracks. Adam told me that he does not want to be part of Galaxia in the future, so I am still looking for band members. Anyone who wishes to participate can of course contact me (by phoning 07739 904924 or emailing me at busterblock@...), but I will probably recruit most band members face-to-face, and the band may just comprise the first serious love of my life (Rhiannon Williams) and myself, in the short term at least.

The main way in which we will distribute our music will be via the internet, and all our tracks will be downloadable free of charge as soon as possible after recording them. I have put the recordings made at the Cutting Rooms on the downloads page of this website.

I was locked up as a political prisoner on the 1st of July, preventing me from putting the tracks on this website until after the G8 summit. I did something even more useful when I escaped – putting improved lyrics for Do They Know It’s G8 Time? on discussion groups, correcting the odd minor mistake and clarifying certain things. An explanation for those improvements, plus the later changes I made when performing the song at the Earth First! Gathering, is provided here.

There was not time before this G8 summit (from the 6th to the 8th of July) to produce a large number of CDs before the G8 summit, but in future I would like us to try to get some on sale in shops. Due to the respective politics of the band and shop owners, it would be naïve to expect many shops (especially when they are part of chain stores) to stock Galaxia CDs, but we could investigate getting them into FOPP, Music Zone and Borders (mainly a bookstore but one that commonly stocks left-wing merchandise) . HMV is a particularly right-wing chain, but it may be possible to get our CDs stocked in Virgin Megastores and WHSmiths.

All our tracks, and the lyrics of our own songs, are and will continue to be copyleft – as defined by the GNU Free Software Foundation – encouraging not-for-profit duplication but forbidding it for commercial purposes, and the covers of our CDs will indicate that the tracks can be downloaded from this website for free.

We will establish the Galaxia Foundation for the World Socialist Revolution, and all the proceeds of CD sales, T-shirt sales, gigs (except for those that are benefits for particular organisations), etc., except for expenses and wages, will go to the Foundation. The Galaxia Foundation will be composed of band members (and perhaps some other socialists) and will democratically decide how to distribute the money – to campaigns, socialist and autonomous organisations, and charities (particularly those which campaign as well as alleviate some of the problems of capitalism). The wage rate of band members will also be decided by the Foundation – whatever wage rate we decide to pay ourselves, our wages will be workers’ wages in line with the philosophy of Galaxia that we are in the band to help the struggle for a better world rather than to line our own pockets. As many of you will have noticed, the word “Foundation” is very appropriate for the Galaxia fund, due to the origins of the band’s name in Isaac Asimov’s Foundation series.

Site map:

• Band members – information about people in or who I want to be in Galaxia.
• Pictures – an image gallery of band members.
• Gigs – a list of gigs that we are planning.
• Downloads – Galaxia tracks that can be downloaded free of charge.
• Lyrics – lyrics for Galaxia songs or songs that we have performed cover versions of.
  • Do They Know It’s G8 Time? – on a web page or as a Word file, or as improved at the Earth First! Gathering (with an explanation for the improvements here).
  • The Revolution Starts Now! – on a web page, or as an improved web page.
  • L'internaçionale – on a web page, or as an improved web page.
• Discussion groups – forums on the internet on which you can discuss Galaxia.
• Galaxia Foundation – information about the Galaxia Foundation for the World Socialist Revolution.

This website was last modified on the 5th of October 2005.