The Dark, The Ring, and The Knowledge by Pok the Bard.
Album: Anthology
Fun Facts:
* The Dark, The Ring, and The Knowledge is in the key of G.
* The tempo is 78.5 BPM, or andante if you wish.
* This song first appears on the Laughing Sun cassette called Indeed.
* Pok wrote The Dark, The Ring and The Knowledge in 1985.
* It was based on an allegedly true story told by a friend of Pok and the wider Wud posse.
* She apparently lost a piece of jewelry and then found it again, several years later.
* It was lying on the tarmac of a country lane, many miles from where it had vanished.
* She was always somewhat prone to rather odd events and may indeed have awoken one night with a benign wizardly stranger shuffling and poking about in her bedroom.
* We believe that the stream where Pok and his friend went walking was in Hoopern Valley, in the grounds of Exeter University.
* Pok plays a delightful fingerstyle acoustic guitar on the Tanglewood.
* His lead parts were performed on Marsha, a beautiful Ibanez Roadstar II that was subsequently stolen.
* Pok is accompanied on drums by Sven’s delightful dancehall shuffle.
* Josh played piano and organ at the same time and almost in one take.
* Sven and Josh overdubbed their percussion parts.
* Maxx completes the ensemble with understated and precision bass that works perfectly.
* Overall the sound is a bit psychedelic or progressive folk, like the Grateful Dead or Bob Dylan perhaps.
* The Dark, The Ring and The Knowledge includes a curious trick of timing, where a couple of beats and a couple of bars seem to go missing.
* It works just the same every time it goes around, so you might be able to spot it.
lyrics
THE DARK, THE RING, AND THE KNOWLEDGE
How can you tell if it’s friend or if it’s foe
You never can be sure in the dark
Reminding you of horrors read on someone’s older knee
Keep you tucked well in your sheets
A crack of light from out the sky
The door swings to and fro
Middle of night, what a fright
Pick a movie slow
Yes this is a world full of portals and windows
We don’t know what lies beyond
Stuck in a room you’ll play a sick tune
If you don’t breathe the air outside
Should you but one day walk on out
See what you can find
The darkness is a friend you know
But seems to make us blind
It’s been a long time since I took a walk
With you by the stream
So if you like we’ll go down there
And talk of where we’ve been
Lying in the water clear
I found an ancient ring
Gave it to you, I felt I ought
I’m sure you’ve worn that one before
Then you spoke to me about the fear
That lies hidden out of view
You want to know just what to do
As if I held some clue
Look within yourself my love
Within will rule without
But while you’re chasing phantoms round
Make sure you’re getting something to laugh about
You told me about a month on
Woke up in the dead of night
A wizard was there in your room all right
You shuddered but it seemed OK
He took hold of the ring that was
Lying there on the desk
And said “Oh child, you’re one of us
But you must just wait a while.”
And so we talked about this for a while
How she coped with it all
She seemed so much better now
She faced her darkness came to her
In knowledge of the ways and means
Of fear of the unknown
She found the way to all our hearts
Is the way to her own
Lyrics by Simon Miller.
Copyright ℗ 1985 Pok Songs/Explicit Music.
credits
from Anthology,
track released November 12, 2023
Music and lyrics by Simon Miller.
Copyright ℗ 1985 Pok Songs/Explicit Music.
This arrangement by Pok, Josh Reynes, Maxx Damage and Sven Stiglund.
Guitars, bass and voices recorded at Wud Records Studio One, Exeter, 2017.
Drums, percussion and keys recorded at Wud Records Studio One, Central Europe, 2023.
Engineered, mixed, produced and mastered at Wud Records Studio One, Central Europe, 2023.
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