Uberimma Fides

In February of 1990 I worked on this song rather fiendishly with Fo Jammi over several weeks. I was immensely proud of it and we put everything we had into it at the time.

I had written the basic words and melody a very long time ago, probably at least 1978 if not 1977. It was called "Ah-Ha" for a long time because that's what I sang instead of "Immortal" over the choruses. I played around with it for years, and back then people seemed to like it, but I never could knock it up into a proper song. I remember singing it in the bedroom I rented from Homer Townsley on Victor, the P-Funk Playpen Party Room. I remember singing it in summer, on the backsteps, out my seldom-used back door.

I remember that I once played this song for Renato D'Elia, who was my boss at the graphic design studio I worked in when I lived in Italy. He dislike the dirgelike drone that starts it off, without stopping to appreciate that I was going for the pseudo Ambrosian chant effect.

Despite it being an intensely religious song I tried to make it something someone in any faith could agree with. Though the fundamentalist subtext is for the listener to decipher as she pleases.

(Angels:)
We’re getting wrapped in chocolate whispers
We’re getting lost in his phrase
(God:)
Velvet dark-eyed angel transistors
Existing only to praise

(Angels:)
We were raised on his fantasies
Baroque excess through the haze
(God:)
I don’t mind if you say you love me
I don’t mind if you stay

(Angels:)
But now that God is all over modernity
Now he’s all over the place
We can count on our own divinity
Looking straight in his face

(God:)
I can look back until I’m unable to
Getting bored with your praise
I can guess as to why you love me
And why I let you stay

On this planet in these bodies
Longer than the pyramids
We’re living, this much is true
And if you’re living its never through
We are immortal.

You and me together through eternity.

I see you see they see we see
Existing through eternity
A vision, crystalline and true
there is no truth that is outside of you
And we’re immortal.

You and me existing through eternity.

That old time religion
Is good enough for me
Leave me up there bleeding and groaning and where everyone can see

That old time religion
Is the only one that’s right
Say my deathly prayers aloud
Before I sleep at night

Ad lib…

Download Uberimma Fides.