Gods or deities are beings with superhuman powers or qualities who may be thought of as holy, divine, or sacred.
Gods may also refer to:
The gods (UK English), or sometimes paradise, is a theatrical term, referring to the highest areas of a theatre such as the upper balconies. These are generally the cheapest seats. One reason for naming the cheapest seats "the gods" is because the theatres have beautifully painted ceilings, often mythological themes, so the cheap seats are up near the gods. Another is that those seated in "the gods" look down upon both the players and the occupants of more expensive seats, like the Olympian Gods looking down from Mount Olympus upon the lives of mortal men and women.
There are references to the "gods" in many plays and films. Among them is the famous French film, Les Enfants du Paradis (or Children of Paradise in its US release), which is described as "set in the teeming theatre district of 1840s Paris (the "boulevard du crime"), the paradise of the film's title is a reference to "the gods", the highest, cheapest seats in the theatre, occupied by the poorest of the poor. As the well-known 1930s-and-later screenwriter Jacques Prévert said when asked about the meaning of the title, "it refers to the actors (...) and the audiences too, the good-natured, working-class audience".
The Gods were an English group founded in 1965. The original bandmembers included Greg Lake, later of King Crimson fame, Mick Taylor (later with John Mayall's Bluesbreakers and the Rolling Stones), Brian Glascock, and his brother John (later with Jethro Tull), future Uriah Heep members, keyboardist Ken Hensley and Lee Kerslake on drums, and Joe Konas.
Taylor, Glascock and Glascock were schoolmates from Hatfield and had been playing together as The Juniors (or The Strangers), a band they formed in 1962. Also part of this band were Malcolm Collins and Alan Shacklock. They eventually signed with EMI / Columbia Records. Their first 7" single (Columbia DB7339) appeared in 1964 ("There's a Pretty Girl"/"Pocket Size"). In 1965, the line-up changed. Mick Taylor continued to play guitar and teamed up with Hensley (organ/vocals). They also added Konas (guitar/vocals) and changed their name to "The Gods".
In 1966, The Gods opened for Cream at the Starlite Ballroom in Wembley, London. A single (Come On Down To My Boat Baby/Garage Man) was recorded in early 1967 on Polydor Records. At this point the line-up included Mick Taylor, Ken Hensley, John Glascock, Joe Konas and Lee Kerslake.
"The Gods of the Copybook Headings" is a poem published by Rudyard Kipling in 1919, which, editor Andrew Rutherford said, contained "age-old, unfashionable wisdom" that Kipling saw as having been forgotten by society and replaced by "habits of wishful thinking."
The "copybook headings" to which the title refers were proverbs or maxims, extolling virtues such as honesty or fair dealing that were printed at the top of the pages of 19th-century British students' special notebook pages, called copybooks. The school-children had to write them by hand repeatedly down the page.
David Gilmour says that while topics of the work are the "usual subjects", the commentary "sound better in verse" while Alice Ramos says that they are "far removed from Horace's elegant succinctness" but do "make the same point with some force."
The Gods of the Copybook Headings
I've tried and tried to run and hide
To find a life that's new
But wherever I go I always know
I can't escape from you
A jug of wine to numb my mind
But what good does it do?
The jug runs dry and still I cry
I can't escape from you
These wasted years are souvenirs
Of love I thought was true
Your memory is chained to me
I can't escape from you
There is no end, I can't pretend
That dreams will soon come true
A slave too long to a heart of stone
I can't escape from you