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paradise gas

from In Case Of Emergence by grilly

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about

This song came to me while i was waiting for a bus at bethnal green. it's about that crossroads and the people who are always there. It's kind of my answer to Jacques Brel's 'Amsterdam'. one of the rare cases where i have to make new music (in one my favourite rhythms, 9/8 compound time) to fit a set of lyrics. It's very much in the vain of my favourite bonzo dog band song, the deceptively whistful 'Readymades'.

The title is taken from A Confederacy of Dunces, being the gas that the protag Igantius belches up after eating too many paradise hotdogs. It sounds worse than it is - like an anaesthetic or poison, but it tied in perfectly with the location, which has a Paradise Gardens and an adjoining Paradise Row. Paradise Gardens is always full of vagrants drinking special brew, white lightning &c, so the misfortune of the word paradise is intact.
Interestingly, since writing this song, i have come across the ballad of the blind beggar of bethnal green, which lends its name to the whitechapel pub. This too is a story of the homeless at the bethnal green crossroads, which i happily declare my song to be an unintentional sequal to.

lyrics

There's a lady who waits
by Nico's Cafe
smoke will rise, ash will fall
She'll talk to you
for a coffee or two
or a drink in the salmon and ball
She's a modern contradiction
heir to prince mishkin
made up of foibles and faults
She says "life's not so hard
in the knackers' yard
so let's waste our time with a waltz"

At the city view hotel
put up with the smell
and put up with the noise from the streets
The invisible man
with the king-size can
and the polyrhythm bus engine beats
If you're drinking 'fore noon
to a chart chopping tune
they'll sell you a pint for a pound
It's all churches and jails
a boat without sails
for the people who are lost and found

In paradise garden
your arteries harden
wolfing down your mr. cod
and across the road
you can unload
on a throne that waits for a god
In the childhood museum
let out a scream
and pray that you're not in the show
Now your bus is pulling up
put your change in the cup
of the strangers on paradise row

credits

from In Case Of Emergence, released June 3, 2012
words and music by grilly

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grilly Birmingham, UK

Grilly has been writing, recording, and performing music since about 1998.

DJ Gallowslutt is the psuedonym grilly uses for remixing.

To The Boats were the grilly-fronted band that thrived from 2006-2010. They discorporated before their second album, which became 'In Case of Emergence'. ... more

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