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Devil Bug's Dream

by The Payroll Union

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1.
Down to the city I carry my wax and canvas (1) There’s a gathering of people all around this new house A mixture of colour that I could never imagine Fixed in my mind is a red I wish to recreate A man with a tall hat stands and points with fury (2) Fellows three feet away do not know how to speak to him but in their sentiments they are for the same thing For there are many white women talking to black men (3) A stone gets thrown and a scream from a gentle lady (4) A cheer from a portion of rabble but the gentleman isn’t stirring Serene in his rage and composed like a portrait The sounds of the voices are starting to rise like a chamber A young boy pisses in the door and the laughter rings out The sky is covered in a grey and purple glow now and without signal windows smash and the door goes down Men pour in with a shout of “hunt them down” We’re out at Pennsylvania Hall Four days and it’s gone (5) We’re all watching on Watching on A crack in the gas pipe spills out a hiss like a low snake A white light blinds out the windows and the awe of the gasp breaks Yellow licks write out words in the sky like prophecy The ending of all that we have built in its inevitability Running like fools from the hall, they’re beaten as they go Men parrot phrases they took from a sheet to make them feel bold The crack and the crumble that tumbles down from this deathly show If I could just capture the smoke before it swallows up the brick and the bone The hose is directed upon the building next door (6) Cheers rise up as the flames do the same as it falls to the floor The fear and the glee in the faces are mixing up the colours and the sound I’ve been in the city but a month now it’s burning down The lick and the flick of the sparks spill out from the scene to the page The gentleman’s gone now the laughter and noise follows out from the stage Who can imagine the terror - is this the start or the end? Oh what a thrill, what a fright, this modern world wills to be free of the night Merchants, tailors, weavers and all Draymen, stevedores, the rich and the poor Gather round the glow of the fiery furnace Revel in destruction, feed the flames Business is business - we all shake hands We’re tied to the binding cord back to workshop, back to the factory back to the dock with a cheer back to the press with its dark black print pushed to the paper so clear The voices are deafening Footnotes (1) John Caspar Wild, a Swiss-born painter who had recently returned to Philadelphia. His lithograph of Pennsylvania Hall’s destruction can be seen on the poster for this evening’s event. (2) The ‘tall hat’ indicates the rioters included men of ‘property and standing’: violence transcended class. (3) Fear of racial mixing – ‘amalgamation’ – ran deep in white society. (4) Women played a leading role in the abolitionist movement: the Anti-Slavery Convention of American Women met in the doomed Hall. (5) The Hall was destroyed just four days after its official opening. (6) Philadelphia’s firemen were made up of companies of volunteers, many of whom opposed abolitionists and made little effort to save the Hall.
2.
Good gentleman stroller Take your lady down Broad Street (1) In the Paris of America Regard the fountains and the finery But don’t spark your imagination For your fears are just around the corner Where there are riots and disease Savages walk the streets Brawling Irish thieves Down on Bedford Street Well you should see it for yourself good sir Let me take you to the dens and the hovels No need to see the wild west (2) You could lose your life on Bedford Street There’s a vice for every degradation So beware a friendly invitation They breed like a disease Flourish and fill the streets See the bawdy houses breathe down on Bedford Street Come with me down Sorrow’s Circuit (3) Through the grog shops and the barrooms The savagery of a scalping Redman (4) Ain’t nothing for our Philadelphian ruffian A war of extermination Is being threatened by that “Jacobin club” (5) So as you curtsy on the boulevard Plans are being hatched on Bedford Street To build the barricades on Broad You’ll be the first up against the wall With a rag stuffed in your mouth In front of a baying angry crowd Swinging from a beam down on Bedford Street Footnotes (1) As in Paris, the ‘promenade’ along genteel boulevards acquired almost ritualised meaning for the urban elite of American cities. (2) One paper at the time described the streets gangs of the southern suburbs as ‘our mighty tribes of Philadelphia Indians’ - a horde of ‘would-be savages and can’t-be men!’ (3) The title of a book by a Protestant missionary on Bedford Street. (4) A reference to the perceived barbarity of Native Americans who were infamous for removing enemies’ scalps. (5) The Jacobins in the French Revolution were known for their radical politics and penchant for guillotining rivals. An 1847 novella compared the Killers - a Moyamensing street gang - to the club. Fears that the violence of the French Revolution would spread to the American city haunted wealthy citizens.
3.
From every still, from every height The demons turn amongst the night The Killers’ call (1), the raging squall From Kensington to Moyamensing (2) Fires they fill the sky (3) Drunkards howl to the night Like a ring around the city’s sights Amazed that we’re still alive The ice has gone, the city’s strong Pulsing with heat just to swallow and eat The Bedford beggar, the liquor store swagger That feeds off the flesh of the drunk and depressed The theatre roars with great applause (4) While smoke it sings into our doors The writer rages ‘gainst boosters and players While weavers they raise up their ‘blood or bread’ (5) banners At Eastern State, the city jail (6) They meditate, they bleed and pray Around the carousel, gangs dance and drink (7) And the beatings break up to the laughter and sing... Footnotes (1) The Killers were a Moyamensing street gang loosely affiliated to the Irish-American wing of the Democratic Party. Probably the most notorious of Philadelphia’s several dozen gangs (others included the Bouncers and the Schuylkill Rangers), the Killers counted William McMullen - subject of ‘Bull’ on the sister album album, Paris of America - among their members. (2) Kensington was a burgeoning industrial suburb about a mile north of the old downtown; George Shiffler (see the first song on Paris of America) died there in the 1844 riots. Moyamensing, just south of Philadelphia proper, was the poorest district in the metropolis, and provided a home to Irish immigrants and African-Americans. (3) Open fires and wooden buildings made mid nineteenth-century cities highly combustible. The Great Fire of Chicago in 1871 destroyed more than three square miles. (4) Theatres were combustible sites themselves in the pre-Civil War city. In 1844, a riot nearly broke out at the Chestnut Street Theater after its owner cancelled the premiere of George Lippard’s scurrilous, radical Quaker City (see ‘Wo Unto Sodom’ from Paris of America). (5) A common cry among the poor in times of hardship. (6) Eastern State Penitentiary: a prison built by well-intentioned Quakers who believed solitary confinement would purify the inmate’s soul. Prisoners went mad until the regime was relaxed. Not actually the city jail: that honour fell to Moyamensing Prison, several miles to the south. (7) A reference to the Flying Horses Riot of 1834, where a white gang attacked African-Americans on the city’s southern border.
4.
A firebell acts as a wedding chime and then The fiddler strikes a tune in California House (1) The pale white Irish skin pressed underneath his chin The sound of volleys from South and 8th (2) commence Underneath this boarding house The gambling tables turn to reveal Ammunition for the fight (3) This is all we have to survive here The competition for the hours at the mill (4) The dexterous uses of a brickbat in your hand (5) The song strikes up again from Irish lore they sing The Hearts of Oak who beat their landlord to a pulp (6) The burning barrel lights Filled up with tar and spite The gas lights fireworks That give the crowd a cheer The fire company Aims all its energy At the adjacent buildings (7) Anything but us No mercy The ashes in his hands where we did drink and dance The place that we once knew as California House Footnotes (1) A tavern owned by an African-American man who married a white woman. (2) A block or so away from the California House, and just yards from Bedford Street. From 1844 onwards, Philadelphia’s rowdy gangs were not afraid to use firearms. (3) African-Americans fought back. One free black - a fugitive slave and operative on the runaways’ Underground Railroad - later boasted he had ‘fired the first shot on the Moyamensing Killers…. The women tore up all the sidewalk, so that the men could get bricks and stones to fight with.’ (4) Black and Irish workers vied for jobs, though most historians accept that competition in the labour market is not enough to make sense of the ferocity of racial violence in the era. (5) The melee weapon of choice in mid nineteenth-century riots. (6) An eighteenth-century rural protest society in Ireland. (7) As at Pennsylvania Hall, volunteer firemen would save only what they wanted to save.
5.
6.
The 6th 04:50
We are the 6th and we We march from Camp William Penn We formed at Master To Chestnut, Pine, Walnut and Dock (1) From every window A cheer, a song, a handkerchief And every word is kind Rapprochements for the cold hearts (2) There’s no flinch Not a flicker in our eyes There’s no fleeing You’ll never know this bitter pride We are the Union We are the loyal soldier (3) Remember ‘38 (4) They burned us from the building I think of ‘42 (5) We marched on that day too Then they had jeered and beaten us Now listen to them roar I look for Johnny Reb (6) Upon the pink horizon At Washington we stopped (7) To rest our weary legs And waiting on us there were curious whites with smiles You left your homes to fight To strike a blow for liberty To aid this government And we serve you with great pride Footnotes (1) Street names. (2) Reports from the march suggest that the 6th received some abuse in the heart of McMullen’s Fourth Ward. (3) Loyal service to the Union became the basis for black claims to political rights after the Civil War. (4) The burning of Pennsylvania Hall. (5) The Lombard Street riot. African-Americans peacefully celebrating the anniversary of abolition of slavery in the West Indies were attacked by a predominantly Irish mob. (6) A slang term for Southerners - specifically Confederate soldiers in the Civil War. (7) A Moyamensing street.

credits

released August 15, 2019

All songs written by The Payroll Union

Produced by Dave Sanderson

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The Payroll Union Sheffield, UK

Americana band with an obsession for American history. Recently released Paris of America, an album on violence and disorder in antebellum Philadelphia. Released 2 EPs - Underfed & Underpaid and Your Obedient Servant - and our debut album came out 19th January 2013. ... more

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