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From Every Still

from Devil Bug's Dream by The Payroll Union

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about

Like most European and American cities of the mid nineteenth century, Philadelphia’s wealth lay in the centre, and its suburbs could seem a dark and foreboding frontier. The two 1844 riots, indeed, took place beyond the boundaries of the city itself in what became known as the ‘infected districts’ of the metropolis. ‘From Every Still’ looks out nervously from a genteel perch to the turbulent borderlands ringing the metropolitan core.

lyrics

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.

credits

from Devil Bug's Dream, released August 15, 2019

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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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