Neighbourhood

from State of That by Johnny Panic & the Bible of Dreams

supported by

	/

Streaming + Download

Includes unlimited streaming via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.

Purchasable with gift card

£1 GBP or more
Buy the Full Digital Album

about

If you’ve got this far, you deserve a medal because it depresses the shit out of me and I wrote it. Believe it or not, I ditched several tracks because they were just too depressing. This tune tries to convey how people like me developed our world view as Remainers. People my generation (and slightly older), get on my nerves, especially when using the pronoun “WE” to talk about WW2, which ended before we were born.

Originally written for the Leeds Dortmund Poetry project at Chapelfm in Seacroft.

lyrics

Neighbourhood

So I find myself in Europe’s first automated factory with my pen-friend’s dad and his mate
Courtesy of a long-gone Post-war Twin-Town initiative, now derided as woolly and unsafe,

Which had dared to plant our council-house outlooks in sun-dried families who fed us
better than our mums, (which wasn’t mum’s fault, l loved beans & chips),

We rode real racing bikes, were given cab-rides in trains,
And got tanned in November. This tinkered irrevocably with our brains.

My dad had told me they were all “Backward and dirty, you see’
Which felt close to home, to me. Anyway,

I forgot all about it till the middle
Of what, in our house, passed for debate.

The phrase “British jobs” made my gut tighten: In Cas, Castres or Koblenz
Redundancy’s tragedy meant empty plates for friends.

A worker is a worker. A welcome is a welcome. A whole family
Once learned “Happy Birthday” in a second language just for me.

The buildings were all post 1945, my friend’s parents could remember it all
the sirens and the darkness and reprisals outside the Town Hall.

Cut to the Now: I have to choose.Do I wearily talk to the wall
Of Twitter accounts with no followers but lots of flags and enmity?

Or do I drive a thousand miles to apologise to the families;
Marty, Arnoldy Casiez? Flags never fed me.