Coppertown Blues Radio Edit (03:17) 320kbps mp3, 5.8Mb CLICK FOR mp3
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Coppertown Blues (M Fix, M Cryle - Control) As a child in the ‘60s, I grew up in the industrial town of Port Kembla, NSW. I went to school underneath the stack (school and stack are both gone now), and my father worked at the ER&S - nicknamed by locals as ‘Eat, Rest & Sleep’. My friend (and fellow Port Kembla brother) Manfred Rentz suggested writing a song describing life in the industrial town. It wasn’t always pretty.
From the CD Lines & Spaces (2014) & Timelines (2021)
(Click on Image)
There’s a hole in the ground where the chimney stood and a phantom in the sky There are tales that are lost in the rubble and dust That'd make a grown man cry Of bottom lines and dollar signs that no one could refuse While the stacks all burned - the big wheels turned Coppertown Blues See my dad he was a copper man And a company man I guess doing 9 to 5 keeping us alive In the pay of the ER&S When the sky came down in the high school ground a siren told the news just one street back, in the shadow of the stack Coppertown Blues Eat, rest, sleep, as the holy smoke came down. Deals done cheap, still buried in the ground & when the wind blew west, feel a burning in your chest and coal dust on your shoes Coppertown Blues I went north when the town went south and some just hung around living with the whores and ghosts on Wentworth Street That haunt the copper town When the big stack fell that I knew so well I saw it on the news some had tears for the company years Coppertown Blues Eat rest sleep, as the sulphur rain came down. Deals done cheap, who knows what's in the ground the Oleander thrives where nothing survives there's coal dust on the roofs Coppertown blues