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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)  Add to Cart   or Download from CD Baby 

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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