the blog quebecois

I wrote this after watching a documentary on TV about junkies and prostitutes in Vancouver`s Downtown Eastside, a notoriously seedy area. It was just depressing, a panorama of failure and misery. It was and still is a tough place: An acquaintance from high school went out there for the party scene and was dead within the year. As are, I presume, all of the people interviewed for the documentary. Dead from overdose; dead from AIDS. And though Robert Pickton was still only a malign shimmer on the horizon, there was no shortage of his predecessors.

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[Verse]

Hangin' round the park
It's no place to call home
Got no place really to go
And I need to score
Hangin' round downtown
It's getting dark so fast
Summer's almost gone
Yeah, that's a fact

Hangin' round my friends
We're in it 'til the end
No future, no prospects
But we don`t care
Hangin`round the park
No place to call home
No place really to go
And I need to score
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[Chorus]

I need fifty dollars
Gonna have me
Some fun tonight
My girl`s out walking
The street
Yeah, she`s all right

There`s a party down the alley
Later we`ll get a room
I know a guy who`s holdin`
I`m meeting him soon

I wanna get out
But my legs won`t move
I wanna get out
But my legs won`t move
I wanna get out
But my legs won`t move
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[rpt. verse, chorus]
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The song isn't complete -- I had only the one verse and the chorus. At some point we realized it was better to go with what we had, even if it meant repeating parts of the lyrics. At least this way, we were getting experience with the song while waiting for the Muse to drop her gifts on Mr. Sensitive Songwriter.

One other thing of note: The song refers throughout to "Hangin' round" where the title (I still have the original ms. to confirm it) has it as "Hangin' in. " I think I couldn't at the time decide which sounded better; but with time I realized that my initial impulse was correct. "Hangin' in" better conveys the awful pathos of people waiting helplessly to be lynched on a gallows of their own making.

Hangin' In The Park Warning: Embedded QuickTime audio.

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Just So You Know Caught By Computer
Me & J.B.
By The Lake
Dirty Little Secret
Fire In The Waxworks
Warning Shots
The Chase
Just Like A Woman