Talky Songs #7 - Don't Set Foot Over The Railway Track

Today's talky song comes from the first Thea Gilmore album I bought, 2005's Songs From The Gutter. Luckily, I bought the limited edition 2 disc version which had this tucked away on disc 2 - a poem Thea wrote in reaction to a parliamentary debate at the time about the social divide. There are a couple of short excerpts from that debate included in the recording and although I can't find anything to identify the speaker... it does sound a hell of a lot like Theresa May. It could be Ann Widdecombe though. It's definitely some heartless Tory git.

7. Thea Gilmore - Don't Set Foot Over The Railway Track

Don't set foot over the railway track

The heathens and the spin doctors are waiting round the back

The skies are always sullen and rain races to the tarmac

So don't set foot over the railway track

Don't set foot over the railway track

The grass isn't green, it's yellow and the pavement is all cracked

The graveyard's in a coma, the church has got the blues

And Jesus has a nose-ring and Mary has tatoos

And girls paint their skins like corpses and have hair ot scouring wire

And the men all look like demons, see them dancing round their fires

Every door has leprosy, every house has got the clap

So, don't set foot over the railway track

Don't set foot over the railway track

Hope you've not been speaking to the wrong kind of people, Jack

They'll screw you son as look at you if you let them gain a foot

This line's God almighty's way of saying that you'll stay just where you're put

'Cause they're all paid up party members with a red streak like a river

They're all standing there on their side saying "promise and deliver"

They are papering their walls with pages of Kerouac

So, don't set foot over the railway track

No, don't set foot over the railway track

Apparently, Thea was never particularly happy with her own delivery of the poem... which is why she chose to re-record it 10 years later with someone much better suited to delivering such material... the great John Cooper-Clarke. Listen to his version - it could well be one of his own poems! Great piece of writing, Thea.