The Burning City Smoking

Last week I attended the Hotel Cafe Tour stop in Columbus, Ohio. More on that later, but I wanted to mention this song that Kevin Devine performed, called "The Burning City Smoking."

"I wrote 'The Burning City Smoking' during the (New York City) transit strike," he says. "That song was a person sticking his head up and saying, 'Oh, I'm not just self-involved and crazy inside - the world has gone nuts, too.' I was always very abstractly political. I listened to punk rock records and thought I could punch my time card. And then all this s*** in the world made me have to sit up and pay attention, and thats a good thing. It's a scary time, so why ignore it?"

...At the show I saw, he introduced it as being about "Tsunamis and hurricanes" -- specifically the aftermath of Katrina. Here's some of the lyrics (I had to transcribe it from the soundfile because I couldn't find them on the internet):

40 million refugees
with no place on this earth to call their home
one for every aimless graduate
with nothing else to show for it but loans

And those of us who make a mark
use someone else's blood
Our western stain won't wash away
won't vanish in the flood

It goes deeper through each hurricane
and tidal wave and war
We want everything we see
and once it's gone we just want more

Atlas had those shoulders
We've got Ambien and Jamesons and blow
to bind us in a bubble
keep the newsprint nightmare distant and remote

If we're now so disconnected
it's our reflections we ignore
And if our constant choices
skim and pass the writing on the wall
Man, I'm sad to say we're lost
and I'm embarrassed for us all


Anyway, do go check it out on iTunes.