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    We have a run of 100 CDs of this collaboration between Kevin P. Gilday and The Sea Kings. CDs were only available at selected stores on Record Store Day (16/4/16) and from our Bandcamp page.

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lyrics

Impassioned by a Gorbals sunrise
Glasgow greets the world
Fully formed
Streets of perfect symmetry invoke
A higher power
Erstwhile civic omnipotence

The city crashes into motion
Pumped full of population
An intravenous injection
Of humanity

While in the west, young mothers
And absent fathers
Beleaguer the dear green places
With earnest exercise
And frivolous gossip

The remnants of the shipyards lay exposed
Titans acquiesce to atrophy
A history of rust has colonised
The powerhouses of the Clyde
Once the envy of the world

Tourists grunt and groan over a bridge of sighs
To a hill pockmarked with graves
In the distance stands two cathedrals
Worshipped with a fervour no god could match
While John Knox looks down his nose
At the dead

By this river we flourish
In these streets we find courage
Gold amongst the grit and the glamour
This contradicting reality
Our beautiful duality
City of the pen and the hammer

Drumchapel and Bearsden sit side by side
Posterboys of modern inequality
A living case study
Just a street and twenty two years
Of life expectancy between them

George Square sits resplendent in the rain
Where the tanks once rolled
To turn guns on their own
Red Clydeside threatened to turn scarlet
As the workers stood unbent
In Bolshevist flirtation

Merchant City four by fours
Shop for blood
The new bourgeoisie
Gentrifying all they see
With media fuelled disposable income
And dreams of being everything
Their parents were not

Nomad artists head South
Fleeing West-end rent hikes
And student encroachment
Occupy ragged bar stools
Beside luminous jackets
And the whimpering ghosts
Of professional drinkers
Reduced to speaking in tongues

The new towns creak under the weight
Of broken promises of regeneration
Artificial settlements, abandoned
Architectural brutalism, beseiged
By retail parks and outlet stores
The exactitude of corporate living

While in a bleak council dwelling
Chilled by the Eastern winds
A lady of a certain age
Gathers china in porcelain hands
And curses her late husband
With a loving nod
With a wry smile

By this river we flourish
In these streets we find courage
Gold amongst the grit and the glamour
This contradicting reality
Our beautiful duality
City of the pen and the hammer

credits

from Glasgow Overture / Beast Be With You, released April 23, 2016

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Kevin P. Gilday & The Sea Kings Glasgow, UK

In a marriage consummated behind a manky Gallowgate pub, Kevin P. Gilday and The Sea Kings bring you their debut collaboration.

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