Hesitation Kills

Heya this is brief but I thought I’d post it anyways. This song came out last month but I’ve been lazy (I won’t even pretend that I was too busy) and blah blah blah here is the new single from Royal Chant and we like it well enough. It’s been on the radio a bit but not enough to make us famous, or make much of a difference, really. If it ain’t a hit then it’s really just in the noise level, but since that’s what we play (noise, of a certain verbal snarled strain), and where we are most comfortable (underground), it all works out in the end.

Anyway, it’s called Hesitation Kills, and you can snag it for free and blast it to your hearts content, or have a listen here on the blog or here on the Triple J Unearthed site. Whatever’s clever, my friends. Let us know what you think if you’ve got a moment to spare. Feedback = good. Even if it’s bad.

So that’s pretty much it. I waited almost 2 months to post something, and all you get is a crappy disposable single. I’m not even going to pretend that I’m unaware of the delicious irony that the song & this post are called “Hesitation Kills”, so let’s just move on from here. I’m not dead.

slantrhyme, this malnourished and untended blog of mine, turned 3 years old sometime over the past two weeks, and once again I forgot to notice. The Iron Man Triathlon came and went, and it wasn’t until it was truly over that I recognized that gnawing at the back of my mind. Ah yes, a beginning of sorts. To commemorate this non-event I have chosen “Lean Street”, by G.S. Fraser, taken from my Penguin Book of Scottish Verse, (ed. Tom Scott).

Lean Street

by G.S. Fraser

Here, where the baby paddles in the gutter,
Here in the slaty greyness and the gas,
Here where the women wear dark shawls and mutter
A hasty word as other women pass,

Telling the secret, telling, clucking and tutting,
Sighing, or saying that it served her right,
The bitch! – the words and weather both are cutting
In Causewayend, on this November Night.

At pavement’s end and in the slaty weather
I stare with glazing eyes at meagre stone,
Rain and the gas are sputtering together
A dreary tune! O leave my heart alone,

O leave my heart alone, I tell my sorrows,
For I will soothe you in a softer bed
And I will numb your grief with fat to-morrows
Who break your milk teeth on this stony bread!

They do not hear. Thought stings me like an adder,
A doorway’s sagging plumb-line squints at me,
The fat sky gurgles like a swollen bladder
With the foul rain that rains on poverty.

++++++++++++++++++

Whenever we are in Sydney we stay at our bass player’s apartment (his name is James and he’s a lovely soul), which is in Kingsford/Randwick. It’s a relatively short walk from there to the very upper-crust beach of Coogee Bay, but in order to get there I pass by a somewhat disheveled but still quite friendly looking veterinary practice called Struggletown Vet. Struggletown. I love it.

I want to know exactly where the term “Struggletown” comes from. It’s so perfect and real that it begs to be remembered. I’ve a hunch that it’s a forgotten term for the area in the early 1900s, but rather than Google it or some other short cut I’d like to sit down in some forgotten corner of the local library and meander amongst their local history section. Even better would be to actually talk to someone who remembers, or who remembers someone who would remember, but the sad thing is that most of those people are long gone, and their stories with them, either dead or pushed out by the ever-rising property prices. Even if you could find someone, it’s hard to imagine finding the right place to sit and listen to them over a pint, because there’s no proper quiet pubs anymore. There’s few pubs left in the city that have history written into the walls and where old men gather to pass the time in silence or over well-worn stories. They’re all gone.

Sorry to end on a bummer. Things are a bit rough in the world overall right now, but that’s no reason not to smile and carry on, each in our own way.

Write back if it’s been a while. I do enjoy hearing from you, wherever you are scattered across the globe. Love & peace to you all…

-M