Warning: There’s an explicit lyric. You have been warned.

This is part of a series I’m doing on the tracks on the new EP, Baltimericana. To read the other parts of this series, simply click on the tag “Song Sources” above.

Lyrics

To be honest, I don’t remember the writing process for this one too well. I think I started writing it after I noticed a sign for a fallout shelter one of the buildings near work that says the capacity is 1250, and it was almost certainly influenced by Josh Ritter’s “Temptation of Adam” (if you’ve never heard that one, it’s is lyrically perfect and one of the best songs I’ve ever heard). I do know that my wife had been playing Fallout 3 a lot around the time I wrote this, so that might have had something to do with it.

Baltimore still has a one o’clock whistle, which is an old air raid siren that’s played on Mondays at 1:00 in the afternoon. What little reading there is to do on the subject leads me to believe that this is in fact one of the many strange things about our city. Also, there are supposedly 112 of them. (Not a primary source, there, but there’s a picture of it.) I don’t remember hearing it in other places I lived, but the only other large city I’ve ever lived in was San Antonio, and I lived on the outskirts and worked in a windowless building, so who knows. Continue reading →