YouTube video link
Music by Chris Riemann
Lyrics by Dave Lindsay & Chris Riemann
Animation by Stephen Hutchins
The only people on the street
Have a dull look in their eyes.
Dirty shoes on dirty feet,
No-one seems to mind.
A little girl who's got a kid,
She's just doin' what her mama did.
Baltimore, you are my home.
Baltimore, you are my home town.
I had a friend shot in the head.
He lived life clean, now he is dead.
They took his wallet.
They took his life,
After doing much worse to his young wife.
Baltimore, you are my home.
Baltimore, you are my home town.
Millions spent on Camden yards,
Nicely gentrified.
Blood congeals on the powder burns,
Another child has died.
Policeman standing all around,
Not a witness to be found.
Baltimore, you are my home.
Baltimore, you are my home town.
[Guitar solo]
Baltimore, you are my home.
Baltimore, you are my home town.
If you look and see what it say on the park bench,
You would think that Baltimore's "The City That Reads."
But when all the kids are packin'
While breathing' lots of crack in,
They're braggin' about whackin'
And other nasty deeds.
So when you look at the ground by the park bench,
What you see is Baltimore, "The City That Bleeds."
In this song, the singer describes his experiences living in the "Charm City" for nine years in the 80's and 90's.
In stanza 1, the singer laments the ubiquitous squalor and misery of Baltimore's inner city as well as the trans-generational nature of the pervasive and persistent teen pregnancy crisis.
In stanza 2, the singer describes a horrific car jacking. This is based on a true story where a friend had his driver's side window shot out during the Rodney King riots. The bullet lodged in the headrest behind him. In real life no-one was seriously hurt.
Stanza 3 explores the enormous resources sunk into the gentrification of the new baseball stadium against a backdrop of extreme violence and ineffective policing.
Stanza 4 describes the irony of the 1980's and 1990's initiative to promote literacy by declaring Baltimore as "The City that Reads" on every public bench in the city. The composer witnessed first hand, a pool of human blood under a thusly labeled park bench following a homicide. The pervasive pessimism and hopelessness of individuals swimming in engineered trans-generational poverty and misery remain a self-propagating legacy and we should ask the leaders of these places, "Why?"
Why, 30 years after this song was written, has nothing changed?
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