New and Selected Breakdowns E.P.

by Kevin P. Gilday

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Includes unlimited streaming via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality downloads of Tokyo Boy EP: A Poetic Travelogue in 7 Parts, New and Selected Breakdowns E.P., The Man Who Loved Beer, The Man Who Came in from the Mud E.P., 50 Kevin P. Gilday Fans Can't Be Wrong: An Introduction, N.Y.C.E.P., Notes From A Quarter-Life Crisis, and Graphite. , and , .

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1.	Why I Fucking Hate The Edinburgh Fringe 02:11	lyrics
A city full of attention seekers Certified cunt-convention Confidence black hole Wild dreams of audience retention Mental exhaustion Relentless and tiring Being flyered by arseholes Being the arsehole flyering Self inflicted scurvy Soggy chips on the menu Performing in a bona fide cupboard PBH putting you on in this fucking venue Every square inch an advert Billboards obscure the greenery Being forced to endure Amateur Sunday actors chewing the scenery August in Edinburgh Someone get these clowns an editor They're charging money for an hour of this pish Earnest self importance is rife The Guardian supplement come to life A capital terrorist attack my parting wish Fannies on unicycles Wankers on stilts You've got your auld maw crying in her quilt Performance artists Part-time magicians Your Da canny work under these conditions Stop being an embarrassment Failed child actor Those dance lessons were a bust Now you've taken up being a wanker 'But mime is in my blood' you cry, 'This art is my compulsion' Just a few grand in government grants And we'll really see some propulsion But it's simple supply and demand my friend And this festival is ruthless There's no room here for soggy fops Artisans, naive and toothless So don't feel downhearted if your audience halves When some cunt goes to the loo After all, they're only in town to see that comedian From 'Have I Got News For You'
2.	Shitebag 03:39	lyrics
There's a word that's been following me around Stalking my every movement Clinging to me, barnacle-like, wherever I go Ubiquitous Omnipresent And that word is... Shitebag You see, I'm a shitebag - or so I've been told My whole life, for refusing to be bold For being unable to throw caution to the wind For allowing my inherent rationality to rescind The order, for some reckless endeavour Which seems like a good idea until you measure The risk, to this porcelain skeleton Brain chewing it over like a beef wellington Before delivering the report – this shit is unsafe Danger blows me away like a waif Or a skinny girl, hungry for my attention This is not how you combat hypertension I don't know how I got like this Forever standing at the foot of the tree While untold splendours reside above Reserved for those lofty enough to see The unfiltered spectrum of possibility Life's rich tapestry being woven With courage and conviction And absolutely nothing to be proven If only this cowardice of body would temper my thoughts Questionable ethics tying me up in knots My penis has no regard for sexual equality Overrules my brain like an unelected minority I wouldn't skydive from a plane but tailspin into drama Plot the script's turning points on a handy diorama Drink ten pints of Guinness but never change a fuse Self-assigned credibility too valuable to lose Consciousness aching with unrequited desire Ephemeral longing turns me into a liar Scarred by jealousy, sick of pretending Will this poverty of spirit be simply neverending? But how would you like to be held to others standards? Values assigned to your behaviour? Maybe my circumspect code should be applied to all Apprehensive living might just be your saviour... You're staying out til late, aye? Partying 'til your eyelids sag Can't handle going home early eh? You're a shitebag So you've downed 13 vodkas? Drinking 'til you boke and gag Can't handle your water eh? You're a shitebag I'm a grown man apparently, done with peer pressure So why should I justify what gives me pleasure? A good cup of tea and an early night A few pints down the pub and then exit stage right My crazy days aren't behind me, they never began The unremarkable confessions of a sensible young man Casual alcoholism excepted I'm pretty straight Fear and anxiety tend to conflate So suspend your moral judgement and bilious barbs Panes of expectation reduced to shards Against perceived wisdom I'll plant a flag Yours sincerely, a shitebag
3.	Jubilee 02:33	lyrics
God save the queen! God save the queen! I can't comprehend a sentence quite so obscene As an omnipotent superbeing using heavenly powers To protect an old woman with a couple of towers A person, a family who have done nothing of note Except to attain positions of power without a single vote These repugnant recipients of our hard earned taxation Rule this fairytale laughingstock that we call a nation A spurious, spineless parasite Worshipped by the sad and delusional, the bitter and unusual Vapid, flag waving goons Delusional, tea pot collecting loons Coffin dodgers with hands on heart To celebrate the birthday of a fellow old fart Worshipping an old woman for her inherited wealth While we scrape and starve and fear for our health They parade their riches, revel in extravagance Ornate palaces and jewel encrusted crowns Sprawling estates and lavish gowns Professional wavers, fox chasers, stupid toffs Architect bothering, caviar swallowing, here come the moths Drawn to the flame – they're to blame for this incessant bore Parasitical oafs, born with it all and feeling entitled to more A cultural embarrassment, an irrelevance An institution worthy of our contempt, certainly not our reverence They take our money and give us nothing in return The great british swindlers with cash to burn And we're expected to be grateful, grateful For their mere presence For a meagre wave, for a stilted handshake Well I want penance It's time to throw off the shackles of establishment tricks But I won't be satisfied 'til I get heads on sticks
4.	Glasgow Overture 03:31	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 Besiege 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
5.	I've Fallen Out Of Love With Poetry 02:37	lyrics
I've fallen out of love with poetry It's not me it's you That spark has gone wandering Amidst countless painful open mics, Anxiety inducing slams, clique politics And The complete absence of ever being paid I've fallen out of love with poetry Because of your fucking whiny voices And your earnest subjects Contrivedly crafted for universal agreement I'm glad we've sorted out that racism is bad - I was a wee bit sketchy until you took the mic I've fallen out of love with poetry With your mid-atlantic inflections and borrowed speech patterns Because you all learned to slam From Americans on youtube Instead of saying what you feel I've fallen out of love with poetry Because your body issues are not important, Unlike mine Of course you're an outsider You're reading fucking poetry This is a club for weirdos This much we know I've fallen out of love with poetry Because you write too many love poems And they don't come easily to me Grand metaphors like quixotic sculptures Hewn from the marble of your affections, Or something I've fallen out of love with poetry Because rhyming is seen as uncool Despite it being a useful linguistic tool A literary device taught to kids at school Yet I stand up here like a mawkish ghoul Because my poetic preference marks me out as a fool, Or something I've fallen out of love with poetry Because these young people - Are actually quite good And I'm not sure if there's a space For a grown man's wearisome compositions And chronic oversharing I've fallen out of love with poetry Because it's fallen out of love with me

about

New and Selected Breakdowns E.P. brings together the poems performed at the ill-fated Edinburgh Fringe show of the same name in 2015. Drunk on a combination of grief and bitterness, I decided to write a divisive and uncompromising hour of spoken word and something approaching stand up comedy. This collection of poems is the fruit of that labour.

'Not unreasonably bitter' - A fan review.