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The Rain Pours Through the Roof

from Black Tin Barns (1995) by Shaun Belcher

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about

This song is about the slow decline and eventual closure of the British Leyland Rover factory in Cowley.

My Uncle John worked in the spray booths there and my father would drive past it almost every day .

By the early 1990s the once proud Morris Motors and Pressed Steel plants were either crumbling or being demolished or sold to BMW.

Thatcherite propagandists in the press had a field day destroying its reputation and shoddy working practices at all levels produced a series of bad cars but it also had a long history of union activism and government opposition meaning it like the mines ripe for closure by a right wing establishment.

The early 1990s were marked by a series of 'joyride' incidents*. Basically disenfranchised youth venting anger at no jobs and no hope. Cars would be stolen, joy ridden and burnt...it happened everywhere but nowhere more poignantly than in Blackbird Leys estate...the side of Oxford that never seen. I was more interested and attached to that part than any dreaming spires.

So this is my sad elegy to a now destroyed community and way of life.

Ironically I have never learnt to drive but write a lot about cars....maybe if I had I'd be Bruce Springsteen now:-)

credits

from Black Tin Barns (1995), released January 1, 1995

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Shaun Belcher Nottingham, UK

If you’ve ever dreamt of Daniel Johnston doing an impression of Conor Oberst singing Jeff Tweedy songs,
then you must listen to this.

Bill Kerry III

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