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Hot Asphalt

Dubliners

Text File

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#This file is the author's own work and represents their interpretation of the #
#song. You may only use this file for private study, scholarship, or research. #
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 jamesb@nevada.edu
Date: Wed, 23 Feb 94 10:26:14 MET
Mailer: Elm [revision: 70.85]

Title: HOT ASPHALT
Performer: THE DUBLINERS

I'm a true fan of Irish music due not only for its
compatibility with my level of guitar playing (it is
improving though!) and this is one of my
contributions to its spreading throughout the world...
Very amusing text, one of my favourites...
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Irish Traditional arranged by Dubliners

HOT ASPHALT

# (I play chords in a 2/4 rhythm: 1(down) 2(down'n'up) )

     Em                             G                D
Good evening all my jolly lads, I'm glad to find you well,
           Em                            D
If you'll gather all around me now the story I will tell,
          Em                    G            D
For I've got a situation and begorrah and begob,
        Em                    D       Em
I can whisper all the weekly wage of nineteen bob.
       G                                 G
'Tis twelve months come October since I left me native home,
       Em                             D
After helping the Killarney boys to bring the harvest down.
     Em                          G                D
But now I wear the geansai and around me waist a belt.
         Em                       D         Em
I'm the gaffer of the squad that makes the hot asphalt.

CHORUS:
              G                           G
    Well, we laid it in a hollows and we laid it in the flat.
               Em                           D
    And if it doesn't last forever sure I swear I'll eat me hat,
                Em                                 G            D
    Well, I've wandered up and down the world and sure I never felt
         Em                     D      Em
    any surface that was equal to the hot asphalt.

# (Follow the same chord pattern...)

The other night a copper comes and he says to me: "McGuire,
Would you kindly let me light me pipe down at your boiler fire?"
And he planks himself right down in front, with hobnails up, till late,
And says I: "Me decent man, you'd better go and find your bate!"
He ups and yells, "I'm down on you I'm up to all yer pranks,
Don't I know you for a traitor from the Tipperary ranks?"
Boys I hit straight from the shoulder and I gave him such a belt
That I knocked him into the boiler full of hot asphalt.

(CHORUS)

We quickly dragged him out again and we threw him in the tub,
And with soap and warm water we began to rub and scrub,
But devil the thing, it hardened and it turned him hard as stone
And with every other rub sure you could hear the copper groan.
"I'm thinking", says O'Reilly, "that he's lookin' like Ould Nick,
And burn me if I am not inclined to claim him with me pick."
"Now", says I, "it would be 'asier to boil him till he melts,
and to stir him nice and 'asy in the hot asphalt."

(CHORUS)

You may talk about yer sailorlads, ballad singers and the rest,
Your shoemakers and your tailors but we please the ladies best.
The only ones who know the way their flinty hearts to melt
are the lads around the boiler making hot asphalt.
With rubbing and with scrubbing sure I caught me death of cold,
and for scientific purposes me body it was sold,
In the Kelvingrove museum me boys, I'm hangin' in me pelt,
As a monument to the Irish mixing hot asphalt!

(CHORUS)

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That's it folk! More Irish songs soon to come!
I have a lot of Dubliners and Pogues stuff.
Any of you fans out there on the net, contact me:

     macic@samson.fiz.uni-lj.si

On the rocky road to Dublin,
                                   CIC