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Maggie Malone

from Evil Against Evil by The Psychic Alliance

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about

By far the oldest track on the album, this is the fourth recorded version of a song that I wrote for my first band, Gojiro (just the first part, which was originally a bit of a Birthday Party knockoff, which was good, but was recorded so poorly as to be almost unlistenable). The lyrics of the original song were re-appropriated by The Wormwood Orchestra and added over top of a song called "A Minor Blues" when our guitar player quit but we wanted to keep playing his long and jammy but oh-so-generic 12 bar blues song. The reggae feel was forced upon me by the jam band elements in the group, and although I sort of hate it, it's never been successfully banished. I revived the song for my next recording project, the EP New Historic Landscapes by The Government of Canada. The reggae part was thrown out in favor of a return to the old version, only played on top of an electronic bhangra beat. When the G of C became a live band we wound up tying the two versions together using a riff from an instrumental we had been playing called "The Talons of Weng Chiang." The coda at the end was added later based on a riff that I had used on a spoken word/electronic ep that was basically still born, and the song was basically finished. The Psychic Alliance swallowed it when we were desperate for material to flesh out our live show, and added many of the subtle nuances that typify the current version. It's still not really done, and I suspect the definitive version will likely be captured on a live album in the nebulous future, barring the band breaking up first.
The song Maggie Malone was to be the centerpiece of a much longer and now aborted song cycle, to be the first LP recorded by The Wormwood Orchestra. I'm not sure if concept records really do it for me though. I always get bothered by how loose their concepts always seem to be (Tommy by The Who is full of some really bad narrative fails). Anyway, here's the basic story, just so there's some context:

A protestant preacher is assigned to an obscure parish in the Irish countryside. He engages a local girl to keep house for him. Her free spirited ways eventually win him over and he finds himself having undeniably erotic feelings about her. He begins spying on her while she bathes in a local pond, working himself into a frenzy of eroticism coupled with self loathing as he becomes increasingly obsessed with her. He begins to go mad, having increasingly paranoid dreams and visions in which she becomes the embodiment of unrestrained nature, a force of primal terror, and he becomes her willing supplicant, abandoning his sterile God to worship at the green chapel of Pan. Driven to the brink of sanity by his now unbridled sexual panic, he returns on Midsummer night to spy again on her, but finds her cabin empty. He sees a fire burning upon a nearby hill, and finds her in the midst of a pagan ritual, making love to a horned priest upon a stone altar. He stumbles home in a stupor and wakes the next day convinced that he has received a sign from God. When the girl returns he strangles her to death, burying her body beneath a willow tree in the churchyard.
Act two occurs several years later. A young priest takes up residence in the parish. By night he sees a spectral woman dancing beneath the willow in the churchyard. He watches her every night, growing more and more obsessed with the beautiful woman who always fades before he can reach her. Finally, convinced that he will never find happiness among the living he hangs himself from the willow tree in order to forever haunt the same spot as his beloved. In a twist ending we find that he is the grandson of the priest from the first act, his soul now claimed as payment for the crimes of his grandsire.

lyrics

The wind ain't what's been howling in the hills tonight
A wolf ain't what's been howling in the hills tonight
there's a wild woman named Maggie Malone
she lives in a cabin in the woods all alone
a wolf ain't what's been howling in her cabin tonight
It's too dark to see her dance
There's nary a gust of wind in the hills tonight
the whipoorwils are all silent as death tonight
there's nary a gust, and nary a sound
but the blades on the windmill spin around and around
the wind ain't what's been twirling those blades tonight
It's too dark to see her dance
Maggie Malone isn't in her cabin tonight
but there's a fire on the hillside blazing full and bright
The moon is high, the wind is low, the woods are bathed in a ghastly glow
and no one's safe in these here hills tonight
I don't want to see her dance

The wind ain't what's been howling. Howling in the hills tonight.
A wolf ain't what's been howling...in the hills tonight.
It's the general consensus that something in these hills ain't right,
And there's nary a gust of wind rolling through the hills tonight
and the whipoorwils are silent
they're all silent as death tonight
but the branches of the trees are waving in the pale moonlight

Hey Maggie! Malone? What are you doing in the woods alone, huh?
I think you put a spell on me!
Your eyes may be green, but I know what I seen in the woods.
And it's a werewolf pretty baby
howling under your red riding hood!

Sleep tight! Maggie Malone! Sleep tight in your woodland home.
Rest your weary head beneath the willow tree.
Could it be?
Baby could it be?
That there might be consequences to breaking the heart of a mad-dog
murdering motherfucker like me?
Awooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!

credits

from Evil Against Evil, released April 30, 2017
First solo: Shaun. Second Solo: Marc. Third solo: Shaun.

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The Psychic Alliance Vancouver, British Columbia

The less you know about this band, the better. Rumor has it that they're very bad people, paranoid, misanthropic, frequently given to melancholy and intellectual dullards to boot. Stories of vicious infighting and naughtiness follow them like a black cloud, and the threat of immediate collapse is constant. Fortunately they look cool. ... more

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