"Hotel Vendome" genre: Folk
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	Ballad about a tragic 1972 fire in Boston's Back Bay.
	CD: Features and Openers (Benefit Compilation for the Center for Arts in Natick ("TCAN"); for info contact www.natickarts.org).   Label: Released through TCAN Credits: Mark Genero on 12 string guitar; Lisa Bastoni on background vocal
	Story Behind the Song I am old enough to remember the Vendome fire and vividly remember watching TV coverage of the firefighters' funerals as a kid. I had long thought that the tragedy would make a good subject for a song, and in the wake of recent events involving many more firefighters' funerals I finally sat down and wrote it. Lyrics Verse 1: A fine afternoon out on Comm. Avenue With boys tossing baseballs as they’re wont to do Some play with fire-trucks all shiny and new A great day to just be alive Then they hear the sirens and stop playing ball And look down the street past the tree-covered mall As real fire-trucks race by to answer the call That came in at 2:35 Chorus: Now there’s four alarms sounding And twelve engines churning As two hundred men Approach one building burning With seven tall ladders and handles a-turning They streak in a blizzard of chrome To the Hotel Vendome Verse 2: The building was brick with a marble façade The windows were bay with a steel balustrade From the roof was a view of the grass esplanade That stood out among the concrete Well back in the days of the Second World War Fine ladies and gentlemen praised the decor But no one had lived there for decades or more Except for some bums off the street Chorus: Now there’s four alarms sounding And twelve engines churning As two hundred men Enter one building burning And twenty-five children will soon be a-learning Their daddys will never come home From the Hotel Vendome Bridge: When Chaplain Mahoney appears at the door There’s no need to ask what he’s standing there for He said they’d put out the fire and the danger was passed When the southeastern side of the building collapsed Verse 3: Here’s to Beckwith and Carroll, Magee and Boucher And Murphy and Saniuk who perished that day And for Jameson, Carroll and Dolan we pray All taken from us for good But the world keeps on spinning, you can’t turn it back Soon all trace was gone of the smoke billowed black Took ‘em 25 years just to put up a plaque Near the site where the building once stood Verse 4: A fine afternoon out on Comm. Avenue With kids tossing baseballs just like they used to And playing with fire-trucks shiny and new A great day to just be a kid But the kids of the men who died at the Vendome Are now men and women with kids of their own And a half dozen of them, now that they are grown Work the same job their fathers once did Chorus: So when there’s more alarms sounding And more engines churning And these men risk their lives For the pittance they’re earning Say a prayer for the ones who await their returning And remember the seeds that were sown At the Hotel Vendome

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