Song Lyrics

My father once told this to me
Boston's gritty history
Another ruthless battle
In a useless holy war

Handed down discrepancies
And tensions that'll never ease
One early afternoon on Broad street
It blew up down there for sure

Broad street's just not broad enough
And you just don't love God enough
And if that isn't odd enough
We've taken too much crap

You've pushed us round the sod enough
We've scrapped and rapped and jawed enough
Poked, provoked and prod enough
Something's gonna snap

The Boston fire fighting volunteers
On their way to fight a fire somewhere
Met with a funeral procession
Proceeding way too slow

A brownstone burns out of control
We need to lay to rest this soul
Loggerheads on broadstreet
Eye to eye and toe to toe

Broad street's just not broad enough
And you just don't love God enough
And if that isn't odd enough
We've taken too much crap

You've pushed us round the sod enough
We're scrapped and rapped and jawed enough
Poked, provoked and prod enough
Something's gonna snap

Riot down on Broad street
Hand me a brick, a stick, a picket
Bottle, axe or cobblestone
Riot down on Broad street

And if I'm going down
Hell, I'm not going down alone
I won't go down alone
And when the fight was over

They retired to the Clover,
Silver Dollar, Thirsty Scollar
Whatever pubs they had back then
The Brownstone was in ashes

Broken Bones and bloody gashes
And a casket sat on Broad street
'Til the sun came up again
Broad street's just not broad enough

And you just don't love God enough
And if that isn't odd enough
We've taken too much crap
You've pushed us round the sod enough

We'e scrapped and rapped and jawed enough
Poked, provoked and prod enough
Something's gonna snap
Riot down on Broad street

Hand me a brick, a stick, a picket
Bottle, axe or cobblestone
Riot down on Broad street
And if I'm going down

Hell, I'm not going down alone
And if I'm going down
Hell, I'm not going down alone
And if I'm going down

Hell, I'm not going down alone
There's a Riot down on broad street [Repeat: x4]

Dicky Barrett, Joseph Gittleman

The duration of Riot on Broad Street is 3:16 minutes and seconds.