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Garbage

  • (Bill Steele / add. verses Mike Agranoff, Pete Seeger)

    Mister Thompson calls the waiter, orders steak and baked potatoes
    And he leaves the bone and gristle and he never eats the skins
    And the waiter comes and takes it, with a cough contaminates it
    And he puts it in the can with coffee ground and sardine tins
    And the truck comes by on Friday and takes it all away
    And a thousand trucks just like it are converging on the bay
    Oh - garbage
    They're filling up the sea with garbage
    What will they do
    When there's no place left to put all the garbage

    Mister Thompson starts his Chevrolet, drives it down the motorway
    Leaving friends and neighbours in a hydro-carbon haze
    He's joined by lots of smaller cars all sending gases to the stars
    There to form a seething cloud that hangs for thirty days
    And the sun licks down into it with an ultra-violet tongue
    Turns it into smog, and it settles in our lungs
    Oh - garbage
    They're filling up the sky with garbage
    What will they do
    When there's nothing left to breathe but garbage

    Getting older now, takes off his shoes, he settles with the Evening News
    For the kids are doing homework with the TV in one ear
    And Superman and Spiderman take the world and conquer crime
    Then it's time for Dallas so he drinks another beer
    In the paper there's a piece about the Mayor's middle name
    And he gets it read in time to watch the all star bingo game
    Oh - garbage
    They're filling up our minds with garbage
    What will they do
    When there's nothing left to read
    Nothing left to need
    Nothing left to touch
    Nothing left to watch
    Nothing left to walk upon
    Nothing left to talk upon
    Nothing left to see
    Nothing left to be but garbage

    In Mister Thompson's factory they're making plastic Christmas trees
    Complete with silver tinsel and a geodesic stand
    And the plastic's mixed in giant vats from some conglomeration that's
    Been piped from deep within the earth or strip-mined from the land
    And if you ask them questions they say, Can't you see
    It's absolutely needed for the economy
    Oh - garbage
    Their stocks, their shares all garbage
    What will they do
    When their system goes to smash
    There's no value to their cash
    No money to be made
    But there's a world to be repaid
    When the kids will read in history books
    Of financiers and other crooks
    Feudalism and slavery
    Nuclear power knavery
    To history's dustbin they're consigned
    Along with all the other kinds of garbage

    (as sung by Iain MacKintosh)

Susannes Folksong-Notizen

  • [1993:] I'm only one of many people who have made up extra verses to this now famous song [e.g. v. 4 above]. Some people like to shout out the word at random. I like to get a gang to mutter it throughout (for our mutter country). [...] Mike Agranoff of New Jersey made up the first seven lines of verse 4, disagreed with me about the rest, but allowed me to sing his lines anyway. Thanks, Mike; your complete verse is
    The residue gets flushed away through pipes beneath the ground
    Gets dumped into the river and fills up Long Island Sound .
    And thanks, Bill Steele. Bill tells me that dozens of people have added verses to his song, an underground classic. (Seeger, Flowers 140f)

  • [1993:] From Ithaca, NY, Bill Steele, the author of the famous and endlessly varied Garbage, writes: "Seeing yet another verse to Garbage in your column reminded me that I always meant to send in my own variations ... For sharply focused recycling programs and kids, drop the original third verse and end after this:

    At the landfill dozers thunder as they plough each truck load under
    Where it festers and ferments but never really goes away
    Though we think it's safely buried, there is reason to be worried
    As the poisons seep into the ground and spread out day by day
    Still the trucks they keep on coming and unloading row by row
    But the hollow's filling up and there's no other place to go
    Garbage - we're filling up the future with garbage
    What will we do
    When our kids wake up to find
    That all we've left behind is garbage

    [more vss. Seeger, Flowers, p 59]
    I thought the song was finished after I wrote three verses, but if I can make additions, so can other people. It's great to know I've created something so many people enjoy. Does that make it a "true" folk song?" (Sing Out 38/2)

Quelle: USA

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