(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)