We buried her when she was 32. Me and my aunt, the vicar, and the man who dug the hole. She said she didn’t want to be cremated, and wanted a cheap coffin so the worms could get to her quicker. She said she liked the idea of it, though I thought it was because of what happened to the cat and our mum. [Mum and the cat had died years earlier in a fire set by the sister of the title.]
The entire song is about on par with those last few lines. The whole thing is one of the most depressing things I have ever heard.
"I wasn’t there that morning
When my Father passed away
I didn’t get to tell him
All the things I had to say
I think I caught his spirit
Later that same year
I’m sure I heard his echo
In my baby’s new born tears
I just wish I could have told him in the living years"
Everytime I hear that, I get the urge to call my Dad to just say “hi.”
“Words fascinate me. They always have. For me, browsing in a dictionary is like being turned loose in a bank.” - Eddie Cantor
“In the quiet of some foreign field
the gunner sleeps tonight
What’s done is done.
We cannot just write off this final scene
Take heed of the dream.”
-The Gunner’s Final Words, Pink Floyd, The Final Cut
One of the most depressing album’s I’ve ever listened to. Brilliant, but the temptation to play in traffic afterwards is just a little too high. In other words, standard Pink Floyd fare.
JMCJ
“Y’know, I would invite y’all to go feltch a dead goat, but that would be abuse of a perfectly good dead goat and an insult to all those who engage in that practice for fun.” -weirddave, set to maximum flame
They say his fiancee got a letter,
tellin’ how Billy died that day.
The letter said he was a hero,
she should be glad he died that way.
They say she threw the letter away.
Bah! I’ve spent the past 2 months getting that damnedable song out of my brain, and now in two seconds flat, it’s back again.
That’s a good choice for a depressing Pink Floyd song, but I’ll see you and raise you.
“And that’s how the high command took my daddy from me!”
–“When the Tigers Broke Free,” Pink Floyd (extra song from The Wall project that’s turned up odd places)
I’m your only friend
I’m not your only friend
But I’m a little glowing friend
But really I’m not actually your friend
But I am
That’s a good choice for a depressing Pink Floyd song, but I’ll see you and raise you.
“And that’s how the high command took my daddy from me!”
–“When the Tigers Broke Free,” Pink Floyd (extra song from The Wall project that’s turned up odd places)
I’m your only friend
I’m not your only friend
But I’m a little glowing friend
But really I’m not actually your friend
But I am
That’s a good choice for a depressing Pink Floyd song, but I’ll see you and raise you.
“And that’s how the high command took my daddy from me!”
–“When the Tigers Broke Free,” Pink Floyd (extra song from The Wall project that’s turned up odd places)
I’m your only friend
I’m not your only friend
But I’m a little glowing friend
But really I’m not actually your friend
But I am
Bruce Springsteen, “Hometown.” He spends the whole song talking about the depressed, abandoned town, the boarded-up stores, the dead-end, hopeless funk the city has dropped into.
Then, in the last verse, he props his kid up on his lap in the car, and lets him work the steering wheel, and he says:
“Son, take a good look around… This is your hometown.”
Says everything about blind, pointless hope, about emotional inertia, about stubborn pride and everything else. Devastating.
And I gotta go listen to my John Hiatt records again. I know he’ll have a great contribution to this…
There’s only one girl I will ever love
and that was so many years ago…
She kept on telling me,
I want you, I need you,
but there ain’t no way
I’m ever gonna love you
Now don’t be sad,
Cuz two out of three ain’t bad.
In Hank WIlliams’ “I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry,” there’s this one part talking about a robin in a tree during autumn (can’t remember it verbatim) and the line after it is “It means he’s lost the will to live,” but I always hear it as “Like me, he’s lost the will to live” and it upsets me so much.
"A man can’t turn tail and run just because a little personal risk is involved. What did Shakespeare say? “Cowards die a thousand deaths, the brave man… only 500”?
“And it was long ago and it was far away and it was so much better than it is today…”
Makes me sad every time.
Cervaise- I always found John Hiatt more hopeful than sad. Warren Zevon, on the other hand, is just plain screwed up. But I love them both, oh yes I do!
Woke last night to the sound of thunder;
How far off, I sat and wondered;
Started humming a song from 1962;
Ain’t it funny how the night moves
When you just don’t seem to have as much to lose?
Strange how the night moves,
With Autumn closing in…
and one more:
The wind cries “Mary”…