I found the opening lines to Trimdon Grange Explosion rattling in my head this morning. Maybe it’s the time of year, maybe it’s a feeling of doom and gloom, but can there be any more gloomy opening lines than these?
O let’s not think about tomorrow
Lest we disappointed be
For all our joys they may quickly turn to sorrow
As we all may daily see.
Today we’re strong and healthy
Tomorrow there comes the change
As we may see from the explosion
That has been at Trimdon Grange.
Sorry to sound less cheery but November brings this feeling.
Anyone have any more examples?
Life’s a bitch and then you die, that’s why we get high
‘Cause you never know when you’re gonna go
Edit: Just noticed the words “opening lines”. Oops.
Don’t worry @Gary any less cheery lyrics greatly accepted.
I am angry, I am ill and I’m as ugly as sin
My irritability keeps me alive and kicking
I know the meaning of life, it doesn’t help me a bit
How about this from those cheery Brummie songsmiths. the Sabbath
“Finished with my woman ’cause
She couldn’t help me with my mind
People think I’m insane because
I am frowning all the time”
Alternatively, this from Faith No More
“Go on and wring my neck
Like when a rag gets wet
A little discipline
For my pet genius
My head is like lettuce
Go on dig your thumbs in
I cannot stop giving
I’m thirty-something”
Splendidly understated, Suzanne Vega paints a very grim picture in Luka.
“My name is Luka
I live on the second floor
I live upstairs from you
Yes I think you’ve seen me before
If you hear something late at night
Some kind of trouble, some kind of fight
Just don’t ask me what it was
Just don’t ask me what it was
Just don’t ask me what it was”
Some bleak and depressing words set to a fairly cheery tune by The Move
I wake and yawn at the crack of dawn
With dewdrops on my feet
As I rise up to greet the morning
Nothing much to eat
Every breath I take seems to make my body ache
My only friend is mist on a Monday morning
Pick up my sack and walk for miles
Never thinking why
To the brewer’s yard where I can sit
And watch my life go by
Drink and drink all day till my memory melts away
I need a friend like mist on a Monday morning
Where’s my wife, has she gone
I hear misty morning call
One foot resting in the grave
Destined not to see her anymore
There’s a den in the grass by the autopath
Of corrugated steel
I may be sleeping there tonight
And depending how I feel
Damp and dirty place
Printing sorrow on my face
With nothing but the mist on a Monday morning
From… I feel the sin
Like wheels upon my feet
Intoxicated by the night
I stumbled in the street
Every breath I take seems to make my body ache
And drift into the mist on a Monday morning
I hurt myself today
To see if I still feel
I focus on the pain
The only thing that’s real
The Wound That Never Heals – Jim White.
Long about an hour before sunrise she drags his body down to the edge of the swollen river,
Wrapped in a red velvet curtain stolen from the movie theatre where she works.
Quiet as a whisper, under the stanchions of a washed-out bridge, she cuts him loose
And watches as the floodwaters spin him around once then carry him away.
Then she removes the golden ring upon her finger and she throws it in.
And I wonder, baby why don’t you cry?
Baby, why don’t you?
Baby why don’t you cry?
Townes. VZ
Now I’m out of prison
I got me a friend at last
He don’t drink or steal or cheat or lie
His name’s Codine
He’s the nicest thing I’ve seen
Together we’re gonna wait around and die
Together we’re gonna wait around and die
(Bit more TVZ)
I stood in line and left my name
Took about six hours or so
Well, the man just grinned like it was all a game
Said they’d let me know
I put in my time till the Pocono line
Shut down two years ago
I was staying at the mission till I met Marie
Now I can’t stay there no more
Fella ‘cross town said he’s lookin’ for a man
To move some old cars around
Maybe me and Marie could find a burned-out van
And do a little settlin’ down
Aw, but I’m just dreamin’
I ain’t got no ride
And the junkyard’s a pretty good ways
That job’s about a half week old besides
It’d be gone now anyway
Unemployment says I got no more checks
And they showed me to the hall
My brother died in Georgia some time ago
I got no one left to call
Summer wasn’t bad below the bridge
A little short on food that’s all
Now I gotta get Marie some kind of coat
We’re headed down into fall
I used to play the mouth harp pretty good
Hustled up a little dough
But I got drunk and I woke up rolled
A couple of months ago
They got my harp and they got my dollar
Them low life so and so’s
Harps cost money and I ain’t got it
It’s my own fault I suppose
Ah, the Pocono’s down but the Chesapeake’s runnin’
Two freights everyday
If it’s just me I’d be headed South
But Marie can’t catch no train
She’s got some pain and she thinks it’s a baby
Says we gotta wait and see
In my heart I know it’s a little boy
Hope he don’t end up like me
Well, the man’s still grinnin’ says he lost my file
I gotta stand in line again
I want to kill him but I just say no
I had enough of that line, my friend
I head back to the bridge
It’s getting kinda cold
I’m feelin’ too low down to lie
I guess I’ll just tell Marie the truth
Hope she don’t break down and cry
Marie she didn’t wake up this morning
She didn’t even try
She just rolled over and went to heaven
My little boy safe inside
I laid them in the sun where somebody’d find them
Caught a Chesapeake on the fly
Marie will know I’m headed South
So’s to meet me by and by
Ah, Marie will know I’m headed south
So to meet me by and by
Only A Fool Would Say That – Steely Dan
A world become one, of salads and sun,
Only a fool would say that.
A boy with a plan, a natural man
Wearing a white stetson hat.
Unhand that gun, begone.
There’s no one to fire upon.
If he’s holding it high he’s telling a lie.
I heard it was you
Talking ’bout a world where all is free.
It just couldn’t be.
And only a fool would say that.
Billie Holiday can usually be relied on to inject a bit of gloom into the proceedings.
Sunday is gloomy, my hours are slumberless
Dearest, the shadows I live with are numberless
Little white flowers will never awaken you
Not where the black coach of sorrow has taken you
Angels have no thought of ever returning you
Would they be angry if I thought of joining you?
Gloomy Sunday
Oh yes, good choice.
Her superlative delivery of the opening line of Body And Soul (1957 version) is steeped in despair: “My days have grown so lonely…”
I also love the weary resignation in the opening line of my favourite Marianne Faithfull song, Truth Bitter Truth: “Where did it go to, my youth?”
What a drag it is getting old!
“I tell you that I’m already shy
I have a feeling that this feeling is certain now.
DAT DAT DAT DAT DAT DAT
Hey, what kind of woman have you seen me as?”
That Mr. Hubert, he a real cushion
Why do I pretend? Our essence is distilled
and all familiar taste is now drained
and though purity is maintained, it leaves us sterile,
living through the millions of years,
a laugh as close as any tear;
Living, if you claim that all that that entails is:
breathing, eating, defecating,
screwing, drinking, spewing, sleeping,
sinking ever down and down and ultimately passing away time
which no longer has any meaning.
VdGG – Still Life – gets me out of bed in the morning!
It seem that there is nothing left but hatred and lust in the world.
I don’t give a damn anymore – I’ve only wound up betrayed.
It’s all been absolutely worthless –
All the efforts I’ve made to be gentle and kind are repaid with contempt,
Degraded by sympathy, and worthless kindness and love that isn’t meant.
I’m through with joy and company, I’ve done with pretty words,
Betrayed… there’s no hiding place anywhere in the world.
I’ve nothing left to fight for except making my passion heard –
I don’t believe in anything
Anywhere in the world.
Peter Hammill – Betrayed
Beneath the old iron bridges, across the Victorian parks
And all the frightened people running home before dark
Past the Saturday morning cinema that lies crumbling to the ground
And the piss stinking shopping center in the new side of town
I’ve come to smell the seasons change and watch the city
As the sun goes down again
Here comes another winter of long shadows and high hopes
Here comes another winter waitin’ for utopia
Waitin’ for hell to freeze over
Nice one! Haven’t heard that in years.
On the bleakest day autumn could muster
In a church to which they’ll not return
I thought back to a time when I could trust her
To a time when there wasn’t John Byrne
HMHB – RSVP
Crikes, Fitter! VdGG make Billie Holliday sound like Little Miss Sunshine.
“Ne me quitte pas!” Jacques Brel came up with a winner there.
Nina Simone will have you in tears.
Singing Brel on French TV in French. Incroyable!
Yep – Still Life was a “be careful what you wish for” song, suggesting immortality might have some downsides…
Ladies and gentlemen of the Afterword, I give you Sir Richard Thompson:
I feel for you, you little horror
Safe at your mother’s breast
No lucky break for you around the corner
‘Cause your father is a bully
And he thinks that you’re a pest
And your sister she’s no better than a whore.
Life seems so rosy in the cradle,
But I’ll be a friend – I’ll tell you what’s in store
There’s nothing at the end of the rainbow.
There’s nothing to grow up for anymore
Or
Or, possibly his nadir of bleakness,
“I’ll Regret It All in the Morning” has been one of my favourites for many years now – not sure what that says…🙁
This must be the biggest hit (UK no 2, US no 1) with the saddest lyrics.
In a little while from now
If I’m not feeling any less sour
I promise myself to treat myself
And visit a nearby tower
And climbing to the top
Will throw myself off
In an effort to
Make it clear to whoever
Wants to know what it’s like when you’re shattered
Left standing in the lurch at a church
Were people saying, My God, that’s tough
She stood him up
No point in us remaining
We may as well go home
As I did on my own
Alone again, naturally
When I get home, it’s late at night
I’m black and bloody from my life
I haven’t time to clean my hands
Cuts will only sting me through my dreams
It’s well past midnight as I lie
In a semi-conscious state
I dream of people fighting me
Without any reason, I can see
In the morning, I awake
My arms, my legs, my body aches
The sky outside is wet and grey
So begins another weary day
So begins another weary day
Ooh that is a bit bleak, innit. Never really noticed
Madness did quite a good hiding of bleak lyrics dressed up in bouncing ska tunes. See also a song about having a heart attack on the commute to work
The evening sky has blown apart
The fire on the hills has all gone gray
And my mother’s got a few days left
She thinks it’s time we all
Learned to pray
And my sister’s in the kitchen
And my brother’s laying out his guns
And my father’s pacing in the hallway
Looks like they’ve all figured out
A way to run
It’s as old as the world
It’s as old as the world
The suffering’s gonna come
To everyone
Someday
The suffering’s gonna come
To everyone
Someday
(Suffering song/Willard Grant Conspiracy)
Sunday morning / Me and my son / Walk in the park
Found a young man hanging from a tree
His hands by his side / Morning sun in his eyes
I told my little boy he was asleep
Albion by Chris Wood
A true story according to the sleevenotes
Bloody hell – that’s grim. Bad enough discovery on your own.
Made me think of Billie Holiday’s Strange Fruit:
Southern trees bear strange fruit
Blood on the leaves and blood at the root
Black bodies swinging in the southern breeze
Strange fruit hanging from the poplar trees
Pastor scene of the gallant south
The bulging eyes and the twisted mouths
Scent of magnolias, sweet and fresh
Then the sudden smell of burning flesh
Here is a fruit for the crows to pluck
For the rain to gather, for the wind to suck
For the sun to rut, for the trees to drop
Here is a strange and bitter crop
“I found her diary underneath the tree, and started reading about me” – David Gates, Diary. Not sad as such… but they take on a new sad meaning once you get to the twist at the end of the song!
I’ll say goodbye to love
No one ever cared if I should live or die
Time and time again the chance for love has passed me by
And all I know of love
Is how to live without it
I just can’t seem to find it
So I’ve made my mind up
I must live my life alone
And though it’s not the easy way
I guess I’ve always known
I’d say goodbye to love
There are no tomorrows for this heart of mine
Surely time will lose these bitter memories
And I’ll find that there is someone to believe in
And to live for something I could live for
All the years of useless search
Have finally reached an end
Loneliness and empty days will be my only friend
From this day love is forgotten
I’ll go on as best I can
What lies in the future
Is a mystery to us all
No one can predict the wheel of fortune as it falls
There may come a time when I will see that I’ve been wrong
But for now this is my song
And it’s goodbye to love
I’ll say goodbye to love
Bleak…… Great guitar solo though
Alongside songs about Fat bustards and fat sherries, there was some darkness in Carter USMs songs
You win some and you lose some
And I’ve lost the will to lose
With my part time job and my faith in God
Falling on a bruise
And this no star bed and breakfast
And insolvency abuse, make me feel like throwing myself
Off the kitchen shelf
Falling on a bruise
And all of my unworldly goods, the bailiffs took them too
For all the ducked bills and silly sods
From Brian Mills’s catalog
Something borrowed, bartered and blue
You win some and you lose some, you save nothing, nothing for a rainy day
You need your nutrasweet daddy or some peppermint paddy
Or just a hackneyed old cabbie
Who can drive you and your baby away
Two fives or a ten
Could get me back to you
And stop me
Falling on a bruise
It’s not that I’m agrophobic
It’s just that it’s not safe to go out anymore
So I just stay indoors with my TV Times
My petty rimes and my nursery rhymes
Someone said, that the sound of a baby crying
Is the world and beauty in the eye of the beholder
But as my heart grows colder, and colder
I just feel so tired
The fridge is empty, the walls are damp, there’s no hot water
And I look like a tramp and tramps like us
Baby we were born to walk
But where does a mother’s girl go, when her mother’s gone?
Some you win and some you lose
I’ve spent my hole lifetime falling on a bruise
And if I had the chance to do it all again
I’d change everything
The correct terminology is Great, not Fat, Bustard
I’ll be your long-haired lover from Liverpool
And I’ll do anything you say.
I’ll be your clown or your puppet or your April Fool,
If you’ll be my sunshine daisy from L.A.
That’s not cheerful that’s threatening.
I seem to recall a Radio 1 dj playing it at 33 and saying “That was Big Jimmy Osmond.” Peel?
I’ll be honest, for the first few lines of the OP I was expecting Trimdon Grange Explosion to turn out to be a Half Man Half Biscuit song
It was cold, it was night
I was with you, some time ago
But you were laughing to hide your crying
In shock and dazed, we walked away
You said “be careful”, some lights were shining
They came much closer, we started hiding
Then it was silent, I heard you breathing
But far away, someone was screaming
Some dogs were growling, we started running
We kept on running until daylight
And it was cold, the smoke was heavy
Casualties high, no one was ready
It was cold, it was night
I was with you, some time ago
You said “no, no” in desperation
The world we knew in desolation
leonard cohen famous blue raincoat lyrics https://g.co/kgs/CF1Fqy
I can’t stop myself. There are so many Depeche Mode examples. How about this:
Girl of sixteen
Whole life ahead of her
Slashed her wrists
Bored with life
Didn’t succeed
Thank the Lord
For small mercies
Fighting back the tears
Mother reads the note again
Sixteen candles burn in her mind
She takes the blame
It’s always the same
She goes down on her knees and prays
I don’t want to start
Any blasphemous rumours
But I think that God’s
Got a sick sense of humour
And when I die
I expect to find Him laughing
This cropped up this morning on a Spotify playlist I made of Afterword Best Songs of the Current Century:
“I wake up every morning feeling hurt inside and I’m so sad the situation’s hopeless and I see,
The woman who meant everything to me, wants to be free, free from me.”
Such a great song.
One that came on this morning & it’s another HMHB one from me with Oblong Of Dreams;
Move him onto his side —
Give him dignity, give him some warmth
Which he’d possibly not received of late
I’m not a mate as such
I just used to see him around and about
And I could never work out if he was heading
For a food bank or a pharmacy
A field path or indecency
Either way, he’s out of it now
‘Oblong Of Dreams’ just won the recent ‘HMHB Lyrics Project’ death match & is thus currently considered by the faithful to be their finest moment.
Personally I voted for ‘Everything’s AOR’ in the final (it was very tight) , preferring the glorious notion of pretending to be Kendo Nagasaki to the poignant & sobre ‘Oblong’.
Proof if it were needed though that HMHB are not a ‘comedy’ band & that Nigel is one of best lyricists we’ve produced.
Fantastic stuff.
How can we forget Laughing Lou’s finest?
This is the place where she lay her head
When she went to bed at night
And this is the place our children were conceived
Candles lit the room at night
And this is the place where she cut her wrists
That odd and fateful night
And I said, “Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, what a feeling”
And I said, “Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, what a feeling”
This is the place where we used to live
I paid for it with love and blood
And these are the boxes that she kept on the shelf
Filled with her poetry and stuff
And this is the room where she took the razor
And cut her wrists that strange and fateful night
And I said, “Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, what a feeling”
And I said, “Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, what a feeling”
I never would have started if I’d known
That it’d end this way
But funny thing I’m not at all sad
That it stopped this way
That is bleak, @TrypF!
While trying to get some background to the song (I know now that it is from Berlin) I read the wiki page about Lou.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lou_Reed
Fascinating to read that he lived with a transexual woman, Rachel Humphreys, for five years in the 70s. Coney Island Baby is dedicated to her.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rachel_Humphreys
What a very turbulent life Lou led! He was no stranger to tragedy.
He broke up with Rachel in 1977 and a little while later married Sylvia Morales. He rarely talked about Rachel after that.
“Humphreys died 30 January 1990[12] at age 37[13] in the Hell’s Kitchen section of Manhattan.[6][9] Although Humphreys official cause of death remains unknown,[9] she died at St. Clare’s Hospital,[9] an institution that specialized in helping those with AIDS during the 1980s/1990s epidemic. Humphreys was buried on 16 February 1990 at Potter’s Field on Hart Island off the coast of the Bronx alongside thousands of other individuals who died during the AIDS epidemic.”
Berlin is chockers with bleakness.
The Kids-
They’ve taken the children away
Because they said she was not a good mother….
They’re writing songs of love, but not for me
A lucky star’s above, but not for me
With love to lead the way
I’ve found more clouds of gray
Than any Russian play could guarantee
That’s a wonderfully witty verse, @Mike_H.
It’s from the musical Girl Crazy.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Girl_Crazy
” Ethel Merman made her stage debut in the first production and co-lead Ginger Rogers became an overnight star. ”
“Also of note is the opening night pit orchestra, which was composed of many well-known jazz musicians, including Benny Goodman, Gene Krupa, Glenn Miller and Jimmy Dorsey.”
I just wonder: which depressing Russian plays might George and Ira Gershwin
be going to in 1930?
Was Chekhov still popular?
Don’t look at the carpet, I drew something awful on it
See?
You’re such a wonderful person
But you got problems
Oh
I’ll never touch you.