389: I Don't Want to Grow Up

I'm not a massive Ramones fan (although as I age they seem to get better and better), but I am a massive one with regards to Tom Waits. The Tom Waits original I Don't Want to Grow Up is a spectacular call for the creatives, outsiders and childlike to remain untroubled by the tedious fusses and futters of adult life. It is a song among songs, a song to end all songs. The lyrics we'll speak of shortly, but first the music: distorted vocals, acoustic guitar, pseudo-badly recorded, it just simmers along with pent up energy, never allowing that release. It's perfect. I just discovered the Ramones covered it, and made a music video animated by Daniel Clowes (Ghost World, Eightball). Perhaps it's the shock of the new, but the Ramones version seems somehow better. I can't explain it, and I'm not going to try. It doesn't matter; point is it's an amazing song, with lyrics I can't even explain how good:

When I'm lyin' in my bed at night
I don't wanna grow up
Nothing ever seems to turn out right
I don't wanna grow up

How do you move in a world of fog that's
always changing things
Makes wish that I could be a dog

When I see the price that you pay
I don't wanna grow up
I don't ever want to be that way
I don't wanna grow up

Seems that folks turn into things
that they never want
The only thing to live for is today...

I'm gonna put a hole in my TV set
I don't wanna grow up
Open up the medicine chest
I don't wanna grow up


I don't wanna have to shout it out
I don't want my hair to fall out
I don't wanna be filled with doubt
I don't wanna be a good boy scout
I don't wanna have to learn to count
I don't wanna have the biggest amount
I don't want to grow up

Well when I see my parents fight
I don't wanna grow up
They all go out and drinkin' all night
I don't wanna grow up

I'd rather stay here in my room
Nothin' out there but sad and gloom
I don't wanna live in a big old tomb on Grand Street

When I see the 5 o'clock news
I don't wanna grow up
Comb their hair and shine their shoes
I don't wanna grow up

Stay around in my old hometown
I don't wanna put no money down
I don't wanna get a big old loan
Work them fingers to the bone
I don't wanna float on a broomFall in love, get married then boom
How the hell did it get here so soonI don't want to grow up

-Tom Waits, Kathleen Brennan

What more can I say? Is there anyone who doesn't feel like that. By the way, I'm not having a pre-30 crisis. I don't have a problem with getting older; I just don't want to grow up. I love robots, and rockets, and space, and dinosaurs, and drawing, painting and writing stories. I collect toy octopuses; have shoe boxes full of postcards. I hate getting my hair cut. I love science and science fiction. I love Viz. I love swearing, but not too much. I love colours, shapes and lights. I get excited looking at a map of the world. I love wrestling, and lego, sometimes at the same time. I don't want to grow up.

280: In which I post many videos of Murder Ballads.

Illustration by Arthur Rackham of The Twa Corbies

Murder Ballads are a traditional folk music form depicting a murder and possibly also the events leading up to and after the event.  Possibly the most famous folk song in this genre is Bob Dylan’s Hurricane which I haven’t included here as copyright stuff is keeping Dylan off YouTube.  Hurricane tells the story of boxer Rubin “Hurricane” Carter who was wrongly convicted for a triple murder.

The Wikipedia article on Murder Ballads is pretty short, but sums the whole thing up fairly well, and if you want to read more, many were collected and researched by some fellow called Francis J. Childs (1825-1896), and published many years ago as the Child Ballads (wiki).

It’s not a subject I can pretend to know much about, but I do know what I like, and simple grim tunes about death seem to be right up my street.  And I’m not the only one.  Look at the popularity of hip hop, from N.W.A. to whoever the kids are bumping to nowadays; swearing, and rip=rapping about guns, n all that.

For all the right reasons I have collected together a huge swathe of YouTube videos representing many different Murder Ballads, and of course including two tracks from Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds Murder Ballads album.  Gorge yourself to death on all that follows: