Songs about the Great Stink

Subject: Songs about the Great Stink
From: Jack Campin
Date: 04 Apr 24 - 01:16 PM

The Great Stink in Victorian London must have prompted some songs. Looks like we need them again.   Anybody know of some?

Subject: RE: Songs about the Great Stink
From: Joe Offer
Date: 04 Apr 24 - 01:19 PM

Gee, I'd never heard of the Great Stink. Wikipedia has a good article about it, but doesn't cite any songs.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Stink

Subject: RE: Songs about the Great Stink
From: GUEST,henryp
Date: 05 Apr 24 - 01:12 AM

Perhaps we should have a song to celebrate the Thames Tideway Tunnel.

Designed to improve the water quality of London’s River Thames, the tunnel will intercept wastewater from over 20 combined sewer overflows along 25 miles of the river, enabling cleaner, healthier water to flow downstream.

Construction, taking eight years and costing £5 billion, was completed at the end of March 2024. Commissioning is expected to begin over the summer, when live storm sewage flows will be diverted into the new infrastructure – essentially protecting the River Thames for the first time.

Subject: RE: Songs about the Great Stink
From: GUEST,henryp
Date: 05 Apr 24 - 01:23 AM

In the spring of 1941, Woody Guthrie travelled across Washington and Oregon, composing 26 songs that extolled the virtues of Grand Coulee Dam and the electricity it produced. The songs included favorites like "Roll on Columbia," 'Pastures of Plenty," and "The Biggest Thing that Man has Ever Done." Collectively they are known as "The Columbia River Songs."

"He plucked tunes about the people, the mighty Columbia River, the beautiful Northwest landscape and the promise of prosperity from new hydroelectric dams," said Libby Burke, an archivist for the Bonneville Power Administration, the Portland-based federal agency that hired Guthrie.

Obviously, Thames Tideway should sponsor a folk singer too!

Subject: RE: Songs about the Great Stink
From: GUEST,Steve Shaw
Date: 05 Apr 24 - 04:14 AM

You might have thought that the band the Poo Fighters could come up with something...

Oh, hang on...

Subject: RE: Songs about the Great Stink
From: Felipa
Date: 05 Apr 24 - 09:00 AM

I don't know about The Great Sink, but I thought of The Rolling Hills of New Joisey/Jersey, a parody of The Rolling Hills of the Borders

When I die, bury me low, where I can smell the petroleum flow ...

Subject: RE: Songs about the Great Stink
From: GUEST,henryp
Date: 05 Apr 24 - 09:14 AM

Pollution, pollution by Tom Lehrer

If you visit American city,
You will find it very pretty.
Just two things of which you must beware:
Don't drink the water and don't breathe the air!

Pollution, pollution! They got smog and sewage and mud.
Turn on your tap And get hot and cold running crud!

Lots of things there that you can drink,
But stay away from the kitchen sink!
The breakfast garbage that you throw into the Bay
They drink at lunch in San Jose.

Pollution, pollution! You can use the latest toothpaste,
And then rinse your mouth with industrial waste.

Subject: RE: Songs about the Great Stink
From: GUEST
Date: 05 Apr 24 - 09:20 AM

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Aa5Fu28C9e0 Live in Thames Tideway

Composer Rob Lewis performs live from the Thames Tideway Tunnel 70 metres underground to celebrate the end of tunnelling for London's Super Sewer.

Tunnel to Tide fuses multi-instrumental music with the sounds of the sewer construction, capturing the unique acoustic properties of the space.

Subject: RE: Songs about the Great Stink
From: GUEST,henryp
Date: 05 Apr 24 - 09:59 AM

SS Princess Alice was a British passenger paddle steamer that sank on 3 September 1878 after a collision with the collier SS Bywell Castle on the River Thames. Between 600 and 700 people died, all from Princess Alice, the greatest loss of life of any British inland waterway shipping accident. No passenger list or headcount was made, so the exact figure of those who died has never been known.

She took the wrong sailing line and was hit by Bywell Castle; the point of the collision was the area of the Thames where 75 million imperial gallons (340,000 m3) of London's raw sewage had just been released. Princess Alice broke into three parts and sank quickly; her passengers drowned in the heavily polluted waters.

In the aftermath of the sinking, changes were made to the release and treatment of sewage, and it was transported to, and released into, the sea. wikipedia

In Memoriam

No! the merciless ship rode proudly,
And struck us through the gloom ;
And the crash of our sides rang loudly
As the "Alice" went to her doom.
She sank with her side all riven,
And the waters closed o'erhead.
There was welcome for souls in heaven,
For earth had six hundred dead.

https://songsfromtheageofsteam.uk/The%20Princess%20Alice%20Disaster/2164

Subject: RE: Songs about the Great Stink
From: GUEST,henryp
Date: 05 Apr 24 - 10:11 AM

Subject: Lyr Add: THE LOSS OF THE PRINCESS ALICE From: SingsIrish Songs Date: 05 Dec 99 - 01:59 AM

I emailed Mick these a week or so ago..."When in doubt go to the source!" says I. So I emailed the Grand Union Morris (GUM) contact person and was referred to a member (Andrew) who kindly provided me with the following.

Enjoy! Mary
-----------------

THE LOSS OF THE PRINCESS ALICE

1. If you listen to me, a story I'll relate
Of a ship called the good Princess Alice.
She met with her fate in 1878.
She was known as the "Floating Palace".

CHORUS: When the Princess Alice sank in Barking Reach,
Six hundred and forty died together.
Not all had been drowned as the coroner found,
Some were poisoned by the black stinking river.

Subject: RE: Songs about the Great Stink
From: Dave the Gnome
Date: 05 Apr 24 - 11:52 AM

Swift the Thames fouls up the sea,
Flow, sweet river flow
Bearing shit and crap from me,
Sweet Thames flow softly

:-D

Subject: RE: Songs about the Great Stink
From: GUEST,henryp
Date: 05 Apr 24 - 03:35 PM

"Sweet Thames, Flow Softly" by Ewan MacColl takes its title from from "Prothalamion" by Edmund Spenser, written in 1596 in celebration of the engagements of Elizabeth and Katherine Somerset, the daughters of the Earl of Somerset.

Along the shore of silver streaming Thames,
Whose rutty bank, the which his river hems,
Was painted all with variable flowers,
And all the meads adorned with dainty gems,
Fit to deck maidens' bowers,
And crown their paramours,
Against the bridal day, which is not long:
      Sweet Thames, run softly, till I end my song.