To Thread - Forum Home

The Mudcat Café TM
https://mudcat.org/thread.cfm?threadid=61932
6 messages

Lyr req: The War Game (MacColl)

23 Sep 03 - 10:29 PM (#1024053)
Subject: The War Game (Ewan MacColl)
From: Joe Offer

Gee, we have a MIDI for this song, but no lyrics. I wonder how that happened. Anybody got lyrics? It's in the "Freeborn Man" songbook, but I don't have that book available to me any more because I moved to another library district.
-Joe Offer-


25 Sep 03 - 01:31 PM (#1024778)
Subject: RE: Lyr req: The War Game (MacColl)
From: John Routledge

Sorry I can't help oyher than refresh.


27 Sep 03 - 01:23 AM (#1025504)
Subject: RE: Lyr req: The War Game (MacColl)
From: Jim Dixon

THE WAR GAME is also included in "The Essential Ewan MacColl Songbook: Sixty Years of Songmaking," 2001.


22 Oct 03 - 06:37 AM (#1039532)
Subject: Lyr Add: THE WAR GAME (Ewan MacColl)
From: Wolfgang

THE WAR GAME
(Ewan MacColl lyrics to trad tune 'O Charlie, O Charlie')

O Johnnie, O Johnnie, just listen to what I say,
It's the God's truth, I tell you, I'm not lying:
You can't swim the crawl or kick the soccer ball
when from radiation sickness you are dying.

You can't sprint down the track with a bullet in your back,
a punch won't stop a bomb when it's falling;
when you find yourself in trouble under eighty tons of rubble,
don't expect to hear the referee a-calling.

You're not good at the trapeze when you're cut off at the knees
or burned by Napalm to a cinder;
And you don't feel at your best with a bayonet in your chest
or when a flame-thrower makes you burn like tinder.

You can wear your judo belt but it won't be any help
when the poison gas towards you come a-drifting;
and a perfect swallow dive won't help you stay alive
when a mushrom cloud towards the sky is lifting.

So Johnnie lad, get wise, wipe the sweat out of your eyes,
it's time to cut the enemy down to size, man.
With their statesmen and their banks, their bombers, guns and tanks,
you've got to kick 'em out to take the prize, lad.

Wolfgang (typing from the source given by Jim)


22 Oct 03 - 06:40 AM (#1039534)
Subject: RE: Lyr req: The War Game (MacColl)
From: Wolfgang

After typing I did a search (why in that order??):

Posted 1999 in Mudcat (without that title which may explain the confusion)

Wolfgang


22 Oct 03 - 06:47 AM (#1039538)
Subject: RE: Lyr req: The War Game (MacColl)
From: Wolfgang

I have learned something new:
The 'lyrics and knowledge search' doesn't seem to search thread titles and subject lines. So it doesn't find a song title even when the thread is clearly titled 'Lyr add: War Game' unless the song title is repeated in the body of the message.

Wolfgang