During a very boring tuesday afternoon in the boardroom, I have found myself in the middle of a bet....:suspect:

The bet is, to obtain the largest number of songs possible relating to homelessness.

I have three: my colleagues reckon to have 4-6...
Living in a box,
Crystal Waters: Gypsy woman
London calling.

Any help on this bet of stupidity would be appreciated as soon as poss...and no offence intended by this....

How exactly does London Calling have anything to do with homelessness?

Is Living in a Box really about living in a box?

Another Day in Paradise - Phil Collins

Mr Wendel - Arrested Development

- god, I feel old

Erm... bad taste bet??

But this song is about a tramp _ I'm going to admit I cried the first time I heard this.

Lying in the sun Stereophonics

Wish that I could lie in the sun.
The same things as anyone
Wish I could lie down there
With my feet, high in the air

I'd have a drink in my hand
Read words from a newspaper stand
Wish I could lie in the sun
Wish I could fly like everyone

Same things as anyone
Same things as anyone

But you burn me up you paint my skin
In bad designs that ain't even in

My skin's crawling up the wall
Into the ocean I'd love to fall
I hear the sounds but they ain't the same
As feeling them with you two feet away

There's always more worse off than me
Suppose I'm lucky I can even see
All the people that I'd like to be
Passing me by everyday in the street
Same things as anyone
Same things as anyone

But you burn me up you paint my skin
In bad designs that ain't even in
I got good lungs, got a good heart
My mind is fit, and my feet can walk

And here I am in the shade on the street
Asking people for money to eat
What did I ever do to deserve this?
Did I kill a child or something worse?

Same things as anyone

What's the reason maybe make you feel
How much more fortunate you are than me

Underneath the Arches-Flannigan and Allan (now that is old)

Is Living in a Box really about living in a box?



No, it isn't.

Streets of London - Ralph McTell

I knew there was another one (that would make me feel even older)

Yes a very bad taste bet! But hey I am in it now...sorry! and please don't say i am laughing at the homesless, I may be myself if the recession hits me!

Yes a very bad taste bet! But hey I am in it now...sorry!

So what's London Calling got to do with homelessness then?

How exactly does London Calling have anything to do with homelessness?

I don't know, I haven't heard of it, someone said it was, lol, I don't even know who sings it or if it is a real song, just thought i'd add it.

I don't know, I haven't heard of it, someone said it was, lol, I don't even know who sings it or if it is a real song, just thought i'd add it.

It's a real song that has nothing to do with homelessness so the person who told you is emphatically wrong.

It's a real song that has nothing to do with homelessness so the person who told you is emphatically wrong.

Ok thanks, I will take that one off my list....

Ani DiFranco's 'Coming Up' is sung/spoken from the perspective of a homeless woman:

Our father who art in a penthouse
Sits in his 37th floor suite
And swivels to gaze down
At the city he made me in
He allows me to stand and
Solicit graffiti until
He needs the land I stand on
I in my darkened threshold
Am pawing through my pockets
The receipts, the bus schedules
The urgent napkin poems
The matchbook phone numbers
All of which laundering has rendered
Pulpy and strange
Loose change and a key
Ask me
Go ahead, ask me if I care
I got the answer here
I wrote it down somewhere
I just gotta find it

Somebody and their spraypaint got too close
Somebody came on too heavy
Now look at me made ugly
By the drooling letters
I was better off alone
Ain't that the way it is
They don't know the first thing
But you don't know that
Until they take the first swing
My fingers are red and swollen from the cold
I'm getting bold in my old age
So go ahead, try the door
It doesn't matter anymore
I know the weakhearted are strongwilled
And we are being kept alive
Until we're killed
He's up there the ice
Is clinking in his glass
He sends me little peices of paper
I don't ask
I just empty my pockets and wait
It's not fate
It's just circumstance
I don't fool myself with romance
I just live
Phone number to phone number
Dusting them against my thighs
In the warmth of my pockets
Which whisper history incessantly
Asking me
Where were you

I lower my eyes
Wishing I could cry more
And care less,
Yes it's true,
I was trying to love someone again,
I was caught caring,
Bearing weight
But I love this city, this state
This country is too large
And whoever's in charge up there
Had better take the elevator down
And put more than change in our cup
Or else we are coming up

"If That Were Me" Mel C (She donated the profits to a homeless charity)

Where do they go and what do they do?
They're walking on by. They're looking at you.
Some people stop, some people stare.
But would they help you and do they care?

How did you fall? Did you fall at all?
Are you happy when you are sleeping underneath the stars?
When it's cold is it your hope that keeps you warm?

A spare bit of change is all that I give.
How is that gonna help when you've got nowhere to live?
Some turn away so they don't see.
I bet you'd look if that were me.

How did you fall? Did you fall at all?
Is it lonely where you are sleeping in between parked cars?
When it thunders where do you hide from the storm?

Could you ever forgive my self-pity?
When you've got nothing and you're living on the streets of the city.
I couldn't live without my phone.
But you don't even have a home.

How did we fall? Can we get up at all?
Are we happy where we are on our lonely little star?
When it's cold is it your hope that keeps you warm?

Where do they go and what do they do?
They're walking on by. They're looking at you.
They're walking on by. They're looking at you.


*sorry but the line about phone and home... dire! *

A bit of a link in 'Someday I'll Be Saturday Night' - Bon Jovi.

Hey man, I'm alive
I'm takin' each day and night at a time
I'm feelin' like a Monday but someday I'll be Saturday night

Hey my name is Jim, where did I go wrong?
My life's a bargain basement, all the good ****'s gone
I just can't hold a job, where do I belong?
Been sleeping in my car, my dreams moved on

I've just had to buy Streets of London :-/

Even Flow - Pearl Jam is another.

I'm sure I've listened to some music since the mid/late 90's - but the Mel C lyric has reminded me why I've blocked them out!

"If That Were Me" Mel C (She donated the profits to a homeless charity)


*sorry but the line about phone and home... dire! *

That'll have been enough to buy at least three mugs of hot soup then.

That phone/home line could win prizes for most appallingly sh*t lyric ever.

I thought spitting image had done one about being homeless as well but i can't find it but remembered this from the simpsons in that same vein of "we are helping everyone, aren't we good? Stylee
This little boy lives in a well - surely that's homelessness?

Sting: There's a hole in my heart
As deep as a well
For that poor little boy,
Who's stuck halfway to Hell...

Sideshow Mel: Though we can't get him out,
We'll do the next best thing...

McBain: We go on TV
And sing, sing, sing!

All: And we're sending our love down the well...

Krusty: All the way down!

All: We're sending our love down the well...

Krusty: Down that well!

The Old Main Drag - The Pogues

Not strictly about a homeless person but someone who lives in that world of misery and destitution

There's "Homeless (http://www.paulsimon.com/node/84)" by Paul Simon on Graceland, written with Joseph Shabalala.

"Moving On Song (http://www.dickgaughan.co.uk/songs/texts/moveon.html)" by Ewan MacColl.

"Beeswing (http://www.richardthompson-music.com/song_o_matic.asp?id=207)" by Richard Thompson.

How about "Aqualung" by Jethro Tull?

AQUALUNG

Sitting on a park bench
eyeing little girls with bad intent.
Snot running down his nose
greasy fingers smearing shabby clothes.
Drying in the cold sun
Watching as the frilly panties run.
Feeling like a dead duck
spitting out pieces of his broken luck.
Sun streaking cold
an old man wandering lonely.
Taking time
the only way he knows.
Leg hurting bad,
as he bends to pick a dog-end
he goes down to the bog
and warms his feet.

Feeling alone
the army's up the rode
salvation à la mode and
a cup of tea.
Aqualung my friend
don't start away uneasy
you poor old sod, you see, it's only me.
Do you still remember
December's foggy freeze
when the ice that
clings on to your beard is
screaming agony.
And you snatch your rattling last breaths
with deep-sea-diver sounds,
and the flowers bloom like
madness in the spring.

How about "Aqualung" by Jethro Tull?

AQUALUNG

Sitting on a park bench
eyeing little girls with bad intent.
Snot running down his nose
greasy fingers smearing shabby clothes.
Drying in the cold sun
Watching as the frilly panties run.
Feeling like a dead duck
spitting out pieces of his broken luck.
Sun streaking cold
an old man wandering lonely.
Taking time
the only way he knows.
Leg hurting bad,
as he bends to pick a dog-end
he goes down to the bog
and warms his feet.

Feeling alone
the army's up the rode
salvation à la mode and
a cup of tea.
Aqualung my friend
don't start away uneasy
you poor old sod, you see, it's only me.
Do you still remember
December's foggy freeze
when the ice that
clings on to your beard is
screaming agony.
And you snatch your rattling last breaths
with deep-sea-diver sounds,
and the flowers bloom like
madness in the spring.

Oh you beat me to it!

Theres a bit in keep on rocking in the free world about homelessness isn't there?

The old main drag - the pogues

Was 'johnny the horse' by madness homeless? Canne remember.

By the way thought this thread would be on the latest youtube sensation, perhaps a relative of happyslapping...

downtown train - tom waits
lost johnny - motorhead

Thanks guys and girls!!!

This is one from Dexy's, I think it was about 1980 ish

I'll show you them now, those boys without cares.
Who'd swapped dirty pictures and talked during prayers.
They grew up with wisdom they'd stored from "those days"
Nobody told them to get in they must change.

I'll show you them now. Come with me and
I'll show you them now.

The teachers laughed with them class idiot style.
After all they weren't their kids so why should they mind.
Boyish good looks held the wrath back a while.
Then they were drummed in and thumped in and soon left behind.


Alcoholics, child molesters, nervous wrecks and prima donnas
Jilted lovers, office clerks, petty thieves, hard drug pursuers.
Lonely tramps,
awkward misfits,
oh anyone of these.

Mortgaged up families looked at first too mundane.
But it's funny how with help all the lucky ones changed.
Some of them couldn't, there had to be more.

Music,
I dunno,
films,
something special perhaps.

I'll show you them now, come with me
And I'll show you them now.


It's so hard to picture dirty tramps as young boys.
But if you see a man crying, hold his hand, he's my friend.

If these words sound corny, switch this off, I don't care.

Nearby he's still crying, I won't smile while he's there.
Nearby he's still crying. I won't smile while he's there.

King of the road ?

That song by Sea Sick Steve. "I started out with nothing, and I still got most of it left"?

I was reminded of this thread on SF by a 'Songs about Homelessness (http://www.mudcat.org/thread.cfm?threadid=117533)' thread on the Mudcat Café, which is a folk/traditional music website.

The suggestions there are hardly 'hits', but I hope the link might be useful to someone.

Although I hate to admit knowing this one "Cardboard City" by Let Loose

King of the road ?

Nah, he spends a day pushing brooms to get an 8 x 12 x 4 bedroom, so techically not homeless.

Man in a box - Alice in Chains

Frank Sinatra - "The Lady Is A Tramp".

Anything by Supertramp surley would count.

Is Living in a Box really about living in a box?

Another Day in Paradise - Phil Collins

Mr Wendel - Arrested Development

- god, I feel old

Nope, Living in a Box was about living in the Kelvin Flats apparently, teh group was from Sheffield :D

Downtown Train - Tom Waits, or the Rodders version if you like gravelly Scots

Did you win your bet boutique?

everything by seasick steve .............3 albums i think so far.
as well as the "hobo " songs he also talks about his "days" as a hobo.

also
Wild Man Fischer he was found on the streets by Frank zappa and recorded for a couple of lps (some say exploited)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wild_Man_Fischer

everything by seasick steve .............3 albums i think so far.
as well as the "hobo " songs he also talks about his "days" as a hobo.

also
Wild Man Fischer he was found on the streets by Frank zappa and recorded for a couple of lps (some say exploited)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wild_Man_Fischer

Three????????

Did you win your bet boutique?

I did! Although I won nothing for it, it was great to win the guys at this!! A bit of office competition won by moi lol (was great as they are all soooo competitive) all helped along by my secret SF helpers!! :hihi: Thanks again guys!