20 Tons of TNT - Flanders and Swann

A powerful 1960s antiwar song from an unlikely source. Michael Flanders and Donald Swann were best known for their witty, urbane and sometimes sharply ironic songs commenting on modern life. 'At the Drop of a Hat' was their first hugely successful review on the London stage. This song was considered, by theatrical producers, to be too much out of character for live performance and survives only as a studio recording. For clarification, the rather considerable explosive power of one ton of the conventional chemical explosive trinitrotoluene (TNT) is used as a unit of this power. I thought the lyrics were worth displaying.

Category:

Music

Tags:

• Flanders
• and
• Swann
• British
• humor
• antiwar
• song
• lyrics

[thucy2]

This is a chilling song, rather out of character for F & S, but truly an amazing piece of work.

As already noted, the line about "the ghostly Magi" is stunning.

Two bits of trivia about Flanders & Swann. Their first records were produced by George Martin, before Martin went on to produce the Beatles. And Michael Flanders was a wheelchair user due to polio, and told some of the first ever "disability hip" jokes. His monologue on being hoisted into an airliner via fork lift is hilarious.

[sziyyet2]

Thanks for the additional background info. They were both endearing characters and very good at displaying a very British character trait - self-mockery.

[sziyyet2]

Thanks for your comment Bob. Nowhere is Flanders' poetic gift more apparent than in the line 'at each new nativity come the ghostly Maji bearing...'; a heart-breaking and deeply felt response to the idiocy of the nuclear arms race.

[Eehlex]

R.E.S.P.E.C.T.

Love these two so much.

[K1LG0RE]

@GasdPurch They must be referring to the currency, which makes sense when one reads the previous stanza, which in turn must refer to the thirty silver coins Judas received to betray Jesus, even though "there were no shillings in them days". ;)

[CanuckYT]

Out of character for their usual material perhaps, but Swann was a Quaker so not surprising that he would sing such a song.

[Air420]

I'm a communist and I enjoyed it, so maybe.

[ThatMartialArtist]

I'm probably wrong but I have noticed a slight undertone of communism in this song. Does anyone else feel like this is so or am I finally loosing my mind?

[GasdPurch]

Why isn't it 40 thousand lbs. of killing?

[GasdPurch]

I love the list of ethnicities... It seems so random and yet it says so much.

[shockwaveable]

Make that 1967, rather than 1957.

[shockwaveable]

@rjhiller

2B - the various START and arms control treaties have reduced the existing stockpiles of the two major powers, and at least one of them hasn't produced any new ones in roughly 20 years. China, Israel, India Pakistan, Korth Korea etc haven't produced more than a few hundred between them, which I doubt makes up for the large number de-commissioned. Fore example, the US had over 31000 warheads in 1967, currently it has just over 5000, with Russia (1957 - ~7000) at roughly 2000.

[shockwaveable]

@rjhiller well I'd imagine it's quite a bit less, for two reasons:

1.The world population is over 6 billion (double that in 1960)

2. Though a number of other powers have gained thermonuclear weapons in that time, overall trend has been downwards, for two large reasons:

2A - As the accuracy of warheads has increased, their size and yield has decreased. The 'citybusters' of old were very inefficient, it was found that dropping 8 or 10 high kiloton or megaton MIRVs had a greater or equal effect.