Big Rock Candy Mountain - Tom Waits (IRONWEED)

"Big Rock Candy Mountain" is a song about a hobo's idea of paradise - a modern version of the medieval concept of Cockaigne, and similar to the fishermen's concept of Fiddler's Green. It was frequently sung by President Roosevelt's New Deal Armies, nation-building schemes to employ men during the Great Depression.

The song describes a hobo's vision of utopia, a place where the "hens lay soft boiled eggs" and there are "cigarette trees." The song is also rather ironic and satirical in that it additionally describes mollified versions of things that one wouldn't think should exist in paradise at all, such as police (with wooden legs) and jail bars (made of tin).

I found this version of it on Limewire and the claims to be Tom Waits singing. I'm not 100% sure, what do you guys think? Leave a comment and let me know so I can update the description.

Update 08/07/08 - The song was used in the 1989 movie Ironweed and sung by Tom Waits.

Category:

Music

Tags:

• Big
• Rock
• Candy
• Mountain
• Tom
• Waits
• Country
• Brother
• Limewire
• Ironweed

[piegar]

14 dislikes? this is great stuff!

[brucegray666]

@piegar Yeah, 14 people are obviously morons.

[pzwhite]

"The song was used in the 1989 movie Ironweed and sung by Tom Waits." - Wikipedia

[brucegray666]

Thanks for that!

[dmjarrington]

He is the coolest guy. He could take a shit and I would probably buy it.

[joshuagerlach]

Hahaha Tom Waits is so fucking cool

[apoxalex]

@dmjarrington hell yeah!

[1ivingHe11]

@neatoauctions Huh, probably because it's a song sung by regular people and as such it was "redacted" according to their whim, you moron. Don't you understand anything about American vernacular music? Christ Jesus, you're a pedant.

[neatoauctions]

Why the performer of this tune decided to omit some of the original lyrics is unclear. The redacted passage is: “On, The Big Rock Candy Mountain, Girls never wear a thing. An’ to your surprise, when you wake up, you’ll find a lipstick ring. The pharmacies’ backdoors don’t lock, and syringes grow on trees. There’s opium goo, and cocaine too; Those things occur in nature, in case yuh didn’t knew, on The Big Rock Candy Mountain.”

[zoivanmo]

He is for sure...I m listening him for so many years... God can be wrong abuot this...I can t...ha ha ha :)

[odanak100]

I'm about in the same state of affairs as the Waits character was in this story.

[scitsalcoryp]

This is one of the coolest ', most underrated movies ever made..you did a brilliant job splicing these two sections of vocal together..in the movie it was interrupted by a fight..surely one of the funniest scenes ever in a movie .

You good people out there get ahold of this ..it is a bit sad but has a redemptive roundup of an ending..oh yeah it is great to have a few ( or more ) drinks with..as it is totally imbibed with alcoholism as a theme...

God Bless

[NeraFX]

@karbonation: That's Candy Island, you goose.

[karbonation]

flapjack???