Burma Shave - Tom Waits

"Burma Shave is an American shaving-cream company, like Colgate. They advertise on the side of the road and they have these limericks which are broken up into different signs like pieces of a fortune cookie. You drive for miles before you get the full message. "PLEASE DON'T"... five miles... "STICK YOUR ARM OUT SO FAR"... another five miles... "IT MIGHT GO HOME"... five more miles... "IN ANOTHER MAN'S CAR - BURMA SHAVE." They reel you in. So when I was a kid I'd see these signs on the side of the road - BURMA SHAVE, BURMA SHAVE - and I'm young and I think it's the name of a town and I ask my dad, "When we getting to Burma Shave?" So in the song I used Burma Shave as a dream, a mythical community, a place two people are trying to get to. They don't make it."
(Tom Waits in Time Out magazine,interview by Richard Rayner. Date: New York, October 1985)

Category:

Music

Tags:

• Burma
• Shave
• Tom
• Waits
• Instrumental
• Ukulele
• Uke
• Acoustic
• Guitar

[oscar989]

Love it, DO you play it in standard tuning?

[waitswatcher]

@oscar989

yes, standard tuning.

[eclipse561]

I want to learn to play this SOOOO HAAAARD

[waitswatcher]

I used the piano score for my arrangement. :-)

[eclipse561]

which is totally my way of saying will you send me a copy?

[waitswatcher]

haha!

you can find the sheet in TOM WAITS ANTHOLOGY songbook.

cheers, ww

[caseyspaos]

@lumpagogo Ah. You are a bot?

[lumpagogo]

@caseyspaos

You need to lay dead (put away old, silly ideation) and go ahead (think new, helpful thoughts).

Lay dead and go ahead.

[caseyspaos]

@lumpagogo OK, I have seen your bad poetry elsewhere. What are you raving about? Did Tom Waits offend you?

[tjburroughs]

Sorry, couple technical errors in that post. 1st think should be thing and it should be capitalized. You tube is one of the last big sites that doesn't automatically insert punctuation marks like apostraphes or capitalize the 1st letter of a new sentence.

[tjburroughs]

Wow, this was absolutely stunning. it was just so beautiful and haunting; not the 1st think that comes to mind when you hear ukulele. I just think this is amazing, I'm truly blown away.

[mozzomoreno]

Bravo! I like this

[pparsow]

oh man i have been a tom waits fan for years and that captured the beauty of his music ....great thanks so much!!!!!

[lumpagogo]

Tommy is not the wait

Tommy is less than great

Put horror in the voice

Tommy is last choice

To lead the way

To Burma Shave