Metal Drums Songtext

von Patty Larkin

From the time he was a kid, Mark O'Donnell and his buddies would
Play in the pasture
Out behind his neighborhood there were acres of vacant land
And they played as only children can
Ooh, in the pasture

Out in the long tall grass, metal drums were lying in the broken glass
The kids would play with the stuff inside of them
They'd crawl in and roll around, end up spinning around on the open ground
Ooh, of the pasture

Ooh, they were playing with the metal drums
Aah, banging on the metal drums
Ooh, beat that metal drum a little faster

In the town of Holbrook, Mass, you're lucky if you got the chance
Working a good job, making a few bucks
And it's Baird and McClair, they run that chemical plant down there
Ooh, by the pasture

Joanne O'Donnell had five kids and all but one of her kids got sick
She was hard pressed for answers
And on the other side of town, there was a street where all the doctors found
Every other woman died of cancer

News broke like a lightning bolt across a red-hot sky
In the blue T.V. light Joanne O'Donnell cried
Seemed like the kiss of death
Hung in the air when a whole town found out
They'd been poisoned for years

The environmental plan put the site on the list of the big top ten
To the tune of sixty-three million
Thanks to the women and the wives, there's a chain link fence up eight feet high
But that won't bring back their children
As for Baird and McClair, all the soil from the ground to the bedrock down there
Was ruined by the bastards
Thanks to the corporate kind, they protected their assets - they're doing fine
Too bad about the Holbrook disaster

Beat that metal drum a little faster now, beat that metal drum now
Beat that metal drum now, beat that metal drum