Shirley Bassey - Ballad Of The Sad Young Men (1979 Show #5) video free download

1979 (An exceptional Torch (style) song by Fran Landesman & Tommy Wolf performed by Shirley Bassey on her 1979 TV Variety Show. This song was originally written for the musical, 'The Nervous Set' but the words could possibly have so many different meanings to people who really listen)

Shirley recorded and released this song on her 1972 LP titled, 'And I Love You So'

ABOUT this song:

This song is from the 1959 Musical called, 'The Nervous Set'. The Nervous Set, the jazz musical born in St. Louis' legendary Gaslight Square entertainment district in 1959, described the Beat Generation, the young people in post-World War II, pre-Vietnam America, swimming in disillusioned angst and apathy, angry, poetic and nihilistic. But this was not a musical about the Beats; this was a Beat Musical, funny, biting, outrageous, despairing, and brilliantly witty. Stubbornly refusing to give the audience a boffo finale, refusing even to offer them people to care about or the satisfaction of applause, doggedly determined to offend, discomfort, even repel now and then.

But even through the haze of verbal and emotional fog, The Nervous Set is also truthful, a serious social document, a record of a time and place that should never be forgotten, when America had lost its way and lost track of what's important. It is a loving evocation of the Beat Generation, with all its warts and contradictions, all its nihilism and its earth-shattering realignment of modern literature and poetry. Everyone knows about the hippies, but how many people know where the hippies came from?

The Nervous Set opened on March 10, 1959, in a three hundred seat saloon-theatre-club called the Crystal Palace, in the heart of the Gaslight Square entertainment district in St. Louis. Strange as it might seem to those who weren't there, for almost a decade in the late fifties and early sixties, Gaslight Square was an international mecca for Beat writers, up-and-coming comedians, and jazz musicians, like yet-to-be-stars Woody Allen, Lenny Bruce, Barbra Streisand, Phyllis Diller, the Smothers Brothers, Mike Nichols and Elaine May, Alan Arkin, and so many others.

For more information on this Musical you can go on line and type in, 'The Nervous Set'

LYRICS:

Sing a song of sad young men,

glasses full of rye

All the news is bad again,

kiss your dreams goodbye

All the sad young men,

sitting in the bars

Knowing neon nights,

and missing all the stars

All the sad young men,

drifting through the town

Drinking up the night,

trying not to drown

All the sad young men,

singing in the cold

Trying to forget,

that they're growing old

All the sad young men,

choking on their youth

Trying to be brave,

running from the truth

Autumn turns the leaves to gold,

slowly dies the heart

Sad young men are growing old,

that's the cruelest part

All the sad young men,

seek a certain smile

Someone they can hold,

for just a little while

Tired little girl,

does the best she can

Trying to be gay,

for a sad young men

While a grimy moon,

watches from above

All the sad young men,

who play at making love

Misbegotten moon

shine for sad young men

Let your gentle light

guide them home again

All the sad,

sad,

sad,

young men