Steve Forbert : The Oil Song - 33 1/3 Rpm Vinyl Single 2010

Steve Forbert (born Samuel Stephen Forbert, December 13, 1954) is an American Country Rock music singer-songwriter. He is best known for his song "Romeo's Tune", which reached #11 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart in 1980.

Even though the sleeve of the album Jackrabbit Slim (1979) states that "Romeo's Tune" is "dedicated to the memory of Florence Ballard," the song is not really about the Supremes singer who died in 1976.

The song was actually written about a girl from Forbert's home town of Meridian, Mississippi, but was dedicated to Ballard because, as Forbert explains, "That seemed like such bad news to me and such sad news. She wasn't really taken care of by the music business, which is not a new story."

Critics hailed him at the time as the "new Bob Dylan", given a similar vocal timbre and thoughtful songwriting.

THE OIL SONG Lyrics
(These are the complete uncensored lyrics of the song only in the concerts of Steve Forbert )
May 2010

“Oh, the engine’s gone dead!” cried the men who were there
And she passed up the dock on the wide Delaware
Then the ship ran aground and the oil got away
And they did not report the big spill on that day.

And it’s oil, oil,
Yeah Drifting to the sea
An' it's oil, oil,
Don’t buy it at the station,
You can have it now for free,
Just come on down to the shoreline
Where the water used to be.

It was hundreds of thousands of gallons galore
Stretching thirty-two miles down the Delaware shore
There were geese in the marshes out looking for food,
They got stuck where they stood in the oncoming crude!

And it’s oil, oil,
Drifting to the sea
An' it's oil, oil

In the well-charted waters of the Nantucket shoals
Was a ship run aground, full of oil we were told
In a week’s worth of rough winter weather and waves,
The boat started cracking and it could not be saved.

It was seven point six million gallons this time
Consider the danger and think of the crime
As it poured out a slick stretching into the tide
for over one hundred miles, it came deep, it came wide!


There's talk of some writing found in the ship's log
saying one of the helmsmen's unfit for his job
and the ship's gyro compass was six degrees shy
Their charts were outdated but they tried to get by


It was oil! oil!
Pouring in the sea
Oil, oil,
Don’t you buy it at the station,
You can get it now for free,
Just come on down to the shoreline
Where the water used to be.

Now both of these ships , like great many more
got registed in through Liberian doors
Inspections are quick and regulations are few
Just sign on the line and go find you a crew , yes

One of these ships was the Olympic Games
The Argo Merchant was the other one’s name.
If things don't get better
then they probably get worst
if you can't drink the oil
you must die of thirst.

( It’s sad but it’s true, things got worse for the seas,
Along came a craft called Amoco Cadiz
Amoco Cadiz between England and France,
Big supertanker out taking a chance
With his one hundred thousand black tons of the slime,
Amoco Cadiz spilt the most of all time! )

Now down in the Gulf east Mexico way
There's something gone wrong , so the papers say
A Mexican oil well is leaking it's goo
They say it's the worse that things have ever come to

Gallons of sludge, sixty million and more!
Sleazin' and easin'; towards many a shore
A Mexican oil well went leaking its goo
At that time the worst things had ever come to!

It was oil, oil,
Creepin' in the sea

Hey, the captain's now free and his case it is closed,
The Exxon Valdez wrecked itself I suppose;
What's left of the life in the Prince William Sound
Might not condone what our court of law found!

And it’s oil! oil!
Creeping in the sea!
Oil, oil,
Don’t buy it at the station,
You can get it now for free,
Just come on down to the shoreline
Where the water used to be.

Saddam Hussein was a pretty strange man,
Look what he's done for his trusting homeland,
With sanctions and bombing he'd no way to sell
Crude from his captured Kuwaiti oil wells
He sat down to think and came up with a scheme
One that he thought might protect his regime
Covered the Gulf in a blanket of black
Thought it might hold a few battleships back!

REPEAT CHORUS
It was oil, oil,
Creepin' in the sea,

Registered in through Liberian doors
Passin' the Shetlands near Scotland's cold shores,
A single-hulled ship with his engine broke down
Drifted five hours and then ran aground
Right where the wildlife preserve chanced to be
And twenty million more gallons got free.
But don't worry, folks, "It's light crude!," they did say,
"It'll prob'ly break up and be gone right away!"

REPEAT CHORUS

They're banning those single-hulled tankers we hear,
Phasin' 'em out in the next sev'ral years
There's one called The Prestige won't be junked in that heap,
It stalled off of Spain and it sank down the deep
One million gallons of fuel reached the beach,
Nineteen more sank in some tanks that weren't breached
If air's trapped inside 'em they'll burst any day,
If not, they'll just sit there to rust and decay…

Till it's oil! oil!
Creepin'' in the sea...

The Delaware River was back in distress,
This time the captain did not cause the mess
The paint on his ship was the same as the type
That divers found scraped on a fifteen-foot pipe
Therefore the pipe was the cause of the hole,
The hole in his hull was beyond his control;
Hey, whomever knows how that pipe got stuck there
Thanks for the half-million-gallon nightmare!

REPEAT CHORUS
Which was oil, oil,
Yeah, creepin' to the sea,
It was oil. it was oil...

The Israeli Army was bombing Beirut
Cause Hezbollah kidnapped some Israeli troops
The Lebanese oil was in tanks near the sea
Cause that's where those oil storage tanks tend to be
The Israeli bombs hit the tanks on the shore,
The oil isn't stored in those tanks anymore
The Mediterranean tourism buzz
As per The Holy Land ain't what it was!

REPEAT CHORUS
Now it's oil, an' it's oil,
Creepin' in the sea...

A barge full of oil hit a tanker last night,
The good news I guess is the tanker’s alright
The barge broke in two and so old New Orleans
Got stuck with what newscaster teams call a “sheen”
The riverfront walk was a-funk, yeah, with fumes,
The Coast Guard was rollin' out red plastic booms
To block off the spill and contain it … (good luck!)
Four hundred thousand thick gallons of muck!

REPEAT CHORUS
It was oil, oil,
Creepin' to the sea...

We're pumpin' out petrol, no matter what cost
And now that eleven men's lives have been lost
The price is as high as rig workers can pay
Payin' the price for the U.S. of A.
A deepwater rig called Horizon went down,
No way to seal off its pipe has been found
So south Louisianans all wait for to see
Just what the landfall of this spill will be...

People, oil, an' it's oil,
Creepin' in the sea,
Don't buy it at the station,
You can get it now for free,
Just come on down to the shoreline
Where the water used to be.

If things don't get better
then they probably get worst
if you can't drink the oil
you must die of thirst.

From The Oil Song 2010, released 12 May 2010
Original Release Date: April 13, 1993
Format : Viynl Mini LP
Rpm : 33 1/3
Made in : Holland
Label : Epic Records

Steve Forbert : acoustic guitar
Steve Allen : twelve string acoustic guitar
Charlie Chadwick : bass and drums
Will Barrow : accordion

Dedicated to Nuzz Prowling Wolf
 Flac  HERE