The Slickers: Johnny Too Bad
Posted by Lexington Green on January 31st, 2009 (All posts by Lexington Green)
Walking down the road
With your pistol in your waist,
Johnny you’re too bad.
Walking down the road
With your ratchet in your waist,
Johnny you’re too bad.
You’re just robbing and you’re stabbing and you’re looting and you’re shooting
Now you’re too bad.
You’re just robbing and you’re stabbing and you’re looting and you’re shooting
Now you’re too bad.
One of these days when you hear a voice say come
Where you gonna run to
One of these days when you hear a voice say come
Where you gonna run to
You’re gonna run to the rock for rescue
There will be no rock
You’re gonna run to the rock for rescue
There will be no rock
{organ solo}
Walking down the road
With your pistol in your waist,
Johnny you’re too bad.
Walking down the road
With your ratchet in your waist,
Johnny you’re too bad.
You’re just robbing and you’re stabbing and you’re looting and you’re shooting
Now you’re too bad.
You’re just robbing and you’re stabbing and you’re looting and you’re shooting
Now you’re too bad.
One of these days when you hear a voice say come
Where you gonna run to
One of these days when you hear a voice say come
Where you gonna run to
You’re gonna run to the rock for rescue
There will be no rock
You’re gonna run to the rock for rescue
There will be no rock…
February 1st, 2009 at 9:30 pm
This song was on the soundtrack of The Harder They Come (1972), which was the first film to bring Reggae to a wider world. The dialog was in Jamaican Patois, which is a creole based on English. Because it is not intelligible to most speakers of Standard English, the movie had subtitles. I saw the movie in New York around 1976, it was nothing special, but the soundtrack is marvelous, if you appreciate the genre.