Here's another bit of work documentation drivel with lacunae that will rival the best to be found in the Nag Hammadi library.
The September 1977 Political Parody Cycle Part 1
At least five songs, written on two pages of a standard classroom notebook. I had them with me in homeroom within the first two weeks of my 11th grade year at the School for Creative and Performing Arts in Cincinnati, so they were written at that time or right before the school year started. The 2-page manuscript contained no notation, and most of the words fitted to melodies that already existed, although in one case the tune was original. I'm fairly sure that this manuscript source was lost even before the end of the 1970s, and though I don't think they were "good" songs, bits and pieces of them still come back to me. So I suspect this is as good a time as any to set them down.
This was a time in my life when my work was consumed with a wicked kind of sarcasm. I was a 16-year-old kid with my brain warped by Mad Magazine and captivated by misadventures within the political scene of those years. Events such as the seemingly grindingly slow (but actually rather rapid) decline and fall of the Nixon administration, the Watergate Scandal, Wilbur Mills and Fannie Foxe frolicking, then fighting, in the Tidal Basin and the so-called "disappearence" of Teamster President Jimmy Hoffa were all grist for my mill of sarcasm. Even presidential assassination attempts were kind of like a joke to me. Unconscionably there had been three assassination attempts during the brief, bland and innocuous adminstration of Gerald Ford. Two were genuine; one made by Squeaky Fromme, a crazed ex-Manson family member, and the other by Sara Jane Moore, who had worked for PIN (People in Need), an Oakland-based charitable organization set up with ransom money extorted by the SLA. The third "attempt" was an accident, the result of an exploding flashbulb on some poor Joe's camera. Forthwith both he and his Kodak Instamatic were flattened to the ground by Secret Service men - the President suffered a minor injury when a tiny piece of plastic struck him on the head.
The last two songs on the second page were parodies of 1950s pop hits by singer Tony Bennett, and they are included first because I remember them best. Of course, they are a lot funnier if you can imagine them sung in Tony's 1950s voice, that loud "singin' my heart out and don't you just love me?" bag he was in then. Tony's recent work is comparitively more subdued. Both of these parodies deal with organized crime.
Pot to Hashish
(sung to the tune of "Rags to Riches")
You know I'd go from pot to hashish (pronounced like "hat" -shysh)
If you would only gimmie dough
And though I couldn't knock off Carter
My mind would be blown.
And then I'd join the police department
And get myself a steady job
And that would sure give me excuses
To steal and kill, cheat and rob.
Note the borrowing from Paul McCartney in lines 5-6. Additionally here is an interesting, though unrelated, sidelight. In the early 1980s when I lived for a time in Dayton, Ohio there was a police officer who was sent to prison. He had supplemented his income by peddling drugs on his beat, right out of his cruiser. When his customers couldn't pay up, he arrested them and turned them in. He also worked as an enforcer, i.e. a hitman. Once he shot and killed a gun dealer in the store with a machine gun which he literally picked up off the rack. Now that was one BAD cop.
In the Middle of an Island
(to the tune of the same name. This was a bright, Hawaiian hula styled number.)
In the middle of an island
In the middle of the ocean
You and me on a fishing trip
(next line missing)
(second half of verse missing - picks up with bridge)
What am I doing in the drink
With a cement block around my feet?
Oh, Buddy why'd you do this to me?
No thanks to you my little fishing friend
Please tell me why this is the bitter end
(this line missing)
And sink into my watery grave
The rest tomorrow.
Uncle Dave Lewis
uncledavelewis@hotmail.com