I love that. Have you heard or read Anna Russell (this is from memory -- I may have her name wrong, but I bet you know who I mean) on making up your own folk songs? She is quite hilarious on the subject.
OK, I love Richard Thompson but have never been a STUDENT of Richard Thompson (Walking on a Wire---I am a helpless puddle of tears every time), but he was on WFUV the other night (I think they were replaying it) being interviewed (you can listen to it online in all probability), and they played this song 'I Got the Hots for the Smarts' (that rhymes in a Scottish accent, or a Brooklyn one for that matter, in Boston of course it's Hats for the Smats), a song which if I had heard it in my youth would have made everything a WHOLE lot better.
You probably know it.
Love the whole folk song as advice thing. In a just world it needs its own blog. I think I'm going to specialize in Gordon Lightfoot. Don't be creepin' down my backstairs, now. xoxo Kay
Jim MacDonald, the perpetrator of the folksong thread on Making Light, wrote a novel called The Apocalypse Door about Peter Templar, covert superspy for the Knights Templar, saving the world from metaphysical villains with the help of Sister Mary Magdalene of the Special Executive Branch of the Poor Clares (the nuns with the guns).
Very amusing book. I think it would be right up your alley, although it might give you Ideas.
Whoops, that should be "Peter Crossman".
The added verses to folk songs kept me laughing for quite awhile this morning. It's somewhat reminiscent of Tom Lehrer's parody of the Irish folksong:
One morning in a fit of pique
Sing rickiti tickiti tin
One morning in a fit of pique
She drowned her father in the creek
The water tasted bad for a week
And we had to make do with gin,
with gin
And we had to make do with gin.
And speaking of songs, I was curious as to whether I would hear the song Iko, Iko, discussed earlier in this blog, in connection with news stories on Katrina and New Orleans. Sure enough, yesterday on NPR there was a story on the diaspora of New Orleans' musicians. So, when it was reported that the Dixie Cups were not in New Orleans when Katrina struck but lost everything, the background music was Iko, Iko. See http://www.npr.org/templates/
sto...storyId=4845409. It occurred to me that a city that can produce music like that can't be kept down for long.
Those are very, very funny. Adding verses to Hush, Little Baby- when I was a kid, my brothers and I watched a comedian do stand-up on TV and he had a violent version of Hush, Little Baby that we all remembered and would sing to each other often-
Hush little baby don't say a word,
Mama's gonna buy you a mockingbird,
and if that mockingbird don't sing,
gonna grab his feathers and break his wings,
now that mockingbird don't fly
so I'll take a needle and poke him in the eye...
and on and on, until the mockingbird died.
Listen, it was hilarious when I was 8!
Never throw your ball over a high wall and then go to fetch it back. ("Little Sir Hugh")
Never cheese off the really annoying kid over a ball game or he'll lure you out on a magical bridge only to let you drop and drown. ("Bitter Withy")
Heck. Never play ball at all!
Hey nonny nonny- Anna Russell i the One. Her folksongs are great, but her Analysis of the Ring Cycle is a masterpiece. Check her out if your aren't familiar with her.
What you need is a folk song about what's going to happen when the taxidermist gets a hold of all those kittens.
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