An Ill-Omened Parody

The show-stopping Food, Glorious Food, from Lionel Bart's good ol' Oliver!, had been poking its nose in the tent more than once in recent days. I'd already written one parody of it about ten months ago. Then, the recent brace of anti-war Oliver!parodies made me wonder whether a trilogy was possible (it ain't, yet). And most lately, I took the occasion of my daughter's departure for Flavortown to catch a showing of Ice Age 2: the Meltdown, and was pleasantly surprised to hear a scavengers' chorus break into the song, with slightly altered lyrics. So the thing seemed to be Fate. The press of business, stultifyingly boring business, prevented me from giving the thing the cream of the Petrikov brain until now.

As before, Bart's lyrico-musical way of thinking has proved to be a bear to replicate; somehow, the rhymes and rhythms just don't recreate themselves in my head. So what follows is in large part a dummy lyric:

Lewd, gory and crude--
Each radio station.
What used to be boo'd
Now rates an ovation.

Hip hop on the Hit Parade;
Rap 24/7.
What vacuous twit betrayed
Andre Previn?

Lewd, gory and crude--
That's rap, in a nutshell.
What murdered the Muse?
One right-in-the-gut shell.

Here's my diagnosis, folks:
Pop music is screwed.
It's lewd, gory and
Rude, sleazy and
Crude, scuzzy and
Screwed.

Lyric © 2006 Nathaniel DesH. Petrikov

Last Call!

OK, third time's a charm. Still bugging me about Camelback Mountain was the word dung at the end of the first quatrain. I'm no prig (no, no, not so, but far otherwise), but I failed to see what in the heck dung had to do with this song, apart from furnishing a rhyme for young. The trouble was, that I was practically married to the second line. So there was nowt to do but change young to new, and carry one from there.

Pristine and pure was Camelback Mountain,
Years ago, when Phoenix was new;
The nouveau riche put houses upon it,
Blighting the land and blocking the view.

The Monk who kneels on Camelback Mountain
Prayed for years as hard as he could;
His mute appeals and silent hosannas
Haven’t achieved a smidgen of good.

Let's save the soul of Camelback Mountain:
Meet tonight in Papago Park;
We'll fire a flare at Camelback Mountain.
One random spark
Should light up the dark.

Lyric © 2006 by Nathaniel DesH. Petrikov

Remaining problems: The first quatrain is now too bland, though God knows most of my lyrics need a prosaic passage of exposition here and there. Light up the doesn't scan; the sheet music shows a dotted quarter note, an eighth note and a quarter note here, designed to carry Lullaby, but tending to give an awkward emphasis to the.

Now, on to something else. But what?

Camelback Again

The ending of Camelback Mountain was weak as hell: no word-picture, no wit, no finesse. Not at all what I'd projected for the ending, which called for taking the homes of the rich-and-not-so-famous-but-still-rich-and-that's-something-anyway, and putting them to the torch. But two rhymes for torch were wanted, and, apart from porch (apt enough), there's only scorch, which (a) is too mild for a conflagration, and (b) tips off the punchline of torch.

This morning, an improvement presented itself:

Let's save the soul of Camelback Mountain:
Meet tonight in Papago Park;
We'll fire a flare at Camelback Mountain.
One random spark
Should light up the dark.

Lyric © 2006 by Nathaniel DesH. Petrikov

So now, except for Monk, the vowels of the first and third syllables of the first three lines of each section are long. Take that, you Shermans! And I noticed this morning a casual internal rhyme in the Monk section: kneels/appeals. Completely inadvertent, folks. Sometimes, I don't know my own strength.

It Never Seems to Get Any Easier

About ten days ago, I received a generalized expression of interest in my stuff from, of all places, Phoenix, Arizona, burg o' my youth. Just a bit of back-and-forth between us got the juices flowing, and a deceptively appealing idea for a Phoenician song occurred to me, to the tune of Sherman Brothers' Hushabye Mountain, from Chitty-Chitty-Bang-Bang. That, if you've forgotten, is the lullaby that the inscrutably cast Dick Van Dyke, playing the inexplicably widowed Caractacus Potts, sings to his two bairns near the outset of the flick.

I say "deceptively appealing," because no idea ever cost me so much mental energy in the actual writing. Words--that is, words that actually fit the frickin' tune, f'cripes sake--simply wouldn't come. In the end, I found myself patching one spot with a bit of Damon Runyon, of all things. Part of the problem was the lack of pick-up notes on the even-numbered lines. Another was the odd rhythm of the thing, with its pairs of dotted and eighth notes, which called for lots of long vowels (I didn't manage to put a long vowel on every one, but neither did the Shermans).

You may not be up to speed with the concerns of denizens of the Valley of the Sun--concerns that go back forty years, if a day. Well, the most prominent landmark in Phoenix is Camelback Mountain, actually a hill with three peaks, which, from certain angles, resembles a dromedary couchant. Adding to its charm is an excrescence on the "nose" of the camel that (again, from a certain angle) resembles a praying monk. The Vulgar Rich have a penchant for grabbing lots on or near Camelback Mountain and building ostentatious ranch houses on them, thereby spoiling the view for those of us with good taste.

And now--

Pristine and pure was Camelback Mountain,
Years ago, when Phoenix was young;
The nouveau riche began building houses.
Now the poor girl is covered with dung.

The Monk who kneels on Camelback Mountain
Prayed for years as hard as he could;
His mute appeals and silent hosannas
Haven’t achieved a smidgen of good.

Some say, "So sick is Camelback Mountain,
Eight to five, she'll never get well";
But I've a cure for Camelback Mountain:
One well-placed shell
Will blow them to hell.

Lyric © 2006 by Nathaniel DesH. Petrikov

I've sent this off to the inquiring Phoenician, who's in the business of producing cabarets and what-not, but I'm not holding my breath waiting for a favorable response. It seemed a shame not to show it to someone, after that ghastly sweat.

"Consider Yourself"—My Arse!

I've struggled like hell to correct a rhythmic error in the draft parody of Consider Yourself, and to come up with another release and ending, cursing all the while the original; so free-and-easy, despite its dense internal rhymes. Prolonged contemplation of Bart's lyric gives me an illusory feeling that I know where he made little compromises when the sounds and the sense wouldn't cooperate, and how he felt when he'd finished and found that he'd produced immaculate transparencies like:

Nobody tries to be
La-di-dah or uppity;
There's a cup o' tea
For all—
Only it's wise to be
Handy with the rolling-pin,
When the landlord comes to call.

Me, I've ended up with something turgid, incohesive and, at one point, downright inexplicable. And the odd part is that the better bits are those written in haste. It's often the way. Oh, well:

Consider the War
Half-won.
Consider the rest
Merely formality.
It's going along
Just swell!
We're sure
You're
Wondering how to tell.

Consider the dead:
Not bad!
A coupla thou;
Nothing to squawk about.
The people are free—
And yes!
It's true!
We
Torture 'em less and less!

If you're a bit verklemmt, Call it "empty victory—
Contradictory,
At best";
But if you guys are wise,
Memorize
The Party Line,
'Cause it will. be. on. the. test.

Consider the facts!
. . . Or not.
It's no-never-mind
To us.
For, after we eliminate dissent, mein Gott!
There isn't a lot
To discuss.

* * * *

How is our mopping-up,
Vis-à-vis Guantánamo?
Would Geronimo
Approve?
Why are we propping up
Cockamamie governments?
Why does France support the Louvre?

Consider the cash
Well-spent.
We'd do it again—
Indeed!
And when the thing collapses like a Baghdad tent,
We'll do it again,
Guaranteed!

Lyric © 2006 Nathaniel DesH. Petrikov