The Talkin’ Headline Blues is a weekly series of recordings using unedited headlines from CNN.com written as a song. This week’s topic: Trumposaurus Rex.
Much like it’s closely-related dinosaur cousin, the Trumposaurus Rex is easily identified by it’s large, swollen, bloated head and tiny, baby-like hands.
North Korea opens bathroom to sitting transgender Trump.
Happy old dinosaur spews Russian Trump testosterone abuse.
You!
Do you understand the connection here? Tyrannosaurus rex translates to KING TYRANT LIZARD. Can we all just agree to refer to Donald Trump, our president and an old toothbrush used to polish shoes, as King Tyrant Lizard? It is only a matter of time (days? hours? minutes?) until he devours everything.
Anyway, here are the headlines from today used to create this version of the Talkin’ Headline Blues. Listen to the song while you read them. It’s fun!
The Talkin’ Headline Blues is a weekly series of recordings using unedited headlines from CNN.com written as a song. This week’s topic: POTUS COITUS.
POTUS COITUS is defined as using an object of strength and virility to distract from obvious shortcomings.
Removed White House bans voters.
From big controversy you find Trump sex.
Busy brand not fake black.
These are exciting times we live in, amiright?! And to prove it, here are the headlines form this week that I used in this version of the Talkin’ Headline Blues:
Why not just ban everyone and everything? You can’t be safe if you don’t, right? Your chair could break under your weight and you’d fall to the floor and you could get a splinter from the wood in your wrist and that could get infected with some sort of bacteria and then that infection left untreated, because, well, no healthcare, could spread and spread and spread all over every part of your body and then it could become airborne and leak into other peoples’ eye sockets and they’d be infected.
It feels good when there’s no escape, right? RIGHT!?
See what I’m saying. Ban chairs, splinters, bacteria, breathing on other people. Just make it all illegal. Put us all in prison. Build walls around us. Chain us to the roof of a car. Do whatever you have to do. Just don’t let any of us people out into the world. WE ARE DANGEROUS.
Anyway, here’s a song about that.
This new one uses some elements of a couple other songs I’ve recorded (this one and this one), as well as this Woody Guthrie one. It’s nice that I can go back to songs I wrote 7 years ago and just take themes and ideas and update them just a little bit. Takes almost no time or effort on my part. Kind of wish that wasn’t the case, though. Kind of wish I wasn’t updating songs about being left behind and shut out and kicked down and dragged around.
Oh, and if you can’t read between the lines, this song is dedicated to Donald Trump, a piece of rotted chair cushion foam left out in the back alley during a week when it rained for 6 days straight. Fuck that guy and his whole entire administration.
The answer, my friend, is blowing in the wind, the answer is blowing in the wind.
Remember when Google set up search results for “miserable failure” to link to George W. Bush? Apparently that was called a “Google Bomb” and miserable failure isn’t linked to Bush any more. But don’t you think there’s another miserable failure lurking around these days? Or maybe an amazing failure? Or super-classy failure? Or unbelievable failure? Yes? Me too. So I wrote a song about lumpy bag of moldy clementines Donald Trump. Have a listen:
Woody and the Carter Family
Now, you may notice, if you’re familiar with old folk tunes, that this new song I wrote about Trump is very similar to the Carter Family song I’m Working on a Building. There’s a few very good reasons for that.
First is, it’s one of my favorite tunes. I play it often and, so, it pops up in my head a lot at random times during the day.
Second, it has some good phrases that I figured I could update to be relevant about today. That’s the best thing to do when writing a folk song. Find an old one that you like, that has a catchy melody and an interesting message and then replace a few words to make it relatable to something currently in the news or your life. I barely even had to change the repeating chorus because Trump does work on buildings. Only thing different is that instead of building a house of good and a structure of hope and faith, he bankrupts everyone and everything he comes in contact with.
Like Father Like Son
Two severely balding orange men standing close together.
Now, the last reason, and maybe the reason that got me writing this new song is closely linked to the idea of creating new songs by rewriting old ones. Last week I was thinking a lot about Donald Trump because of the Republican National Convention and I remembered a news article I read about how Woody Guthrie had written a song about Trump’s crooked landlord father Fred Trump (read all about him here). So I went in search of that article to listen to the song because I thought maybe I could update it to be about Donald.
Only problem is, when I found the article, it turns out Woody didn’t so much write a song about Fred Trump, he just maybe reworked a verse of his tune I Ain’t Got No Home. His “song” about Fred Trump amounts to little more than a few scribbled ideas in his notebook. Not much for me to use. Plus, Woody’s song I Ain’t Got No Home was already a rewrite of the Carter Family song Can’t Feel At Home In This World Anymore. Do you see where this is headed?
Woody took a lot of ideas from Carter Family tunes (and from a lot of other people) and that’s something I picked up on really fast when I started writing my own songs. I didn’t have to try and come up with something completely new and different. I could just update old songs to fit my times and the troubles and triumphs I saw around me. So that’s what I did with I’m Working on a Building.
But that’s STEALING
Yeah, it probably is. I admit that. Although, folk music (and maybe most music) is all stolen. Every new song rests on the shoulders of something that came before it. You might go as far to say that everything rests on the shoulders of what went before it. As we move into the future the past is what we have to stand on. Forgetting that, you fall into a pit of nothing and may never take another step in any direction. I guess it’s only really stealing if you take complete credit for all the words in a song and say all the ideas were yours alone and no one ever did anything like you ever before. No one does that, though, right?
Maybe the plumbing is just really bad in North Carolina and they’re trying to save on plunging bills?
Well how about this? Anyone remember that I used to rewrite and rerecord all my songs in an endless loop of songwriting practice? Anyone? No? That’s okay. I’ve written about a billion songs. In any event, I’ve reworked a song from way back in 2011, Goodbye, Goodbye, which was about the Arab Spring. Read up on and listen to the old version here. This new one is all about the bathroom law that was passed recently in North Carolina (among other places).
Wait, a song about a bathroom law?
First off, what the heck is a bathroom law? Try reading up on it here, here and here. I’ll give you a couple, two-tree minutes to read those.
So, yeah, it’s a law that some laughable people in North Carolina passed to say who can use what bathroom and where and when. Now, I’m too young to remember segregated bathrooms to separate people based on skin color, but this seems similar to that. No?
I may be simplifying it and I may have written a simple song about a complex issue, but what exactly are people in support of a law like this trying to accomplish? Some say it’s to PROTECT THE CHILDREN. I say that whenever I hear someone use that as a reason to do something, it’s probably for some other much more nefarious reason.
Then, why write a song about a bathroom law?
Especially a song that is basically saying, “See ya later, North Carolina. I can’t deal with you anymore.” Is that the true nature of the law? To make the LGBT community just get up and leave.
Is it better to stick around and fight for a place you call your home or just pack up and say, forget it. Who wins in either situation? You either keep your home, but have to live with terrible decisions by terrible people, or you move far away and have to leave your home.
How insane is that to make a law that causes someone to question their home, the place they were raised, the place they identify themselves with? That is not creating or maintaining a safe environment (PROTECT THE CHILDREN). It’s creating discomfort for everyone when one group is segregated. It highlights everyone’s differences. If someone is different than you, then you, in turn are different than them.
YOU’RE DIFFERENT TOO.
If they aren’t normal compared to you, then you aren’t normal compared to them. NO ONE’S NORMAL. And then where do you fit in if you aren’t normal? Who’s hand do you hold? Who’s lips do you kiss? What bathroom do you use? Where do you feel safe and secure and at home?
Wait, a children’s book can be used to explain a complex adult issue?
So instead of thinking about any of that or questioning yourself at all, go ahead and make people that aren’t like you feel so unsafe that they don’t want to live by you. But then, of course, that solution only leads to you seeing and feeling your differences. It’s like the book If You Give a Cat a Cupcake. One thing ALWAYS leads to another. And thinking about that book leads me to thinking how at my daughter’s pre-school there are SHARED BATHROOMS. Boys and girls in there TOGETHER. Who’s worked up about that? Who’s protecting the children?
Maybe, in America, we should just all get our own personal bathrooms everywhere we go. (I think they call them colostomy bags.) Then you never have to be around anyone that isn’t exactly like you.
Music Vomit 