Tag Archives: song

Listen, Talkin' Headline Blues

POTUS COITUS: The Talkin’ Headline Blues #183

Audio

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: The Talkin' Headline Blues #183
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:

Listen, Talkin' Headline Blues

Dance Ban: The Talkin’ Headline Blues #182

Audio

The Talkin’ Headline Blues is a weekly series of recordings using unedited headlines from CNN.com written as a song. This week’s topic: Dance Ban.

Dance Ban: The Talkin' Headline Blues #182
Donald Trump, the wrinkly, limp bulge hanging between an old man’s legs, claps his tiny infant-sized hands after announcing his new dance ban.

Super unconstitutional twist spreads to Trump’s organizers.
My group is immigrants.
Deputy doesn’t need apology prayers.

I know this happened like three weeks ago and so much has happened since, but did you catch a glimpse of the first dance at the inauguration? Just watch it. Go ahead, let it sink in.

Now that you’re nice and uncomfortable and never want to dance with anyone ever again, think about how easy it’s going to be for a dance ban to be passed. First you’ll think it’s a joke. “Hahaha, good one, no way, don’t believe it, fake news,” you’ll say. BUT NO. It’ll happen. And why not, right? If the Trump administraion can ban people, why not dancing. Why wouldn’t Don ban something else that obviously makes him so uncomfortable?

And you know what, if a dance ban does happen, that’s okay. Because there’s already an outline of a perfect way to fight it and beat it.

Just like history has always shown, there are ways to beat any ban on anything.

Now the headlines!

Listen, New Song

Ban It All

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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.

Ban It All
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.

Listen, Talkin' Headline Blues

Apocalypse Disallowed: The Talkin’ Headline Blues #181

Audio

The Talkin’ Headline Blues is a weekly series of recordings using unedited headlines from CNN.com written as a song. This week’s topic: Apocalypse Disallowed.

Apocalypse Disallowed: The Talkin' Headline Blues #181
A pair of tiny hands beneath a girthy chin signs an order to allow no further use of the word apocalypse.

5-year-old denies shrunk apocalypse.
Feud leaves history killed.
Who swerves protesters?
A tomorrow that bullied Trump.

It’s time again to do some news headlines as a song. You know why. Before everything and everyone is banned from doing anything or going anywhere. Before every single person is isolated from every other single person and before even the Four Horsemen are told they have the wrong papers, come from the wrong place and worship in the wrong house.

So here are the headlines, from the favorite fake news website of the sagging butt fat who we have to call president, used to record this version:

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Over the Border Wall

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When a wall goes up there’s so many ways to get to the other side. You can go over it, under it, break it down and go through it, jump it, fly it, pole vault it. Doesn’t even matter if it’s a border wall or a house wall or a city wall or a hotel wall or a wall in your head or heart. Just bust on through.

Get over the border wall at all costs.I’ve been think about this song for a long while now. Not just days and weeks and months, but years. It’s a old Carter Family tune that I first heard probably about a decade ago. Their tune is called Over the Garden Wall. Ten years ago I was thinking a lot about immigration. A lot about Mexico and all the countries south of Mexico. I wrote one called On the Banks of the Old Rio Grande. And another called Brown-skinned Woman. And I started reworking this one, replacing garden wall with border wall. Just fits good. But I must have gotten distracted or something because I never finished it or recorded it.

Who knew, 10 years later…

And, of course, now I’ve been thinking about it again. With so much talk the past months about building a damn wall between the US and Mexico how could I not. Locking people out. Locking people in. I didn’t really need to change much from the Carter Family version. I did almost changed the line “while the old feller was snoring asleep” to “while the old feller was writing a tweet” but I felt that was too easy a jab. And also only pointed a finger at one man. If a wall goes up who’s fault is it really? Some bigot elected official? Some racist sheriff? Someone else? You? Me? Has nothing been done in 10 years? In 20 years? In 200 years? Who’s fault is that?

If a wall gets built, climb it. Both ways. Then move the Statue of Liberty to the mouth of the Rio Grande and let everyone in and out.

Like a very wise man once said:

As I went walking I saw a sign there
And on the sign it said “No Trespassing.”
But on the other side it didn’t say nothing,
That side was made for you and me.
-Woody Guthrie, This Land Is Your Land