Put It In A Song
by Alexei Panshin
During the past few years, I've been writing songs with Josh Wachtel. This is a miracle in itself since I have no musical training, I can't carry a tune in a bucket, and my children order me to stop whenever I attempt to sing. Without the particular circumstances that led to Josh's and my collaboration, I doubt that writing songs would ever have occurred to me as something I could do.
Because the music that Josh and his wife Kim perform doesn't observe conventional musical categories, Josh calls it Crossover Music. Their repertoire consists of unknown songs he's picked up from great people and great songs that he's learned from unknown people. The songs that we write together are intended to fill in the gaps.
These songs come into being in different ways. This one started after Josh borrowed a book of classic kidlore from me. He then surprised me by picking out verses and writing a tune to go with them. We worked at putting all the words together, including changing some of them. And one verse about a chicken egg found in a field metamorphosed into something new entirely.
This is called the Folk Process, and it's the way a lot of
songs used to get written:
What the Blind Man Saw
One bright day in the middle of the night
Two dead boys got up to fight
Back to back they faced each other
Drew their swords and shot each other
A deaf policeman heard the noise
He came and killed those two dead boys
One bright day in the middle of the night
As I was walkin' up the stair
I saw a man who wasn't there
He wasn't there again today
Oh how I wish he'd go away
Jaybird sittin' on a hickory limb
He winked at me and I winked at him
His eyes were red and his teeth were green
Sat there pickin' on a tambourine
(chorus) One bright day in the middle of the night
A monkey and a flea and three blind mice
Sat on a curbstone shootin' dice
The monkey did a flip and fell on the flea
The flea said, "Whoops, there's a monkey on me"
A Twinkie and a Tastykake knockin' at the door
They just come from the mini-mart store
The lady went upstairs to get her gun
Should-a seen the Twinkie and the Tastykake run
(chorus) One bright day in the middle of the night
As I was walkin' down the street
Who do ya think I chanced to meet?
It was Godzilla and old King Kong
Stompin' on buildings and singin' a song
Red and blue and delicate green
The King can't catch it 'n' neither can the Queen
Bring it in the house through the 'lectric socket
Catch a rainbow and put it in your pocket
(chorus) One bright day in the middle of the night
If you don't believe these lies are true
Ask the blind man, he saw it too
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The next song was written because there wasn't anything like it already. It's about the rise and fall of a dictator. In my lifetime, I've watched a lot of strongmen come and go - and this is about all of them. If anybody has been following the news all this time and remembers, they might catch whiffs of Trujillo, Papa and Baby Doc and Saddam in this one.
Josh was the instigator of this song. Before it was done, we swapped it back and forth a number of times. I'm particularly proud of the instrumental bridge. Josh worked it up thinking that it was going to be another new song altogether, but I snatched it from his guitar and put it in this one where it fit perfectly.
Coup d'Etat
Triumphantly you mount your steed
And parade the boulevard
The trumpets sound and flowers fly
It's the changing of the guard
Men strew your path with gifts of gold
As they pledge their loyalty
The table's set and the feast begins
To celebrate your destiny
You're the chief now and your enemy died hard
The judge wipes a dagger on his cloak
Your hands are clean but smoke still lingers in the air
And liars laugh before you tell your joke
You wave your fist and pledge reform
But you give stale bread to eat
While your mistress soaks in a golden bath
Men and dogs patrol the street
Your mustache and your happy grin
Adorn ev'ry school and bar
But you spend each night in a diff'rent house
And need a fleet of decoy cars
You wear medals just like your Dad before
He killed a million people in his time
Graves in the highlands and corpses in the sea
He never paid a minute for his crime
The wind whispers of a coup d'etat
And you feel a sudden chill
The stolen ballots have now been found
There's guerillas in the hills
The time has come to wave the flag
And send the troops off to war
But the walls close in and you can't trust
Your own brother any more
The hour is near when the piper must be paid
The sky is gray and it looks like rain
The lights are out and your bags are packed
The plane awaits, but will you make the plane?
Strangely enough, when this song was first performed, somebody
asked me, "Is this one really about Gee Dubya?" I said,
"It couldn't possibly be. Gee Dubya doesn't have a mustache."
#
What's particular fun about song writing is when something emerges that neither Josh nor I could have produced on our own. This one started out as a tune that Josh had. He had a few words but stuck there. It ended with me trying to show Josh how the tune should go at the finish, with me singing notes wretchedly and then telling Josh "no" until he was able to sing the right ones back to me. Josh's brother Ben got in on the act with the melody for the bridge.
This one is a love song, which we hadn't done much of before.
It was written to be sung by the female singer in Josh's band
- but she took it so much to heart that she couldn't bring herself
to sing it, not realizing that it didn't just apply to her, but
was about the experience of half the women in America.
Beyond the Mountain
I was sailing / with my lover
On a ship / that sailed the ocean
But my mind wandered
And our ship foundered
And I was lost / in troubled waters
I was fishing / in a desert
With a bare hook / and a promise
But in that sea of sand
There was no place to land
There was no end / to my starvation
The light of glory / has no mercy
On a prisoner / in the dock
In the garden
The sun shines golden
But the door is locked / and the key is lost
Love is the answer
Rainbows in the air
Love must be the answer
But the rain falls in torrents everywhere
I must bake my bread / for our provision
On that new day beyond the mountain
When dawn has broken
And I've awoken
To my true love / in the morning
--By Josh Wachtel, Alexei Panshin, and Ben Wachtel
#
This song is another example of the Folk Process at work. (Before mass communication, when the Copyright Barons of the Twentieth Century stepped in to grab off everything they could as their own particular property, there was no such thing as the Folk Process - just people swapping songs around, changing words and notes to suit themselves and the needs of the moment.) Since I'm technically ignorant and musically incompetent, it's a great comfort to me to feel that in combining what has been handed down to me and what I've been given to write, I'm doing exactly what one person after another before me has done.
The blues started out as a kind of newspaper for those who didn't have access to official information sources or couldn't rely on them to be truthful. As the old song has it: "I've been farther into the blues looking for news than you've ever been." In that tradition, here is a classic news-blues for you. The tune is eternal. The words are true:
Times Right Now
Times ain't now nothin' like they used to be
Times just now, different than they used to be
I seen better days, but I'm puttin' up with these
I bought me a good car, I drove it down the road
You know, I got me a new car, I drove it on down the road
The police pulled me over, say they want to check my load
It's profiling - that's what it is!
They grabbed me by the ears, picked me up by the tail
Yeah, they grabbed me by the ears, swung me 'round by the tail
If I don't smile and like it, I'm sure to spend the night in jail
But if I laugh - they'll kill me dead
They strip-searched my house, they hit me with their fist
Oh, they ransacked my house, punched me with their fist
Tell me they don't need a warrant, I'm an urban terrorist
They got a list with my name on it
They took me off in handcuffs, no one knows where I am
They took me away in handcuffs, 'n' I don't know where I am
They claim I flew the flag wrong and I hate Uncle Sam
Flyin' the flag upside down is a sign of distress
There's a postman in your basement, the meterman's readin'
your mail
There are eyes at your window, the trashman's been readin' your
mail
So be careful when you breathe in and be cautious when you exhale
And don't look suspicious while you're doin' it
Never can tell who might be watchin'!
The Black Ships are comin', soldiers are movin' out
I say, the whirlybirds are comin', there's soldiers movin' out
Gonna guard the streets and highways to save us all from doubt
Times right now, too much like they used to be
Times just now, too much like they used to be
In Nazi Germany
I seen better days, but I'm puttin' up with these
I seen better days, now I'm puttin' up with these
I see a better day, I'm not puttin' up with these
# # #
Copyright 2003 by Alexei Panshin
First Published in e*I* ezine Vol. 2 No. 1 (Issue #6),
Earl Kemp's
on-line fanzine