CALLING ALL KOSSACKS! (Especially the musical ones.)
For the last month I’ve been plagued by an idea for a crappy country song which I’m pretty sure will destroy the forces of Evil and bind together our divided nation. I have a tune worked out, although it seems too basic and catchy not to have been stolen from somewhere, and hopefully there’s a musical Kossack who’ll help me get it recorded. All y’all can help with some more verses though: it’s fun!
The first verse begins with an upbeat down home list of rural nouns and cultural markers that’s become the hallmark of all crappy country songs these days:
“I know you like blue jeans, dirt roads n' Saturday night,
Your girl by the river in the clear moon light.
I know you like hard work, cold beer an’ havin’ a gun.
Yeah I know you like country...
Now tell me which one.”
Second Verse kicks it up a register - faster and more aggressive. (Like they all do.)
“(Just because) you're down-home n’ home-grown you don't get no pass
When I can hear them balalaikas ringin' out your ass.
(Ain’t gonna let no) Bolshoi Good Ol’ Boy tell me what’s what,
So shove your ham n’ grits n’ Solzhenitsyn George Straight up your butt.”
While I’m insistent on the anatomical location out from where I can hear the balalalikas ringing, I can see how following it up with “George Straight up your butt...” might come across as juvenile and perhaps a wee bit anally fixated, distracting from the overall narrative theme: country song where all the redneck cultural references are either replaced or joined by Russian ones.
(A bit more challenging than you might think. You quickly realize how few Russian cultural markers you actually know, that most of them have too many syllables to be poetically useful, and that nothing at all rhymes with “borscht.”)
(Maybe something like “take your ham n’ grits n’ Solzhenitsyn and Rimsky Korsi-go-fuck-off...”)
Okay, third verse. Way too many syllables here for the tune, so I was thinking a sort of Patriotic
Talking Blues section - deep, mournful cowboy voice over strummed chords.)
“I remember a time when bein’ conservative meant goin’ to church, havin’ a family... an’ a dog.
Now it’s just a bunch of involuntarily celibate wanna-be Nazis, worshipping a cartoon frog.”
I was thinking soft background strains of “America the Beautiful” or “God Bless America” would work too, which got me thinking of the Patriotic Talking Blues genre of the 50’s and 60’s and how ripe it is for parodying the conservatives of today. Take this classic for example:
Call your cousin and tell them you’ve finally found some use for their top-flight John Wayne impersonation, find a karaoke version of this (although any patriotic instrumental will probably do,) change the place names and context to Russian and Whammo! Instant biting satire that hits older conservatives right where they live: the good old days when the Duke was King. Perhaps have Mr. Wayne break down halfway through and just start haranguing Republicans for being no-good dirty rotten yellow-bellied backstabbing traitors to Russia.
For now though, how about taking any patriotic tune and change the words to celebrate the new Russo-Republican Special Relationship! Change those spacious skies into Russian spies! Do it now: Stop Stalin!
(Kossack musicians interested in helping me with my nation-healing country song, Kosmail me and I’ll sing it for you.)