Have you noticed how every song written about September 11 sucks major ass juice? Writing songs about 9/11 is cheap. Who needs original thought when all you have to do is regurgitate September 11 catchphrases and suddenly you got tears flowing and hands holding and voices singalonging and people applauding you for displaying such meaningful sorrow. It’s like when the opening band shouts out the name of the headliner because it’s a guaranteed reaction-getter.
For two straight evenings, I traversed a maze of web rings like Songs of Memory and Heal the Pain We Bear – consisting of dozens and dozens of obscure, mediocre artists. For two nights, Woodbridge red at my side, I listened to their laments about September 11, 2001. Oh Christ, how I twisted in my headphones; each website, each song – just another jagged stone in an avalanche of suck.
9/11 tribute songs have four basic lyrical themes:
1) Songs about Putting a Boot in Someone’s Ass: A good example is Toby Keith’s oafish, “The Angry American”:
"This big dog will fight when you rattle his cage
And you'll be sorry that you messed with the US of A
Because we'll put a boot in your ass it's the American way."
(Toby doesn’t realize that, so far, the only ass that has any boots in it is our own – four cylindrical, metal, wingtipped boots).
2) Patriot Songs, Flag-Waving Songs, etc: Like, “Stand Up for the USA,” by Fani Mancini. Or how about this kettle of vomit by Matty Oz:
“We’re Americans
We’re known for pulling through
We’re Americans
We bleed red white and blue."
(What is this notion that only Americans know how to “pull through.” Is the survival instinct solely an American trait? Wouldn’t the peoples of every nation rebuild after a fall? Jesus, even ants regroup after you destroy their nest).
3) Song’s That Mention Jesus, God, or the Devil: Suffice to say, that religion quite regularly rears its ghastly head from the slag-vat of obscure, mediocre 9/11 songs. I especially enjoyed the tunes about all those faces and images of Satan that supposedly materialized inside the billowing black clouds of the twin towers:
“The faces in the smoke could be warning everyone
The Devil might be saying, ‘It’s not long until I come.’” (http://originalsongsite.com)
(Side note: last week, I was gazing at the passing clouds, and I saw an ominous outline of a duck. . . Oh God help me, the ducks are coming, the ducks are coming!)
4) Songs That Mention Saving the Children: There are plenty of obscure, mediocre songwriters with their “Save the children,” songs. But the most famous is Charlie Daniels’, “Last Fallen Hero”:
“We will make whatever sacrifice
Pay whatever price
So the children of tomorrow can be free.”
(But what about me!? May I too be free? What about me?!”)
Anyway, after surfing all those web rings, I realized that I’m the only obscure, mediocre songwriter left who hasn't written a 911 song. So I bucked up and wrote a musical response to September 11. I called it, “When the Towers Fell Like Great Falling Cement and Metal Things.”
And I was so pleased with the song, that I called my pal David Allen Coe and told him that I had written the perfect 911 song. David Allen Coe said that it was not the perfect 9/11 song, “Because it didn’t say nothing about America, or Jesus, or the children, or kicking ass, or ducks.
So I wrote another 9/11 song. It’s a fight song in the key of D. I call it, “Jesus Will Help Us Kick Your Ass for the Children":
Jesus will help us kick your ass for the children
And we’ll raise our banners high
Victory is ours for sure
What about the children, the children, the children?
God will help us fuck you up
And we’ll sing, “America – land of the free,”
And crack cinderblock over anyone’s head
Who dare not wave it as high and proud as me.
Jesus will help us kick your ass
And the children will all be fine
And grow up to kick your children’s asses
Again and again till the end of time.
Chorus
Oh Christ help me, the ducks are coming!
Quack quack – they’re coming indeed.
The ducks, the ducks, the ducks are coming!
Quack-quack, quack-quack. Quaaaack-quacccccck.
(Repeat/fade – with sirens and screams in background)
EJD
10/16/02