The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #66922   Message #1114599
Posted By: Mark Cohen
12-Feb-04 - 12:15 AM
Thread Name: Favourite Parodies
Subject: RE: Favourite Parodies
I believe Bob Blue wrote "Their Way", though I'd love to hear Roy sing it. I have a few favorite parodies: "Garnet's Home-Brewed Beer", "It's Not What I'd Sing When I'm Sober" (David Diamond, I believe), and one I once heard in Victoria, BC but never learned: "Borscht Riders in the Sky" (the chorus went, "Yippie-oy-oy, Yippie-oy-vey"). I'm also partial to some of mine, of course: The Perennial Beginner (The F-Chord Song) (after Phil and Lou Berryman's "A Chat With Your Mother (a/k/a "The F-Word Song"), Greenberg's (after "Green Fields"), and For Just One Dime (after Stan Rogers' "Northwest Passage").   And one more, that isn't in the DT. This one came from a Mudcat song challenge in January '02, after John Ashcroft ordered thousands of dollars worth of draperies to cover up the immense statue of "Justice" in the Justice Dept., which depicted a woman with one breast exposed. (I've made some editorial changes.) It's after "The Sound of Silence," of course.

THE BREAST OF JUSTICE
(c)2002 Mark Cohen

Hello Justice my old friend
They're trying to cover you again
Because John Ashcroft softly weeping
Saw the photographs of his meeting
And your proud metallic gleam in the flashing light
Gave him a fright
It was the Breast of Justice

Remember back in '34
They placed you on the marble floor
Like a beacon in the dark you shone
Like a goddess on a heav'nly throne
And for years and years you proudly stood and glared
At all who dared
To hide the Breast of Justice

While the people bowed and prayed
To other gods whose games they played
You alone held up this warning
To the ones whose fears were forming
And you told them, "Justice will prevail, though the prudes of any shape
May throw a drape
Across the Breast of Justice"

"Fools," you said, "You do not know
This metal skin is only show
While you beat your breast in anguished pose
Because you happen to see mine exposed
Do you think that a few yards of cloth will set you free?
Don't you see?
This is the Breast of Justice"

In every corner of the land
Wherever Justice takes a stand
Putting curtains up to hide the light
Will only make the truth burn twice as bright
And our eyes will behold the heart of liberty
Beating free
Within the Breast of Justice

Aloha,
Mark