I have the album it first appeared on, "'The Winner' and Other Losers." And Bobby Bare is definitely too smart to have had anything but parody in mind when he wrote it. That's what made it so funny when Monday Night Football adopted it--as if no one would be offended by the parody.

And Leej, it was "Hippie from Olema," a little town in Marin county, and it was a California group that did it, someone like "New Riders of the Purple Sage" or "The Doobie Brothers"--like them, but probably not them.

--seed