Lyr Add: Simple Gifts parody Complex Gifts

Subject: Lyr Add: Simple Gifts parody Complex Gifts
From: GUEST,Bob Coltman
Date: 26 Jan 16 - 11:32 AM

I couldn't resist.

COMPLEX GIFTS

'Tis the gift to be complex, 'tis the gift that's bizarre,
'Tis the gift to come down wond'ring where we are,
And when we come to a place that's cheap,
We will pay at the desk and go right in and sleep.

CHO
When true complexity is gained,
To play video games we will not be ashamed,
To fax and tweet it is our delight,
Till by faxing and tweeting we're totally all right.

Subject: RE: Lyr Add: Simple Gifts parody Complex Gifts
From: keberoxu
Date: 26 Jan 16 - 05:55 PM

Are there parodies of Lord of the Dance as well, while we have this tune in our heads?

Subject: RE: Lyr Add: Simple Gifts parody Complex Gifts
From: BobL
Date: 27 Jan 16 - 03:28 AM

The Kippers' "Bored of the Dance" (although they didn't use quite the same tune)

Subject: ADD: Coffee (Simple Gifts parody)
From: Joe Offer
Date: 04 Jul 17 - 10:11 PM

Here's another song using the "Simple Gifts" melody. It's in the "Women" chapter on page 253-254 of the Rise Up Singing Songbook. Anybody know anything about lyrics writer Cassandra Amesley?

COFFEE
(words by Cassandra Amesley, music: Simple Gifts)

When I wake up in the morning I will plug in the pot
If I choose to do it, drink my coffee hot
But I work in an office that is run by men
Who expect me to do it again and again

CHORUS
Coffee, the bane of my life
I am not paid to be an office wife
You've got hands and a modicum of sense and health
You can make your goddamn coffee for yourself

It's hard to be working in a paper life
To shuffle paper and to have to type
To file every morning and to balance the books
I'll be damned if I also have to cook

I receive all your visitors with charm and a smile
And I find important documents you lose in a file
Work overtime on call, draft reports you cannot do
And I make ten thousand less than you

If you're too important to make coffee or tea
Well that sure says what you must think of me
If the logic of this song doesn't filter through
You drip, I still have grounds to sue!

— w: Cassandra Amesley — m: trad. "Simple Gifts" C Cassandra Amesley. All rights reserved. — On Solid Ground (tape — Ladyslipper). Tune sources: see FAITH.

Subject: RE: Lyr Add: Simple Gifts parody Complex Gifts
From: GUEST,.gargoyle
Date: 05 Jul 17 - 07:22 PM

Mr. Joe that is a classic cup of....

Here another LORDS variation.

THE LORDS WHO SING OFF-KEY

Off-tune, off-tune, wherever I may be,
For I am the lord who sings off-key.
And I'll sing off-key where ever I may be,
And you'll sing off-tune if you sing with me.

I sang at the tourney and I sang at the feast,
My voice was listened to the least.
They told me be silent, they told me be gone,
But there's still more words so my song goes on.

I sang at the campfire and I sang at the quest,
For our tactics were a little different to the rest.
We sang at the monsters till they bribed us be gone,
But there's still more clues so my song goes on.

I sang at the tourney and I sang at the war,
I sang till the fighters could not take any more.
They picked up their weapons and challenged me to fight,
But the song goes on 'cause I called their blows are light.
I sang for the Prince and I sang for the King,
To them my song seemed to have a different ring.
They did not shout nor did they complain,
They just banned me from singing for the rest of their reign!



The Known Words
The Etherial Edition A.S.I.
Revision 4.06, 2017-02-05
(Editor - Paul Sleigh aka
Baron Karl Faustus von Aachen,
formerly Eric of Tobar Mhuire, commonly called Eric the Fruitbat)

Sincerely,
Gargoyle

The current pdf collection is a wonderful romp through the prissey traditional gardens of English folk purists.

Subject: RE: Lyr Add: Simple Gifts parody Complex Gifts
From: keberoxu
Date: 05 Jul 17 - 08:21 PM

Who is Cassandra Amesley from Rise Up Singing, asks an earlier post.

A Google search turns up
her comment on someone else's blog.
Her comment is dated 2012.

"Iowa's a peculiar state....Lived in Iowa till a few years ago.
I was an organizer and hung out with pols and feminists."

Amesley is a former member of the Iowa Coalition Against Domestic Violence; Citizens for Community Improvement (said community was Des Moines); a former board member of Iowa Shares, "a workplace giving coalition."

Amesley is a published cultural theorist who around 1990 wrote something called "How to Watch Star Trek." What she wrote, was the results of interviewing and studying people who watch Star Trek episodes. This includes people who attend Star Trek conventions and publish "fanzines."

Don't know where she went to after leaving Iowa.
(I don't run THAT kind of Google search. Too lazy.)