News I Made Up
Dallas, Texas
The inquiry into Country & Western Music continues in Dallas today, with testimony from Billy Bob Blair of the Humanitarians.
Billy Bob, whose controversial songs have included Oh, Tony, Don’t Take Your Guns To Town and Bagram Blues was asked to account for discrepancies between his published lyrics and the real world.
“Well, I just don’t know,” Billy Bob Blair told Desmond Yackle, heading the investigation, “I mean, you say one thing at the time because it seems right, yawhaw? And then later it turns out it was wrong, well, that’s music, y’know? But, hey: it wasn’t me who started that whole crazy Mid-East war, but I was proud to go, and do my patriotic chore, you know?”
Billy Bob is also under investigation because of his hit single Justifications – which contains the lyrics “Your country, my country, just don’t get along/weapons of mass destruction, Saddam, that’s where I’m coming from/You’ve got ‘em and I know it/Even if you won’t show it/You’re gonna give ‘em to Al Qaeda/Now you know we’ve tried ta/Go the legal route, but now, oh, now/Someone load my rifle, I’m go-in’ on one giant quail shoot!” – is widely blamed for the misperception that WMD would be found in Iraq.
“Well, I jus’ believed it was true at the time, man,” Billy Bob Blair told the inquiry, “but you know, I’m a musician, is what it is, and I was taking a whole shitload of cocaine back then.”
Therese du Bois of Spokane, Washington, demanded that Mr Blair also account for the so-called 45 minute claim in the song DANGER!:
“There’s no time, no time for doubt/Gotta find those weapons and take ‘em out!/It’s not religious to object, in fact it’s a sin, it’s/So wrong, takes too long, A-bomb could fall in 45 minutes!”
Billy Bob would not concede that this claim was exaggerated. “I felt it, man, at the time, I was totally there in the music with my guys, y’know? And that whole thing we did – it was catchy: let me hear you shout/beyond doubt/call him out/Saddam’s a bad scout/don’t feel bad about/it, there’s no question/no suggestion/the evidence’s arrestin’/be no questin’/it’s all waitin’ on trucks/no shucks/millions of bucks/of hardware/it’s there/he might share/with terr’rists/UN won’t wear this!/Throwin’ a monkeywrench/(Damn the French!) – that was totally where I was at the time, dude. Totally.”
However, he did mention that, in close consultation with other C&W singers such as Hank Williams and the Be Good Tanyas, he had come to the conclusion that whipporwills – often said to be lonesome – are in fact perfectly happy birds with an excellent social structure.
“But man, the old songs – they’re the best.”