12th Nov – Well, never mind, We are ugly, but we have the music.

Cleaned myself: 0
Monkey see, monkey do: 0
Tics: actually, no.
Believe in God? Christmas is coming.
YTLH: Black Monday is coming.

Rehearsals are proceeding by Zoom and email. It is early days, and we have concerned ourselves only with structure, and completeness thus far. In charting the course of man-made disasters within our lifetime, to which we can link a biblical parallel, we have the five or so below plus the Covid-finale. Each scene will have its own song, set and dialogue, and the state of play, as of tonight is:

Mad Cow Disease (BSE) – song & dialogue written. All parts cast.
Foot & Mouth – no song, some dialogue. Not fully cast.
The Flood – song written, dialogue to be edited. Cast.
Rise of Isis – song written, draft dialogue only. Not cast.
Financial Crash – still not sure it qualifies. Nothing done.
Covid-Finale – song written, dialogue finished. Cast.

Only one song is outstanding, that for Foot & Mouth, and I have charged myself with coming up with a pop-song style of lyric that exhibits two of the key failings which are a feature of many chart successes, to wit: a moment (or two) of pretentious teenage profundity, which I have termed faux profundis; and a timeline that doesn’t make sense. In the following draft, I have annotated it to point out these deliberate failings. It’s called Foot ‘n’ Mouth (working title) and though Big Tooth has roughed out some chords, the music hasn’t been arranged yet. Imagine it as a sort of rocky, upbeat version of Chelsea Hotel (original version) not just in melody and rhythm, but also by having some lines that are sort of sung/talked, as Leonard was apt to do; though it is to be rendered as the The Jam, or The Who, or something even worse.

Foot ‘n’ Mouth

Verse 1
Locked down alone on the 15^th floor,
Straining to view past the concrete,
(establish that protagonist is trapped in urban hopelessness and despair)
Hours of ironing don’t straighten the kinks in your wiring
(FAUX PROFUNDIS)
You pace your rooms like the lions of Longleat
(introduce contradictory notion of tamed wild animals using a shamelessly infantile observation – to appeal to those with a similarly limited range of references)

Verse 2
So, you bought a ticket to park & ride
(establish contradictory timeline; use a low brow reference)
To enter the land of the free
(link subjects with a lame cliché)
Where the only thing running is scabs and sores
(semi-non sequitur FAUX PROFUNDIS, reflecting the awfulness of Do They Know it’s Xmas?)
The funeral pyre is their liberty.
(double up on FAUX PROFUNDIS)

Chorus
So, take your foot out your mouth
(thick person’s version of being knowingly witty)
And head back down south
Into your pen once again.
(Timeline invoked. Plus, self-regarding conflation of subject with animals)
Today’s a new day, but like yesterday,
It’ll start all over again.
(confuse timeline – imply that it happens every day, even though it’s established that they are stuck in their high rise apartment)

It’s so bad, I think I’ll try and get Big Eggo to sing it.