More ditties from the Dave Warner songbook
Continuing my trek through the 600 + songs I’ve written, today I’m going cabaret. Yes, I know my best known (and probably best loved) songs are the hard-core, rock, monologues but I love to write in all styles. I guess as a kid, I was lucky enough to have a mum that played everything from musicals to jazz on our phonogram. ‘South Pacific’ lived alongside Dakota Staton. So I grew up with 360 degree musical exposure, not much classical I admit but there were the ballet records.
After I did my one-man show `Australian Heroes’ in Sydney in 1987 I toyed with idea of doing more comedy and cabaret shows. When John Ryan (aka Johnny Leopard) joined me I did a few stand-up shows but never performed these two tunes. The first is original, the second to the tune of `These Foolish Things’.
THE ABC (1988)
C Am F G
What would we do without our darling ABC
C Am F G
Who’d highlight castles from the sixteenth century?
C Am F G
And specialise in specials on the plight of chimpanzees
C Am F G
Night after night after night after night
C F G7 C
If we didn’t have the ABC to put us right
Who’d employ John Jost but the darling ABC
There’d be no other post for his flagrant vanity
And how would academics ever make TV
Night after night after night
If we didn’t have the ABC to put us right
Am
There’d be no sports reports with a modicum of wit
Am
Just a great black hole where Drew Morphett used to sit
Am
There’d be no investigative slinging of manure
Am
Just a large downturn in pastel Walpamur
Am
There’d be no Schilberger no smug Ollie
Am G7
No Clive Hansen just Fred Stolle
And how could we live without our darling ABC
Playing seven Mozart symphonies – all concurrently
And who’d bore us silly with repeat British comedies night after night after night
If we didn’t have the ABC to put us right!
A STUDENT MUST BEAR (To These Foolish Things)
A broken dunny in the next apartment
A mattress harder than the Darling ‘scarpment
A rusty old syringe
These are the things
A student must bear
A reefer stuffed inside an unused textbook
A wine-stained essay and a tutor’s vexed look
A quick tequila binge
These are the things
A student must bear
No place, to park
Full bus and squeeze
Rock bands in refectories
Your head on an unflushed lavatory
Shingles, herpes aids and maybe typhoid
Are little blights that heighten students’ life voids
Scabies flu and mange
This is the range a student must bear
And through it all the certain knowledge
That on your last day when you quit the college
Your prized degree attained
You’ll start again
to loiter in the queue –
The dole was meant for you
Post student blue.
Leave a Reply