About a week ago, me hearty Joey Marianer recorded three songs (two of which I wrote) while I slept! I meant to post about them on Talk Like a Pirate Day, but ended up not being home all day. Nonetheless, I’ll start with the pirate shanty. This might not make much sense to you if you’re not familiar with Paul and Storm; it’s a parody of one of their songs, about the lengthy live performances of another of their songs, which would be less than three minutes if they had a few other singers keeping them in line.

Storm DiCostanzo, please sing, and sing faster!
You’re not going to get any younger, you know.
Hey, Paul Sabourin, we’re growing impatient,
And you’ve still got most of the song left to go,
so come on Storm, spit it out.

I curse the day that these guys ever wrote this —
a joke about seamen that’s not hard to get.
How could I know that their seed would get into
my hair and my craw and two thirds of the set

Now three lines in, and I arrr with the masses,
Dejected, excited, and counting to pi.
And I have to admit, if you’d ask to continue
my bladder says ‘no’ but my mouth says ‘aye-aye!’

Why does every new verse of your song
Keep taking you so goddamn long?

Storm DiCostanzo, please sing, and sing faster!
Enough with the jokes that we don’t understand.
I need to pee and it’s no longer funny.
Yes, that’s your R Kelly goddamn cover band.
So come on Paul, spit it out.

Eighty-six seconds for all Lehrer’s Elements,
One Week’s three minutes and Yesterday’s two.
Cohen wrote hundreds of draft Hallelujahs
but won’t subject crowds to much more than a few.
You’re not our bitches, you’re not the CD,
and we don’t mean to tell you you do your job wrong,
but please bear in mind, in the time that you’ve had
Mister Boggia churned out thirty-five Beatles songs. [actually 25]
And if you keep singing so slow,
you’ll hold up the closing band’s show!

[extract from Nobody Loves You Like Me, by Paul and Storm’s usual closing band, Jonathan Coulton]
Here at the bar who cares what I do
I’m all alone but I’m drinking for two
Drowning the man that I used to be
Nobody loves you like me

Hey, Paul Sabourin, please sing, and sing faster,
though we won’t stop arrring till long past the show.
Crap out the verses, and Storm, while he’s at it,
your G-string is tuned half a Boggia too low.
So come, yes come…

Hey Paul and Storm, please just sing, and sing faster
Don’t hold back your seamen, please spit it all out.

Mister Boggia is Jim Boggia, who is known not only for his original songs and Beatles covers, but also for having perfect pitch and being very good at tuning. The ‘Boggia’ mentioned at the end is a unit of measurement defined on JoCo Cruise 2015 as “the smallest unit of tuning perceptible only to Jim Boggia”.

The other song of mine that Joey sang is Seven Bridges (of Königsberg) Road, which I mentioned in my last post:

Joey sang it based on Steve Young’s original version, rather than the Jonathan Coulton, Paul and Storm, and Sara Watkins version that I’m familiar with. Joey is wearing a T-shirt printed with the cover of my poetry album Wake Up Gasping. The album cover is by CamannWordsmith, who makes several of the major art food groups.

The other song Joey recorded that night was a parody of ‘You’ll be back’ from the musical Hamilton, from the perspective of GlaDOS from the game Portal. It was written by Brian Young, whom I knew from the olden days of the JoCo forums (which I am surprised to see are still up), and we both know from the JoCo Cruise.

The wardrobe and impetus to learn the tune was provided by our friend Chella Quint (who is usually more into menarche than monarchy) for an unrelated project which will forever be a mystery to you, but you should check out her work on menstruation (which should not be a mystery) because it’s bloody good.

That’s all for now, but Joey is working on some incredible cover versions of songs which I look forward to sharing.

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