Parodies Lost

"Boss, Luc just quit."

"Luc? Luc Fer? Our best parodist? Hell of a guy too. Why? Did he say?"

"Not a word. He packed up his stuff and walked out the door. Left this:"

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Some people can just dial up Sympathy for the Devil in their minds: the "mad samba" percussion that introduces the song and ties it together; "Please allow me to introduce myself" over the percussion and block chords, then the busy bass part kicking in, doubled in the piano left hand, while the piano right hand anchors the harmonic rhythm, instead of -- as you would expect of the Stones -- electric guitar; all of it wrapped up in a relatively straightforward verse-chorus structure, no bridge, broken only by Keith Richards's electric guitar solo.

Conceptually, it couldn't be simpler: Simply replace "sympathy" with "Trumpathy." But as alien as those two concepts are one from the other, it would mean an overhaul of the original, even if functionally you have to leave enough elements to make it recognizable. Sorta like how there's "pathy" in both words haha.

Music-wise, the parodic idea was to keep the simple structure of the song, more or less, as well as the basic musical elements like tempo, but flesh it out as a different genre. The percussion would set the tone as in the original, but there couldn't be any suggestion of samba because the lyrics have Trump making fun of how the drums in the original are "way too Latino." The triadic harmonies of the original bass and piano become dissonant and jagged in the parody--think angry Melodica Men on shrooms. The most "faithful" element, musically, of the parody (besides the basic chord structure) is the guitar solo, which the parody "covers" with three overlapped synth sounds as a way of expressing the artificial "muzak pandemonium" that Trump says is his "heavenly music."

The vocals are spoken in the manner of Trump speechifying, but he winds up, quite unintentionally, sounding like a poor imitation of Obama rapping badly. Good work if you can get it.

The lyrics were written in early August, 2019, after the Trumpista fear of an "invasion" of mostly unarmed migrant families and children found murderous expression in the Aug. 3 mass shooting in El Paso, when a Trump-echoing white nationalist targeted Latins in a Walmart and killed 22.

The words "cheap pewter and crap zirconium" refer to an incident in which Trump gave supposedly "platinum diamond Harry Winston" cufflinks to actor Charlie Sheen, who had them appraised by a jeweler. In four seconds the jeweler assessed their actually worthless components.

I'll leave any other deep diving on the lyrics to you all, except to say that the chorus reverses the Jagger/Richards "name/game" and otherwise echoes the original J/R words with Trump's native language, insult: "hope" becomes "dope" and "puzzling" becomes "putz."

I'd almost written and wrapped everything by Aug. 19, when a story emerged that Trump was interested in buying Greenland. I thought this would be an example of Trump in his standup comedian persona (a much stronger aspect of his personality than people realize), but it turned out he was serious and canceled a visit to Denmark because the PM there dismissed the idea out of hand. And then Trump referred to himself as "the chosen on;" the parody song has him invoking a "second coming" that his supporters are trying to "crank."

Right then and there I knew I was done. When reality becomes parody, parody is done. I spent the afternoon painting over the loop of a video of Trump saying that if the economy failed and everything went down the tubes, there'd be no choice but to vote for him. The loop has a guy punctuating things with a thumbs-up. 

For what it's worth, here it is.

So I'm going back to Pandemonium in the hopes that the good lord gives me some other world to warp. Trump and Thumbs-Up Guy don't need my help.

Luc I. Fer

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