Parody

(from 2013)

Someone (but not me) should write a parody of the song Ghost Riders in the Sky. Spike Jones and His City Slickers sent up the original Vaughan Williams version not longer after the song became popular. Everybody seemed to do it, Burl Ives, Bing Crosby – and of course in the early 1960s, the good ol’ Ramrods.

My favourite “animal parody” of all the time was the Australian/British “artiste” Rolf Harris (before his spectacular fall from grace) who got hold of Mark Dinning’s death-ballad “Teen Angel” and turned it into “Tame Eagle.”

For those who cannot remember the dire original (which reached number one in the American Billboard charts in 1960, but which was refused airplay in Britain as the government controlled radio stations thought it too morbid), Dinning warbles in the verse:

Just sweet sixteen, and now you're gone
They've taken you away.
I'll never kiss your lips again

(momentary pause – and it’s the pause that makes it)
- They buried you today

(all together now)

Teen angel, can you hear me
Teen angel, can you see me, etc. etc.

Harris’s song uses the same wobbly Dinning-type voice and has this “tame eagle” that escapes... The song ends with a worried voice – “Here – I thought you said it was tame...?” Then pandemonium as the creature attacks the singer....

Well, I thought it was funny a million years ago.

Growing old is obligatory, growing up is optional.