Crazy Don’s Parody Page!
A page of my parodies, some which are available at amiright.com and some that are not.
| Title of Parody | Based on this song | Original artist | Comment |
| The Ballad of Ken Jennings | The Ballad of Jed Clampett (aka the theme to “The Beverly Hillbillies”) | Flatt & Scruggs (who recorded it and had a hit with it on the country charts in 1962; it was sung on the show by Jerry Scoggins) | After Ken Jennings’ winnings topped the million-dollar mark on “Jeopardy!,” it was only natural… |
| The Ballad of Osama bin Laden | The Ballad of Jed Clampett | Flatt & Scruggs | I decided that the best song about this despot should be based on the theme to “The Beverly Hillbillies”… |
| Chef | The Theme from “Shaft” | Isaac Hayes | Well, Isaac Hayes provides the voice of “Chef” on “South Park”… |
| Chevrolet | Yesterday | The Beatles | It’s just a stupid little song… |
| Ding Dong the Sons Are Dead | Ding Dong the Witch Is Dead | The Wizard of Oz Munchkins (it was also a hit in 1967 for a group called “The Fifth Estate”) | After Saddam Hussein’s two sons Uday and Qusay were assassinated, I wrote this song to celebrate… |
| $4.09 | 409 | The Beach Boys | When I went out on the day this song was written, the price of gas had just hit $4.09 a gallon. And if you’re reading this in the future, you could probably recall when that was a cheap price for gas! ;) |
| Gonna Bomb Afghanistan | Mercury Blues | Alan Jackson | Well, if I had money, I’d bring down Osama. That’s the point of this parody. |
| I Hear You Laughin’ (The Osama Tape Song) | I Hear You Knockin’ | Dave Edmunds (originally done by Smiley Lewis in the 1950’s) | I was incensed when a tape of Osama bin Laden was released that praised Allah for the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. Osama is such a coward… |
| I Wanna Know Why We Haven’t Got Hussein? | Have You Ever Seen the Rain? | Creedence Clearwater Revival | This song is now dated, since we have now captured Saddam Hussein, but when I wrote it, I wondered why we never got him in the first Persian Gulf war in ’91. |
| I’m Just Not Runnin’ | It Keeps You Runnin’ | The Doobie Brothers | It seems everybody and his brother were wanting to succeed Gray Davis, who was recalled, as governor of California, and me, being a West Virginian, decided not to run. Good idea. (And no, that’s not a typo, his name was really Gray.) |
| Jack Is Wack | Black Is Black | Los Bravos | In Charleston, WV, as well as in New York and Chicago and a lot of other places, oldies stations are being replaced by something called “Jack FM,” which plays music from the last few decades and is likened to an iPod of the air. It’s shortchanging us oldies fans, and in Charleston, the oldies have been moved to an AM station that’s hard to hear at night… |
| Ken Lost on “Jeopardy!” | I Lost on “Jeopardy!” | Weird Al Yankovic | After Ken Jennings lost on his 75th game, it was only natural… |
| Kids Just Wanna Watch Toons | Girls Just Wanna Have Fun | Cyndi Lauper | On weekday afternoons, kids originally had a choice of cartoons to watch that weren’t on cable: Fox Kids and Kids WB. However, the weekday afternoon lineup on Fox Kids was abruptly canceled, leaving kids without cable or satellite access no choice than to watch Kids WB. Kids WB’s biggest program then was “Pokémon,” while Fox Kids offered “Digimon.” My nephew was a Digimon addict. And ironically, the Fox Saturday morning lineup is no longer calling itself “Fox Kids,” and ABC is now calling its Saturday morning lineup “ABC Kids.” Could this have to do with Fox Family becoming ABC Family? (UPDATE: Kids WB has abandoned weekday programming; leaving kids without cable or satellite access no choice to watch cartoons in the afternoon!) (ANOTHER UPDATE: The “i” network, formerly Pax TV, is now running children’s programs on Friday!) |
| Linux (That’s What I Want) | Money (That’s What I Want) | Barrett Strong (who originally did the song in 1960; it’s also associated with the Beatles and the Kingsmen) | I wrote this when Windows XP came out. It’s ironic that my current computer runs Windows XP, which has more bugs than you can shake a stick at. If I had my druthers, I’d run Linux, but since I’m so used to Windows… |
| Methamphetamine | White Lightning | George Jones | Well, there has been a lot of activity concerning meth labs in West Virginia (and elsewhere), and it came too close to home for me, as there was a fire near the house where I used to live, and it was attributed to a meth lab. And the stuff is very smelly… |
| 1945 | 1985 | Bowling for Soup | Not many people who were teenagers in 1945 are around today, and most of them would be dead, but there are still some who are still hanging on to life. To survive, these seniors take many pills to keep them alive, and since most of them have lost their mobility, they depend (no pun intended) on electric wheelchairs, or scooters, to get around. In 1945, there was no TV and the biggest hits were by the “big bands.” Radio was the main entertainment source back then, and most of the hits of the day were played on jukeboxes. |
| 1965 | 1985 | Bowling for Soup | 1965 was the height of the “British Invasion,” and its biggest competitor was the “Motown sound.” Cable TV mainly brought in distant channels, there were no channels especially for cable, and the biggest music showcase was “The Ed Sullivan Show.” Most Americans could only get three channels on their TV’s back then, though—ABC, CBS and NBC. |
| Nowhere to Run (bin Laden) | Nowhere to Run | Martha Reeves & the Vandellas | My first contribution to amiright, it came to me in a flash, shortly after the WTC/Pentagon disaster, and that the perpetrator, Osama bin Laden, was a wanted man and had “nowhere to run”… |
| On eBay | On Broadway | The Drifters | Another stupid little song. I have never bought anything on eBay myself, though… |
| Osama bin Laden | Winchester Cathedral | The New Vaudeville Band | Another song that came to me… |
| Osama Got Run Over by a Reindeer | Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer | Elmo & Patsy | I figured that if ten years earlier Saddam got run over by a reindeer, then why not Osama? I wrote my own version of this, not knowing that the same guy who wrote the Saddam song wrote another about Osama. |
| Osamabusters | Ghostbusters | Ray Parker, Jr. | I figured it was time to bring down the guy responsible for the World Trade Center and Pentagon bombings, so I wrote this little song. |
| Saddam | Shotgun | Junior Walker & the All-Stars | I wanted to bring Saddam down as well as Osama bin Laden… |
| Searchin’ for Saddam | Searchin’ | The Coasters | Saddam could run, but he wouldn’t hide. I also wrote a reference to Jessica Lynch, the West Virginia girl who was the most celebrated POW in the current war in Iraq, into the song… |
| Spanish Infomercials | La Bamba | Ritchie Valens | I have four Spanish-language channels on my digital cable, but only one is known to show paid programs (aka infomercials). And most of them are for products that can help a man with a malady that can be helped by a prescription-only diamond-shaped blue pill that sponsors the #6 car of NASCAR driver Mark Martin, but are non-prescription… (UPDATE: There is now an English-language infomercial for this product for men, but so far it’s only shown up on the TVG channel (the channel that shows horse races)) (ANOTHER UPDATE!: It seems that the Spanish-language infomercials for these products have disappeared off the face of the earth, but at one time there were at least 12 or 13 of them, and now they're all gone!) (UPDATE AGAIN!: They're ba-a-a-a-a-a-ack…) |
| The Twelve Days of Spanish Infomercials | The Twelve Days of Christmas | traditional | After reading an editorial in the local newspaper about spoofing the song “The Twelve Days of Christmas,” I decided to write my own spoof, about those dreaded Spanish-language infomercials. Five products mentioned in the song are actually stuff sold on English-language infomercials of which these infomercials have been dubbed into Spanish. They were intended to be eight through twelve, but one of the products has “6” in its name, so I made it “6”… (UPDATE: There are now two more dubbed infomercials in Spanish, one for the Dual Drill and one for the Ronco knives…) (UPDATE TO UPDATE: I have now counted 20 dubbed Spanish infomercials; and the Spanish infomercial products mentioned in this parody have disappeared off the face of the earth, especially the religious-music CD collection, the talismans, the anti-baldness shampoo, and most of all the things mentioned on the fifth day! ;) ) |
| What Does It Take (to Bring Osama Down?) | What Does It Take (to Win Your Love?) | Junior Walker & the All-Stars | I kept wondering what would it take to capture America’s most-wanted man, Osama bin Laden… |
| Workin’ for Enron | Working in a Coal Mine | Lee Dorsey | I decided to write a song about a current event, so I picked the Enron debacle… |
| You Don’t Have to Watch Ken on “Jeopardy!” | Refugee | Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers | Well, “Jeopardy!” went into reruns during the summer, which meant no Ken Jennings… |
| And some that I chose not to post to “Amiright”… | |||
| Dead Kittens | Dead Puppies | Ogden Edsl | I lost eight kittens in 2004, seven by a cat I named “Mama Cat” and the eighth was the brother of my cat Garfield. I wrote this song under the name “Provo Studebakr,” Provo, like Ogden, is a town in Utah, and Studebakr, like Edsl, is the misspelled name of a car that’s no longer made. I thought this song would be in too poor taste… |
| Don’t Mess with My Tutu | Don’t Mess with My Toot-Toot | Jean Knight | A very popular song of the 1980’s, there were many versions, and I wrote one about someone buying a ballet costume, which includes pointe shoes (which allow the ballerina to dance on her toes) and the obligatory tutu… |
| Osama bin Laden | Ahab the Arab | Ray Stevens | I wanted to write a song about Osama to the tune of “Ahab the Arab,” but it got turned into this mangled mess, which is why I didn’t submit it. |
| Osama’s Christmas Song | Nothin’ for Christmas | Barry Gordon | I decided that since Osama was a bad boy, he would receive nothing for Christmas. Here’s a hint: The last two words of the song are to be sung to the tune of “Silent Night.” |