Woe Is Me

June 24, 2008 3:02 PM

Part of my quickly growing Old Songs collection, in which I record songs I wrote many years and even decades ago. This is a somewhat scandalous song about unrequited love.

There isn't much of a story to this. All the songs I wrote at this time seemed to be based on sprightly ukulele parts and salacious lyrics. I guess it was just the mood I was in for that year. I was back in Minneapolis, writing theater reviews for City Pages, studying improv comedy at a local school, and generally getting myself into trouble, and it must have just had me feeling a little puckish. I still feel that way.

Yes, I'm aware that the name in the first verse rather sounds like James Lileks. I don't recall if that was deliberate or not. If so, well, sorry, Lileks. Sometimes you just wind up being a character in a naughty ditty, and that's just how it is.

There are some lyrics you'll hear in the song, at the end of each set of verses, that are not in the printed lyrics. I make these up on the spot.

"WOE IS ME" LYRICS:

Alas, alack
Mr. James Lillack
He loved a girl
She didn't love him back
He took her for a ride
On a river ferry
He tried to make her
But she made merry

For shame too bad
Dr. Steven Ladd
He chased a filly
Who drove him mad
He took her out
To a movie show
Who she left with
He still don't know

A pity, tough luck
Young Allan Ruck
There was a salesgirl
He wanted to wed
He parked his car
At lovers lane
And watched from afar
As she did the same

Too much, the end
For me my friend
I wooed a cutie
And my heart won't mend
I offered to be
Her only boy
I jumped for her
But she jumped for joy

posted by Astro Zombie (3 comments total)

OK, Zombie. I'm at my friend's house, it's the eve of her departure for the gaming comvention Origins; I've spent all evening cutting out 84 medium-size cardboard circles while she's been building an elaborate headdress whose contents are secret but awesome.

So to keep from going INFUCKINGSANE we put Mefi Music on to stream, and I have to say that your Old Songs project is a major part of why we haven't yet become serial killers. In between scissor tendonitis and hot glue burns, we've been giggling over this one, making "awww" noises at Serenade the Moon and really admiring the bitter, Brechtian vibe of The Beggar's Song. It's 1AM, I can't feel my thumb and all that stands between us and madness is your Great Long Strumming Thing. Sing, o Astro Zombie, sing till the moon sets. That is all.
posted by Pallas Athena at 10:21 PM on June 24, 2008


Thank you for that comment. It is one of the loveliest I have ever received.
posted by Astro Zombie at 11:55 PM on June 24, 2008


Heh.. it was a pretty crazed evening. But the comment remains true.
posted by Pallas Athena at 5:31 AM on July 12, 2008


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