Whole lotta tumblin' goin' on down there! (Note the orange tint to the soil.) This is nothing like the swamping Mar a Lago is in for for the next few millennia - I can see boat tours of the upper levels of that resort's carcass in my crystal ball. There's no mountain nearby down there because their situation is just that much further along the road to total seismic and hydrologic disintegration compared to the scruffy knob in the picture above. More on that further down (but not concerning the scruffy knob).
So I was getting close to the end of an 8 year stint in Hawaii during the the early ‘teens, teaming up with a buddy to do some freelance remodeling/structure-salvaging on Oahu, and we were billeted (from the Big Island) to Maunawili, just below the Pali, where our projects were. In the Ohana next to our job-site digs lived an ocean biologist who was an avid music fan, of all sorts of music. At one point she asked me to teach her how to play William Lee Ellis’ tune, “How the Mighty Have Fallen,” off his Conqueroo album, on guitar. Ellis is a genre-straddler who is the son of a bluegrass pioneer, and who also studied under the Reverend Gary Davis, plus he has two classical guitar degrees. He’s a great multi-style guitarist and on top of everything else, a Musicology and Art prof at St Michael’s College in VT.
A year or two after I got my version of his song recorded (see below) I sent it to him suggesting my rewrite be pitched to the producers of the American film version of the Girl with the Dragon Tattoo trilogy (which stopped at book one). When he realized I wasn’t from a studio (or such) he got disinterested quickly. Maybe he knew that, despite expectations, the next film was off the table. I volunteered to him that, beyond the movie, I wouldn’t try to sell the song and I wouldn’t claim title to the revamped lyrics — and I’m not doing so here. I’m claiming I did the rewrite but not wanting to make money from it. It belongs to the time we live in and the good Mr Ellis can ceartainly take any royalties he’s due, if such become a thing.
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In order to teach the tune I had to learn it, so I fiddled around with it and in the process got into the tune more-than-a-little for my own enjoyment. I liked the structure of the song and the rhyme schemes, as well as the cord changes and the kind of historical/biblical narrative it lays down. I began playing it in my own style (in this instance, it became slightly Leon Redbone-ish, and more uptempo and driving than Ellis’s folk-shaped styling) and before long I heard the lyrics easily changing themselves into something a bit more politically relevant/irreverent, getting even more topical over the last several months — in keeping with, and as befits, the fall of our current historical protagonist. While this iteration of the lyrics to the song keeps close to the same rhythm (though not the same tempo), the lyrics below couldn’t be pulled off in the original musical style, I don’t think, as the original music is neither ominous nor celebratory enough for the new musical context, that being my pontifical opinion.
Anyway, I never did teach my friend how to play it, although we recorded a duet version together on the island, which I’ve got somewhere; it was much rougher lyrically than this iteration, and musically not there yet either. I did try, lamely, to teach her to play it but it turned out her ¾ size guitar was a bit beat up and impossible to tune, and mine, a dreadnaught, was way too big for her small hands and arms, with no smaller guitars freely available in the unfamiliar music scene. But mostly, I’m just not a good teacher. That was 9 years ago, though, and I haven’t stopped working on the tune ever since.
I’m in the process of polishing the performance of this off before I record it (hopefully very soon, but I’m still in the process of learning my own lyrics and some new ones suggested last week by a fellow songwriter named Tim Hunter). Nonetheless I thought posting the lyrics alone seemed timely given the size of the landslidish catastrophe we’re witnessing in real time right now — which measures somewhere above 10 on the political Richter Scale — and the massive cleanup that has just begun in earnest, at least as it appears so far. The song, as noted above, is therefore also a bit celebratory.
(Seismologists and soil scientists, please reserve your opinions till you hear the musical version.)
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False Moves
(from B. Ellis’ How the Mighty Have Fallen, revisited by B. Cole)
Cain and Able were bound by blood
But Cain sent Able back to mud
In a fitful rage of jealousy
‘Cause God had cursed humanity!
And that ol’ Samson, he could kill a lion
But then he met Delilah, and he just quit tryin’;
She grabbed ahold of her ol’ Handsome’s hair
And said, “Who told you, boy, that life is fair?”
Oh, how far the mighty they fall!
Like a mountain, tumblin’ into the sea
Oh the mighty, how they fall so far —
Just one false move, and there’s your History!
Cleopatra said to Anthony:
“If you’ll excuse me dear, we’ve got to flee / I’ve got to pee!”
See, it don’t matter who did what to whom
‘Cause nothin’ matters when you’re in a tomb!
Oh, how far the mighty they fall,
Like the mountain that tumbles into the sea
Oh, how the mighty, they fall so hard
Another false move: of such is History…
The mighty, they never learn — They always seem to crash, and then they burn —
The mighty, they never last — They’re just here, ’till the die is cast! / their ride has crashed!
“Let them eat cake,” dit petite Antoinette;
A big mistake et ainsi un coup de tête,
Then take your Bonaparte à Waterloo:
Reculer,* gamins, enjoy the view!
From the wages of sin to the wastage of war,
It’s a goddam cinch that we’re all in for more
‘Cause makin’ nasty is a mighty vice
And their catastrophes are never nice
Oh, how far the mighty they fall
Like how the mountains roll down into the sea
Oh, the mighty, how they fall so low:
And all those false moves...we call it “History!”
The mighty, they never last — they disappear into the distant past
The mighty, they never learn — they just tumble — when it’s their turn…...
*”Reculer” is meant to be gargled.
/ = phrase choice, dependent upon exigencies.
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Redbone’s influence shows mostly in my pronunciations of words and phrases in the “soon to be released” recording — enough to be considered a ripoff, I guess.
