"Song of the Errant Plumbing", or, Pipe them Pipes A'right, Laddy!
Created | Updated Dec 23, 2003
We here at Irritating Public Radio, Your Friends In The Air, believe that while "All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy", it is also true that "All the dull Jacks who play make work for the rest of us...", I think. The ink has run on the quatrain in the men's loo.
Anyway, it is part of our mandate from the local Art's and Artist's and Artist's Patrons and Art Dealers Councils that we occasionally hold our noses and let breathe free the creative soul.
We were actually voting in the direction of letting free the soul so we could breathe, but the Board of Driectors has strongly suggested that we "behave".
Whatever could they mean by that, one wonders, while the rest run to the tea cart...?
Well. So. Hmmm. Here is our esteemed presenter, Mr. Mervyn Hayman Harben, VC, PT, RAF, Retd, to deal with the subject at hand until he can find a clean rag.
Mr. M.H.H.:
Ah. Yes. Just so. I think. Thinks: "I wonder what I'm supposed to do next?"
Aha! Here are my note cards!
All arranged alphabetically
According to colour.
How very very spiffy.
Song.
It says,"Song."
Song.
Ah, the song at hand. The song I'm here to talk about, yes, that one.
It is very strange to be talking about a song.
It would be very much easier to just sing the tattered thing and then let you....
But a little intro might be in order, I suppose.
Where's that tattered intro... I know it's here somewhere... on a mauve card... or a brown card... Ah, it's a dark yellow! I found it!
Look at me! I found it! I reka! Eureka! We all reka from the... (silence)
Um.
Intro. Yes. Here it is.
Once upon a time, a gentleman was born in Essex.
I like that.
He grew up and learned his father's trade...
tuning saws for travelling minstrels...
that doesn't sound quite right...
before he was converted to Anthracism...huh?...
and he ran away to join the circus in Nova Scotia...
That doesn't sound quite right, for some reason. Oh, well, it's my handwriting.
The gentleman eventually wound up in Anchorage, Alaska, working for a small solar-powered kayak firm that was hoping to bust the industry wide open with an open source...huh?
tuned parabolic... fish grill?
Ah-hem. The gentleman later died while trying to save a co-op from incorporating...
Whom am I referring to? None other than Sib De Morain, the unsung songwriter.
Something is definitely wrong with this. I think the cards are out of order.
Anyway, his preeminent, preemergent, underappreciated masterpiece was arguably...not by me, I don't even know what I'm talking about... the "Song of the Errant Plumber", a madrigal and round in four part harmony for two draftsmen, a barkeep and a bystander?
Ah, here's safe ground:
The counterpuntal influence of this piece can be traced to the improvisational pipe organ playing that Sib heard while he was picking cranberries... and we're off, again... at an Amish Kibbutz in Northern Wisconsin during the great Redundancy of 1978. The organists were blind juvenile delinquents from the nearby Pectin Grace Memorial Halfway House of the Porcine Brothers of St. Pathologias, Winnetonka, led and trained by the great deaf ventriloquist and polymath, Dr. Enid Dine.
The "Song of the Errant Plumber" rises above the normally expected chordal sequences and plunges into rather lonely territory to approach the late sixties "Dub" stylings of Shinehead.
There are moods and colours to be found in this 4 minute and 32 second piece that much longer and more intricate compositions can only hope to approach...
Ah... Ah... I just realized something. I haven't even heard this, um, piece.
In fact. Um. I'm tone deaf. So it doesn't make any difference.
I'll thank you all to have the good taste enough not to mention this.
Don't say anything.
Please.
Engineer's Voice: Okay? You warmed up? Thirty seconds till we're recording! Ready! Uh-ten, uh-five, uh-two, Go!
