Every True down in Trueville loved Christmas a lot,
But the Geek up in Sueville most surely did not.
He claimed to be happy and maybe he was,
Had no gripe with the reindeer or with Santa Claus.
He could join in the singing about peace on earth,
But he ground his Geek teeth about Jesus’ birth.
A star and bright angels why how could that be?
He said, “Superstition. It’s all Geek to me.”
In matters of faith he would give not an inch.
His heart was as shriveled and cold as the Grinch.
He said, “If there’s one thing I thoroughly hate
It’s to have signs of churchiness mixed with the state
Never mind that the money says ‘In God we trust’
That’s an old fashioned notion that’s dry as the dust.”
So he thought till his humanist thinker was sore.
Then he thought with his humanist thinker some more.
Then he thought, “I know what I’ll do, just what I’ll do.
If anyone talks about Jesus I’ll sue.”
So he called up his lawyer friend Clyde the attorney.
And Clyde said up front, “What’s the fee it will earn me?”
The Geek said “I’m really embarrassed you’d ask
To be paid to be part of so worthy a task.
We are saving this land from religious fanatics,
The noblest victory since Appomattox.”
So the Geek and his side kick Clyde the Attorney
Set out on the work of their humanist journey.
The Geek sent out more than one great proclamation
To every far corner and edge of the nation.
“Better our walls should be filled with graffiti
Than we should help people have faith in a deity.”
“Season’s greetings,” they shouted, “Hooray Santa Claus”
But refused to acknowledge who’s season it was.
One day on the corner where Elm Street runs through
They chanced to meet sweet little Mindy Lou True.
They said to her, “What’s that bad song you are humming?”
“Away in a manger, for Christmas is coming.”
“That’s religious,” they scolded sweet Mindy Lou True
“Why if everyone sang that you know what they’d do?”
“They might do what Jesus did,” Mindy replied.
“They’d start to feel wonderfully happy inside
Their joy would spill out all over each other
They’d love everybody as sisters and brothers
We would humble ourselves and repent of our sins
And our frowns would be covered all over with grins
If we learned to love baby Jesus enough
We might even be willing to share all our stuff.”
“Stop your talk of religion,” the Geek and Clyde told her.
But Mindy Lou True became even bolder.
“Why that’s a religion that you two are preaching.
To me this makes more sense than what you are teaching.”
So the Geek and his lawyer had had quite enough.
They took off in a whiff. They took off in a huff.
Through the cities and towns they went suing and stopping
Any talk about Jesus, but they loved Christmas shopping.
Then they ran to their home to chuckle and chortle
Over how they stopped Jesus from looking immortal.
The Christmas they taught was no birth of a king.
It was kind of a warmed over washed out old thing.
Instead of the wise men with stars in their eyes,
We got Geek and his lawyer, couple a wise guys.
In the home of the free and the land of the brave
They made talk of the Savior a thing to be saved.
The Geek issued his seasonal formal decree,
“Mistletoe is ok and the log and the tree.
Happy holidays everyone have a good time
But don’t mention the Christ Child for that is a crime.
Season’s Greetings and have you a happy new year
Have a glass of spiked eggnog and send up a cheer.
But don’t set any manger scenes up now you hear?”
Geek said, “Those Truevillians are burning with rage.
They don’t know we have entered an enlightened age.
They don’t need faith and reverence the Geek said with pride.
They’ve got Rudolph and Santa. They’ve got me and Clyde.”
Then he heard in the street a low rumbling sound.
Like the thunder of elephants pounding the ground.
He looked out the window and all he could see.
Were the Trues up from Trueville the little city.
“Oh no,” cried the Geek, “They will lynch Clyde and me.”
But the Trues started singing a beautiful song.
They sang it out loud and they sang it out long.
They sang, “Jesus has told us to love everyone
For each of us is the Lord’s daughter or son.
You can’t take away Jesus, he’s still in our hearts,
And when we feel happiness that’s where it starts.
Though you’ve tried to stop Christmas, you’ve tried and you’ve tried,
We still care about you. And we even love Clyde.”
Then a new thought was born in the Geek’s little brain
He thought and he thought, and he thought once again.
It stretched in his mind till it even caused pain.
Could it be that religion is valuable too?
That the song of the Trues down in Trueville was true?
If it was, then the Geek and Clyde knew what to do.
The Geek’s brain grew more than three sizes that day.
He grew humble and some say he started to pray.
Even Clyde the attorney had something to say
Though he said it in quite an attorneyish way
“We the parties in question hereafter referred
As the parties fore mentioned first second and third
Express affirmation of what we have heard.”
Nobody from Trueville could tell what he meant
But they loudly applauded his worthy intent.
And the Trues and the Geek and the lawyer named Clyde
Felt a wonderful Christmasy feeling inside,
And it lasted, they say ’til the day that they died.
(Chorus of Trues) Aaaaah Clyde
Individualists Doing Their Own Thing
Category: Commentaries
That day as I walked into the entrance of the Capitol Records tower I was tingling. We were going to record in the studios where legends such as Frank Sinatra, The Kingston Trio, Ella Fitzgerald (I pause here while people under 50 consult their history books. But take my word for it. They were icons in their day.) This place was Mecca for creative musical performers back then. You could sell a record album (Pause again for the young and middle aged to look that up. A record album was a flat black plastic disc the size of a large dinner plate that could hold almost one 500th as many songs as you can store in an I Pod. You could also sail them like a Frisbee. You could almost sail an album from the top of the Capitol Tower down to the corner of Hollywood and Vine, two star studded streets second only to Broadway in New York for show biz fame and glory.
Even the building itself was a creative symbol, built to resemble a stack of records (see previous explanation of records.) Not to make any old fogy comparisons, but you don’t see any famous music buildings today shaped like a stack of MP3’s.
I thought, “Surely this building must be constructed on springs to hold the creative energy exploding inside its round walls.”
The receptionist took our names and the purpose of our entering this hallowed hall. She called upstairs to make sure we were legitimate, and the security guard bade us pass. I wondered how long until we were on a first name basis with these people and so famous that this identification stuff would be ridiculous..
The glitter began to fade as I walked around (literally) the building and saw desks and behind them people on phones, typing memos, and shifting papers. It was looking suspiciously like an insurance company’s headquarters.
Many people looked “cool and far out” to use the vernacular then in vogue. But after awhile they began to look uniformly cool and far out. I overheard two people shocked by one of the middle managers wardrobe. “He wears white socks.”
Can you believe it?”
He says its doctor’s orders for a foot condition.”
“Whatever. You’d think he could wear something over them.”
Seemed to me an odd conversation from people involved in the non conformist pop music scene of the 1960’s. The stars of that decade seemed bent on reshaping not just the music, but the world into their creative image. They were proclaiming “Don’t trust anybody over 30.” Many of them professed to be not just entertainers, but intellectuals and philosophers with expertise in social relationships, foreign policy, and military tactics. As Truman Madsen, an authentic Harvard Ph. D. in philosophy once said to me, “The question today is, shall we follow the advice of Joan Baez, and Bob Dylan, or rely on military commanders, none of whom have a single hit record.”
Some of these pickers and singers were also learned theologians, preaching from their on stage pulpits that “God is dead.” Not everyone joined in the wake. I followed one bumper sticker that read, “My God is alive. Sorry about yours.” Apparently some people had replaced God with the Beatles; John Lennon once proclaimed, “We [the Beatles] are more popular than Jesus, and we will outlast him.” How did that turn out? A few years ago I read an account of. Paul McCartney being pulled over for speeding by a patrolman in Australia. The officer took one look into the car and said., “Hey I know who you are.”
Paul smiled a nonchalant “Who in the universe doesn’t?” smile.
The patrolman said. “No really. I know you. You used to be in The Rolling Stones.”
Other pop stars included psychological counseling with their music. The answer to the world’s problems they advised was free love and listening to Mother Mary (-juana’s) wisdom, “Let it Be.”
The overriding theme of this new wave in music was, “Do your own thing.” But the subtext seemed to be, “But it better be like our thing.” Someone suggested a slogan for the time, “Individualists of the world unite.”
The Three D’s didn’t fit the mold. With clean comedy, upbeat music, and unabashed flag waving we were paddling upstream many experts in the business said. But we chose to be true to who we really were. Fortunately, a fair number of people liked the direction we were paddling, and the little stream we chose to float on. Our first Capitol Records release contained our own musical recipe for happiness, “Give Said the Little Stream. I’m small I know, but wherever I go, the fields grow greener still”
Even if we had tried to join the mass march of the individualists we probably couldn’t have pulled it off. Somebody would have peeked into my cowboy boots and spied—you guessed it. White socks.