Friday, November 09, 2012

Origin of: SETTIN' THE WOODS ON FIRE - HOMER AND JETHRO

Did you know that one of the most popular Hank Williams tunes of all time…was about shitting?

Merle Haggard tells the story:

"Hank was on the road, and they stopped at this Mexican joint. There wasn't a rest stop for miles so Hank went in the woods and took a shit. He said, 'I'm setting the fucking woods on fire!' That was the hottest godamn chili I've ever seen!' Before they'd driven another few miles, Hank had a song."

And when Hank spied the lady above, he wrote "The Log Train." Although you never know, it might've been "Hey, good lookin' watcha got cookin'?" No? "Your Cheatin' Fart?"

Since Hank is amply available all over the place, let's go with a parody version, which better suits a Photoshop photo anyway (no, Google censors, in the original the girl was just bent over, and nowhere near a campfire). Submitted for a shit-eating grin, the sadly neglected Homer and Jethro, who've gotten one decent compilation from an American company (Razor and Tie) and only one from Germany (Bear Family). It's about time for a full box set on these dead guys. Not that it will do them any good, but, to quote a revised line in this parody: "poor ol' Victor needs the money!"

Oh, speaking of needing the money, poor ol' Google has taken to hot-linking certain words. If you foolishly scroll over one of them, a pop-up ad appears. I will do my best to re-write my copy if I see one of these distracting blemishes. Google, of course, does not share the profits with me. They also dictate on YouTube how many pennies they might give for a highly viewed post and don't even start the count if there have been less than 50,000 hits. But let's pretend they're the good guys and the record labels, book companies and movie studios are the only ones cheating the talent and fudging royalty statements and using their power to take the whole pie and leave behind only a few crumbs.

Sapristi! H&J are SETTIN' THE WOODS ON FIRE

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