Mari, I think I might have heard the original song before, somthing about it sounds familiar....what decade is it from? Can you help orient me to its sound somehow?

I've done this one too. Mine was entitled 'Mosquito Bite'. This was well done and I never knew the actual words until I did a parody on it myself. JD - it is a late 60s song. Don't know where to find a listenable copy of it though. I wrote mine from memory.

"The Israelites" was on the charts in 1969. The lyrics were quite difficult to understand, a la "Louie Louie." One part sounded like "every monk and beefhead." The actual lyrics (found them online) don't make a lot of sense either. If you look on the Misunderstood Lyrics section of this site under Desmond Dekker you'll see a lot. Guy, you wrote your parody from memory? Wow! Every monk and beefhead would be impressed!

Mari D - Loved it! I don't know if it's the same version but as I recall the lead singer part is real deep and low & bassy (unless that was one of the background guys?) Yeah, and the only part that you could usually understand was "Oh, The Israelites", which makes it a perfect parody selection. You did something else that I really like to do; you've got perfect regular English & Grammar and some scientific stuff and then in just ONE place we're kissing "our sorry asses goodbye". That works so much better for me than "sh*t, sh*t, sh*t, sh*t", etc. The dissonance just plugs right into my verbal funnybone and I've got to laugh. Thanks. Guy, I'll have to look at yours. I've written just a few things from memory only and it's tricky. Some songs you don't have to have the actual music but with the lyrics I might either forget a verse or two or add something that wasn't there in the first place (maybe my young mind made a parody fragment at the time and embedded into the song to me). P.S. - "every monk and beefhead"? Man, I've got to look and see what that really is. I'm gonna take a minute or two and try to think of a guess first before I check it out.

Looks as if there were a lot of parodies to this...add mine to the heap...'Andalusite'. Good job!

No Mari - I meant that I had the melody memorized. No way did I even know the lyrics. Heck I thought 'You sound the alarm" was "Jump on ya alive". I really has a catchy beat with that reggie tone to it.

I've got one to this, too, which I've never posted: it's an immune system parody, called T-Lymphocytes... but I kept it back 'cause it's a bit too dry and techie. But I think my standards may have dropped since, so it might be worth a second look ;-)

Geat parody , Mari. I was toying with The Israelites over the weekend, but yours is so good, I'll save some energy for Christmas shopping. Desmond Dekker was a ska artist (a lot of Jamaican ska artists, like The Wailers, would combine Motown-style R&B with Calypso, and helped give birth to Reggae). England's two-tone bands, like English Beat and Madness drew heavily on Desmond Dekker's style.

I still don't recall who did the video with the cue cards that had the misheard lyrics on them. That was hilarious!

Mari: Are you thinking of Bob Dylan's video of 'Subterranean Homesick Blues,' where he says, 'The pump don't work cause the vandals took the handles"? He holds up cue cards all through the song, but I didn't recall that they were misheard lyrics. I will have to dig out the video and look.

Stray, now that you mention it, that "Israelites" video (where a rastaman was holding the cue cards) must have been a parody (visually, anyway) of the Dylan video. The Dylan video uses the real "SHB" lyrics, however, even though they may look misheard.

INXS also parodied the Bob Dylan video, for Mediate... it's a very well known video, especially to Dylan fans.