Parody and Satire -> Call Me: Fountains Of Wayne Hotline

Robbie Fulks: Fountains of Wayne Hotline

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Our transition song this week was released as a one-off single in 2005, making it a bit more recent than we usually go for. But it was supposedly recorded as a private joke a couple of years earlier and then shelved for a long while before fan pressure prompted its release, and the songcraft it parodies has certainly been around long enough to count.

Full disclosure: I love Fountains of Wayne, especially 2003 hit record Welcome Interstate Managers, which is the same disc which Fulks and his band were listening to during the time they recorded this song in their friend's garage. [Ed: read more about the backstory here.] But Robbie Fulks' total breakdown of their formulaic approach to music is funny as hell, and a worthy addition to a vast and far-too-often underrated catalog which includes both the serious electro-pop satire of 2001 fave Real Money and such faux-country singalong love song hilarity as The Scrapple Song.

I have to admit, I'm not sure if this song is as funny if you haven't had college level courses in music theory. But let's give it a try, shall we?

Tobacco: Cigarette State

Robbie Fulks: Cigarette State

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The ninth wealthiest state in the union in terms of gross domestic product is North Carolina. They are the largest producer of tobacco in the United States. One of the six most important crops grown by American farmers, the plant is native to the Americas, though it is farmed on all continents except Antarctica. By 2005 tobacco represented 15.5% of the total value of all crops grown in North Carolina, but production has fallen 60% between 1997 and 2003. North Carolina has been one of the centers of the US tobacco industry from production of tobacco, to growing, to its final product manufacture.Ranking first in the United States in the production of tobacco, North Carolina had a 2006 annual farm income of $506.2 million dollars. With that in mind, I would like to present Cigarette State by Robbie Fulks.

The Music Biz: Robbie Fulks

Robbie Fulks: F*ck this Town

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I promise to offer something more serious and less juvenile later in the week, but this is the first song that hit me for this category... I had to put it up.

In the early 1990's, Robbie moved to Nashville to shop some of his songs around to the Country Music industry. It didn't go well...

Pennsylvania: The Scrapple Song

Robbie Fulks: The Scrapple Song [purchase]

I was curious if we were gonna loosen the reins for the last two states because I've had this Fulks number waiting in the wings. Thankfully, I now get to share it. By the way, if you ever get to see Robbie live, he's hysterically funny, bears an uncanny resemblance to former Sixer, Shawn Bradley (here's a pic of Fulks and here's a pic of Bradley), and is an absolute monster of a guitar player. Seriously, he could join any bluegrass band in the country and hold his own. In the meantime, pull up to the table and dig in to some scrapple.

"The mom and pop diners 'round Allentown,
Don't really have much that a fella can hold down,
And the folks up around Philly and Bethlehem,
Ain't gourmet types, really, or chefly men.

Now, they're God-fearin' folk in that Keystone State,
But their food ain't fit for a collection plate,
There's things for all kinds of people to hate,
But there's one that everybody loves.

And they call it SCRAPPLE SCRAPPLE,
Corn-beef steamed and hog-meat dappled,
Set by the window 'til it's cold and hard,
Sliced up thick and fried in lard.

Hey, what's that swimmin' in the big bread pan,
That's kickin' up all this mania,
It's SCRAPPLE SCRAPPLE
The pride of Pennsylvania."