Lucy Vickery

Hey, Mr Tangerine Man

issue 11 February 2017

In Competition No. 2984 you were invited to follow in the footsteps of Green Day and Moby and provide Donald Trump’s detractors with a protest song.
 
Where’s Woody Guthrie when you need him, you might ask. Well, as it turns out, the Dust Bowl Troubadour was well acquainted with the Trump family. Literary scholar Will Kaufman has discovered lyrics written by Guthrie excoriating his then landlord (‘Old Man Trump’) Fred Trump’s racist bigotry.
 
Billy Bragg has set the bar pretty high with his excellent reworking of that other folk icon Bob Dylan’s ‘The Times They Are a-Changin’ ’ but Alan Millard’s Dylan-esque entry was well done too and earns him the bonus fiver. The rest take £30.
 




Come gather around, I’ve a sad tale to tell
Of a bigot and bully, the bigwig from Hell
With hair like a beaver’s tail plastered in gel
But he’s only a flash in the pan, man, only a flash in the pan.


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