Roy Zimmerman Funny Songs About Ignorance, War and Greed Any guy who performs certified far-left folk-rock parodies in a Texas bar - and survives, yet (see sidebar) - has more stones than most. And you have to have a thick skin if you're taking on right-wing flash points like gay marriage and creation science. But Roy Zimmerman is far, far more than a provocateur. Let's just start off and say we love the guy (our Web guy has been Zimmerman's devoted Webmaster for several years), but we also feel pretty sure that our fondness is justified. Zimmerman, a soft-spoken guy who doesn't come across as a fighter, lives in the San Francisco Bay area, so his liberal credentials are rock-solid. But our take is that his work is about far more than liberal vs. conservative - he's really more interested praising the thoughtful and skewering the foolish, regardless of what political label you might put on them. (Of course, as another famous parodist puts it, the truth does have a liberal bias...) And he does it amazingly well. After all, how many folk rockers get reviews like these: Tom Lehrer says, "I congratulate Roy Zimmerman on reintroducing literacy to comedy songs. And the rhymes actually rhyme, they don't just 'rhyne.'" Pissing off the right has made up much of the career of Roy Zimmerman, a master political parodist with a gift for juggling words that would make W.S. Gilbert nod approvingly. Dig the bridge of "Defenders of Marriage":
One summer evening when my woman was doing laundry Notice the barrage of internal rhymes - Roy's competition isn't Weird Al, it's Stephen Sondheim. Oh, and for a gentle and moving take on the same topic, treat yourself to "Summer of Loving," a pro-gay-marriage anthem which compares the gay marriage struggle to that of interracial spouses Richard and Mildred Loving. Early in his career, Zimmerman made his mark with his folkie-era parody group The Foremen, which he ran from 1988 through 1996. Though the group grabbed enough attention to win Warner-Reprise contracts for two albums, they were dropped after that. (Zimmerman puts it simply: "We didn't sell enough records.") And hey, who would expect a big label to understand the artistry of a band with Tom Lehrer's biting wit, the political fluency of The Capitol Steps and a self-parodying musical sound which died 30-odd years before the act hit the stage? Today, under the moniker of his indie label Metaphor Records, Roy Zimmerman has played clubs across the country, and shared the stage with George Carlin, Bill Maher, Kate Clinton, Dennis Miller, Sandra Tsing Loh, kd lang, Andy Borowitz and Paul Krassner, and he's done several shows with The Pixies' Frank Black. His up-to-the-moment topical songs are featured on American Public Media's syndicated broadcast "Weekend America" and Sirius Radio's "West Coast Live." But it's still a tough haul business-wise for Zimmerman, who, like most indie performers, must write his own ticket on a daily basis. As with any indie performer, it's all about getting himself out there, one way or another. Hell, he recently toured the entire 48 continental United States -- twice -- as much as a challenge to himself as to make money, and had some adventures we hope he'll share on these pages at some point. In the mean time, please, please do yourself a favor and check out Zimmerman's wide range of talents. Buy some records, why not? And hey, don't miss the anger-laced wit of "California Couldn't Pay Our Education," describing the fate of impoverished, illiterate Cali students: Now we've got great jobs / I stock the salad bar at Bob's / And I polish knobs at Union Station / And I practice law... la la la la la la la/ California couldn't pay our education." Heck, don't miss anything on royzimmerman.com or youtube.com/royzimmerman. We wouldn't steer you wrong, we swear. |
      
When Audiences Attack I'm asked frequently whether my funny songs get me into trouble. The truth is I play mostly for audiences who come to the show expecting, even craving, a Lefty slant on things. A small percentage of my shows are for "general audiences" and I have fielded some complaints and watched a few walkouts. When someone walks out, I always think, "I hope...they paid." Once, only once, I was accosted onstage. Here's how I tell that story as an introduction to my song "Chickenhawk": I did a show in Arlington, Texas, a town just outside Dallas. The show was sponsored by the Freethinkers of the University of Texas - Freethinkers being a euphemism for the "atheists club" of the University of Texas. So there were 30 or 40 freethinkers in the middle of this bar - sitting all together, oddly enough - and the rest of the bar was occupied by the locals, the regulars, some of whom did not take kindly to my hippy-dippy satire from California. So I was getting a lot of this (the middle finger) from the back of the bar, and people were boosting the volume of their conversations. And one guy got so upset that he came right up onstage with me, yanked the cord out of my guitar, and said, "This is OVER!" And there was a big strapping college kid in the font row who jumped right up and took the guy to back wall before I could even subdue him with cleverness. That quickly. And it was an important event for me, because I learned that they WILL come onstage. They're not stopped by the Fourth Wall. And also, I felt like I touched that guy. I reached out with my hippy-dippy satire, and touched him in a place he hadn't been touched in a while.... That's how I tell it now, and that's how it happened. Soon, there was a small crowd onstage there in Arlington. The owner of the bar, another freethinker or two, the manager of the bar, a scrappy young woman who joined the scrum around my assailant, but turned to me and said, "Not another word out of you!" He was ejected from the bar. In fact, banished forever, I've been told. He was probably belligerent by nature, probably drunk, and probably this wasn't his first offense. If he'd really been trying to hurt me, of course, I would not have been ready for it. He could have cold-cocked me or worse. So I'm more wary onstage now, and I do thank him, whoever he is, for that lesson. There's a vigilante mentality on the rise, fanned into flame by Sarah Palin, Sean Hannity, et al. It's scary, not just for me but for society. For domestic tranquility. For the general welfare. For human progress. America is a big group therapy session, as I've sung, and the Tea Party is the one guy in the corner who will not shut up. So yes, my funny songs have gotten me into a couple of scrapes. Much more often though, I get a comment like, "I disagreed with everything you said, but I laughed anyway." That's the music I want to hear.
Links:
Home Page Facebook - profile Facebook - Fan Page MySpace YouTube Discography: Purchase CDs from royzimmerman.com Download MP3 Albums from Amazon: |
