Netsongs: The Dern Internet Song Parodies

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Like anybody who grew up reading Mad magazine and listening to Tom Lehrer during the late 1950s and 1960s, I love song parodies, e.g., Mad's classic "The Ghoul That I Marry," with a special fondness for those using Gilbert & Sullivan tunes.

Song and poem parodies are also a rich long-standing tradition on the Internet (and in the science fiction community, where they are called filksongs or simply filk), on topics ranging from Unix, Star Trek, and current events to, of course, The Internet itself (including Usenet). These are especially, for some reason, based on Poe's "The Raven," the "To Be or Not to Be" soliloquey from Hamlet, and "I am the Very Model of a Model Major General" from Gilbert & Sullivan's Pirates of Penzance (and, for the especially ambitious, Arlo Guthrie's "Alice's Restaurant" -- I've encountered at least three such).

Over the past few years, I've been guilty of a few of these puppies myself:

"Batch Up Your Shellscripts" (based on "Brush Up Your Shakespeare" from Cole Porter's KISS ME, KATE)
"Semi-Poetic Justice -- We've Grepped a Little List" (based on "I've Got a Little List" from Gilbert & Sullivan's THE MIKADO.)
"I Get No CIX Out of You" (Based on "I Get a Kick Out of You" from Cole Porter's ANYTHING GOES.)
"When You're Still on the Net..." (based on "When You're Lying Awake" from Gilbert & Sullivan's IOLANTHE.)

Other People's Song Parodies

Like I said at the top of this page, I'm not the only one on the Internet who does and/or posts this kind of infernal nonsense, as you can see:

A collection of Gilbert & Sullivan Parodies
The Internet Songbook - a wonderful collection of (other peoples') Internet parodies, to familiar poems/tunes such as Hamlet's soliloquey, Poe's "The Raven," assorted Gilbert & Sullivan songs, Beatle tunes, and more. Here's a few I particularly like, to whet your interest... but don't stop with these!
- "The Ravin'" by Joseph Kesselman - an excellent "Raven" parody about spam, plus links to other computer song parodies and to "filk" (science fiction songs and song parodies) resources
- "Abort, Retry, Ignore"(a "Raven" parody)
- Seth Palmer's delightful "American Pie" parody, "AOL Pie" ("...I can't remember if I cried/ When I realized that Steve Case had lied./ But something touched me deep inside/ The day the service died....")
- For you Who fans, Emacs Wizard
- Another version of another ever-popular format for parodies from the Bard of Avon, "MacSonnet" ("Shall I compare thee to an IBM PC?...")
The "Spam" section of The Internet Songbook, including
- "Cyberpromo DOA" (to the tune of "Charlie on the M.T.A.": "Let me tell you a story 'bout a piece of email...")
- "I'm Going To Ban Your Domain, Ha-Ha (The Lament of Phil Lawlor XIV)" Napolean the XIV would be proud. See multiple versions of Nappy's original on a recent CD re-release, if you're brave enough. (I'm not.)
- "Mamma Don't Let Your Babies Grow Up to be Spammers"
Computer Songs and Poems, a comprehensive, delightful and well-organized archive of classics and others, including "ARPAWOCKY," "We All Live in a Yellow Subroutine," "I've Been Working on a Kernal," and "The VMS Mourning Song" (to "American Pie").