I watched very little television in those days – I had no TV at the flat from the summer of 1990 until towards the end of that decade. I did see some TV at Janie’s place and at the gym, though – clearly the amount of advertising dedicated to selling cars made an impression on me.
This lyric did well in NewsRevue – I especially remember Jonathan Linsley liking it – perhaps for its lung-busting quality – perhaps for the out of context thought of chicken korma.
CAR MAKER BURANA
(To the Tune of “O Fortuna” from “Carmina Burana”)
(OPTIONAL ANNOUNCEMENT:And now we proudly present Car Maker Burana by Carl Ott)
INTRO
A fortuna, we’ll spend sooner,
Car makers advertising.
VERSE 1
Ford Mondeo, Renault Clio,
The advert’s saying sod all;
Vauxhall Corsa ads are coarser,
A topless supermodel.
VERSE 2
Fiat Strada, Skoda, Lada,
Don’t advertise on tele;
Ford Fiesta on the tester,
Unleaded is less smelly.
VERSE 3
Austin Metro, Audi Quatro,
Are advertised on posters;
Fiat Tippo, Ford Scorpio,
Both run like roller coasters.
VERSE 4
Swift Suzuki, Honda Pukey,
These rhymes have got remoter;
Nissan Dorma, Chicken Korma,
And that is all for now as we have got to motor.
Technically, the above lyric is version two which was published a couple of months later. The only line that seems to have changed between the two versions is line two of verse one, which started its life as:
The adverts are such twaddle;
A little note for the completists, there.
Postscript: 25+ years after writing Car Maker Burana, I have become more ensconced in the world of early music, both reading about it, playing it and playing about with it. I stumbled across the following essay by my early music teacher, Ian Pittaway, which made me realise that, far from being a modern parodist, I have long been a contrafactist in a tradition dating back hundreds of years.
One song to the tune of another: early music common practice, 800 years before Humph
Not only that, but the specific work I chose to parody…I mean, as my contrafactum…for the Car Maker lyric, is from a 12th/13th century goliardic tradition of just such contrafacta. Go figure.
Anyway, here is a video of O Fortuna from Carl Orff’s Carmina Burana with translation on the screen…
…and here is Simon Rattle and the Berlin Philharmonic delivering the piece more recently:
While here is a third and slightly weirder version.