"Welcome to 100 Years of Solitude, Pat McCoy. Have a nice day."

My friends in the band The Camaros in Spokane, Washington have done me the honor of writing a song about me "Welcome to 100 Years of Solitude, Pat McCoy. Have a nice day." (from their last gig Friday 3/25/11 at A Club) I think that makes me immortal. I really like it- and hope you do as well, enjoy.

Comments

[Edward]

Cool! - your own song. Do you have the lyrics? It was a little hard to pick them from the recording.

[MC]

No, I suppose I could ask for them. But it only tangentially refers to me. In a conversation, I was telling my band member friends about a cross country road trip I took in college with two friends, where one of my friend's grandfather (a former senator) was the mayor of Painesville, Ohio (a suburb of Cleveland) and with his girlfriend Betty took us college kids to a Holiday Inn Lounge in another town.

I think these details made it into the song.

[mjv]

Awesome. Yes, let me know if you get the lyrics.

[Mark Robbins]

I wrote this song in response to a sentence that was uttered by a friend, Pat McCoy. It was a version of : “The mayor of Painsville, and his girlfriend, Sonja (I think it was Daisy originally), were checked into the Holiday Inn.” At the time, I was reading Marquez’s “100 years,” which is a sort of fantasy. So I wrote this fantastic story about a fictitious town, Painsville, and the title was “Welcome to 100 years of solitude, Pat McCoy” in order to tip my hat to Pat saying this ridiculous sentence. Then, the title was so long, I added the “have a nice day” to make the title even longer and to allude to a stupid joke I remember about a guy who has a long message tattooed on his penis. Some of you know the “Wendy” joke, I’m sure. I do that a lot where I will make references to my childhood that only a few people will remember, just to be playful, really. That is the story. Here are the lyrics. My notes include some of the verses that didn’t make it into the song, which I thought might be interesting. I hope you enjoy the song – it has been a big hit, and it took us longer to finish than any song we have worked on. It didn’t work out when it was so lyric heavy, and we had to find a melody that wasn’t just

Welcome to 100 years of solitude, Pat McCoy, have a nice day.

Don’t tell your mother, don’t tell a soul
We didn’t build this city on rock and roll
We did it the old fa-shion way
And you can bet it took our own blood, sweat, and tears
I cut a deal with my former college roommate
Who charged us half his hourly rate as engineer.

Believe me brother we surely would
Have used rock and/or roll if we could
But it turns out rock is pretty hard to come by these days
And in nature vs. nurture roll depends upon the prior
So all our buildings have your typical foundation
And all our electricity has tape and wires.

(Musical version of “Don’t tell me”)
The grass is greener
The grass is greener
The grass is greener

I tell you sister it’s a tough sell
Cause things in Painsville aren’t going well.
A bodybuilding busybody
A baseball mascot that we hate
There is no bridge across the river
And no place you can get a cocktail after eight.

Don’t tell me that the grass is greener (The grass is greener)
Don’t tell me that the grass is greener (The grass is greener)
Don’t tell me that the grass is greener (The grass is greener)
And don’t leave me here

Our founding fathers are pretty sad
Cause things in Painsville have gotten bad
See there’s traffic piled up everywhere as far as you can see.
And the bowling alley has three lanes but only 27 pins.
And the mayor of Painsville, and his girlfriend, Sonja,
Are checked into a room in another town at the Holiday Inn.

(Chaotic Break)
Don’t tell me that the grass is greener (So I try to keep my head up)
Don’t tell me that the grass is greener (And I try to do what’s right)
Don’t tell me that the grass is greener (But I don’t know what I’m doing)
(And there is no end in sight)
END

These are words that did not make it into the final cut.

See as a group we were all lacking in any sort of wondrous thinking
Not to mention any thinking of the rocking/rolling kind,
But the people needed someplace that they could call their own
And Painsville’s what we came up with to keep us for the time.

(For example) on a personal note I only sleep three hours a night
And I’m a little bit ashamed to say the wildboys are my friends
And no one in the town can seem to tell their left from right
And all the pregnant girls have given birth to unexpected twins.

[MC]

Mark, thanks for the lyrics and commentary. It's funny how memory works. I am thrilled to have had any part of the inspiration for such a cool song.

“The mayor of Painsville, and his girlfriend, Sonja (I think it was Daisy originally), were checked into the Holiday Inn.”

This is partially intact-they took us to a Holiday Inn Lounge to entertain us while we were visiting Painesville. we stayed at Mr. Mantle's house in said town-a beautiful big ol' house with a veranda if I remember correctly.