Music Parodies

Andy Ivan and I were F-4 GIBs (Guy in Backseat, Co-Pilot) in the 557 Tactical Fighter Squadron, 12th Tactical Fighter Wing, at Cam Ranh Bay Air Base, Vietnam, in 1969.

I got there in March. In November, Andy showed up with a guitar and a voice. My best friend, Bill Smith, got shot down and killed on 4 Nov 69, and I guess unconsciously I might have been looking for a replacement. Andy became Bill's "replacement," for a couple of months.

About that time, I had developed an interest in writing music parodies and Andy and I would perform them in the squadron bar. I didn't have a voice talent, but Andy would let me get in a few words, occasionally.

I did have some talent, I think, for writing. In the early 1960s, I read all of Hemingway's stuff and I thought I was going to be his replacement. I took a couple of writing courses in college, wrote a few articles that were published in national skydiving magazines, then I decided to create my own skydiving magazine, "The Skyline," a monthly newsletter for the Illinois Valley Parachute Club.

When I graduated from Bradley University in 1966, the U.S. Army draft and the Vietnam war were well-underway and my skydiving and literary careers got side-tracked in favor of the pursuit of my aviation career in the Air Force, although I did surface as the classbook editor for pilot training class 68F at Laredo AFB.

Then I guess maybe my literary interests flared up a little at Cam Ranh Bay to do these parodies. Our "recording studio" was in the squadron bar, and on 15 December 1969 we had decided to get all our stuff on tape. "Tape" was an ancient portable tape recorder using 3.5" reels. It was pretty crude. We started taping around noon, with a Blatz beer in hand. The atmosphere in the bar was pretty quiet, but as you listen to the recordings, you'll occasionally hear some reality picked up by the microphone; pool table noise, and some beer cans hitting the floor.

I mentioned that Andy and I were GIBs = young, inexperienced, lieutenants, co-pilots, who took our share of heat for being such. But we were proud to be fighter pilots, right out of pilot training, and although we took our criticisms regularly, it was generally well-deserved. But we cheerfully accepted it because we were paying our dues along the road to our dreams of becoming aircraft commanders ourselves. (And down that road, our dreams did come true, although it turned out that Andy's dream was rather short-lived.)

This first recording, "Stroke Them Burners My Friend" was to the tune of "The Sloop John B". Notice in the introduction that I proudly declare that "The music you are about to hear was recorded at the famous Sharkbait Bar and Grill, Cam Ranh Bay, on 15 December 1969. The music was written, directed, produced, and recorded by GIBs!"

"Stroke Them Burners My Friend" MP3

My favorite was "I'm in the Mood to Kill" which was done to the tune of the old standard "I'm in the Mood for Love"

The original lyrics were:
I'm in the mood for love simply because you're near me
Funny but when you're near me, I'm in the mood for love.
Heaven is in your eyes, bright as the stars we're under,
Oh, is it any wonder, I'm in the mood for love.
Why stop to think of whether this little dream might fade,
We've put our hearts together - now we are one, I'm not afraid.
If there's a cloud above, if it should rain, we'll let it.
But for tonight forget it, I'm in the mood for love.

I turned it into:
I'm in the mood to kill
Simply because it thrills me
Oh, how it really sends me
Let's go and pickle and kill
The pipper is in your eyes
The pipper is on the target
Put in a smoke and mark it
We want to kill those guys
We drop our bombs in singles, ripple, double-pickle, or pairs
We put our bombs on target
There was a town, it's no longer there
If there's a cloud above
If it should rain we'll let it
But for today forget it
Let's go and pickle and kill
For, I'm in the mood to kill
Simply because it thrills me
Oh, how it really sends me
Let's go and pickle and kill

(Terminology: "pipper" = bomb/gun sight; "pickle" = drop bombs; "smoke" = smoke rocket used by forward air controllers to indicate location of a target)

"I'm in the Mood to Kill" MP3

The guys in the squadron liked the stuff that Andy and I put together. On Christmas eve 1969, Andy and I were the live entertainment in the Sharkbait squadron bar doing our parodies and clowning around. Andy played a lot of Christmas music and the guys sang along. We crashed about 0200, got a combat nap, came back to the bar about 0600 and went on with it. Christmas day was just another regular day, with a standard flying schedule, but Andy and I weren't on it. We put on more entertainment all Christmas day in the bar, and the guys on the flying schedule came in when they could. I dreamed one up that day, "Early One Christmas I Was Bombing Away" to the tune of "Bad Man's Blunder"

"Early One Christmas I Was Bombing Away" MP3

I don't know why, but except for "I'm in the Mood to Kill," the other parodies were sort of about us getting killed ourselves. I had been doing all the writing and Andy didn't seemed interested in writing one himself, but one day out of the blue he came up with one called "Do You Wanna Die?" to the tune of "Do You Wanna Dance?"
I was surprised when he came up with it and I'm not sure what motivated him to do it.
On "The Green, Green Grass of Home," Andy just sang the original country western lyrics, and I added the replacement words toward the end, "And then I awake at Cam Ranh, and look around me, at all those sand bags that surround me, and then I realize that I was only dreaming. For there are four F-4s out there, ready for a bombing attack, and I've got this feeling inside that tells me that today I ain't coming back."

We thought all this morbid stuff was funny as hell and we laughed our asses off when the recorder was turned off, because we didn't think we were going to die there. Of course, it did happen, the 12th had over 100 losses in 1965-1971, including 14 in 1969, but we didn't think we were going to die in the Vietnam war. In January, 1970, I got orders to go to RTU at MacDill, and I was in an F-4 deployment across the Pacific back to the States. I never saw Andy again.

Andy crashed and burned in Laos on 10 Sep 1971.

"Do You Wanna Die" / "Green Green Grass of Home" MP3

Squadron Photo


          -Ron "Rowdy" Doughty

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