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They only had to ask A Song for Mrs. Clinton?By Rick Horowitz MILWAUKEE -- I coulda been a contender! It's not every day I'm ahead of my time. Actually, it's not any day I'm ahead of my time, so when I come even close to being where the edge is cutting, where the horizon is peekable over, where [insert your own futuristic cliché here], I figure it's worth celebrating. But it could have been so much more. I'm talking, of course, about the new campaign song for Hillary Clinton. Which, with better planning and just a little bit of luck, could have been my new campaign song for Hillary Clinton.
When I say "I wrote it," what I mean is I wrote the lyrics for it, and my friend Walt Gilbert wrote the music -- and what great music it is! Lively, and bouncy -- not like that sappy "You and I" thing that Celine Dion is singing -- with a real beat, so you can dance to it. In fact, you can dance the polka to it. Because that's exactly what our song is: a polka. "The Sick & Tired of Hillary Polka." You think I'm kidding. I'm not kidding. I've got the sheet music right here on my desk -- with notes and words and everything a real song has. This song of ours -- "The Sick & Tired of Hillary Polka" -- has even been performed in public, in front of people who were not our relatives. And in Our Nation's Capitol, no less. So there. Still don't believe me? You can check out the video. That's right -- the video. On YouTube. At -- Not so fast. First I should answer the question I'm sure is foremost in your mind: Why a polka? Why not? And now that that's taken care of, a little history. Walt and I first wrote the song for "Hexagon," an annual musical-satirical revue that pokes at the ways of Washington with original tunes and skits and such. For months, the show's producers had been putting out the word to their writers: We could really use a good Hillary Clinton bit. And for months, Walt and I had been resisting. She'd been done to death, we told each other. You couldn't pick up a paper, or turn on the TV, or surf the net, without running into Hillary Clinton. "I'm sick and tired of Hillary," said one of us to the other on the phone one day. "'The Sick and Tired of Hillary Polka'!" said the other in a flash. It was a Lennon and McCartney moment. Only with less hair. Anyway: In this multi-media, multi-platform world of ours, a song written for the stage -- even one of our songs -- doesn't have to stay on the stage. Which is how I came to be standing in front of the cameras doing my own rendition of the thing for Milwaukee Public TV. (I'm the one in the lederhosen.) From there, it was just a short hop onto YouTube, where literally millions of -- Where literally thousands of people have already checked me out, some of whom have fallen on the floor in laughter. And others of whom have simply fallen on the floor. And if we'd been paying attention when the voting started on Hillary's website... OK, so maybe it's not a campaign song for Hillary Clinton as much as a campaign song about Hillary Clinton. Maybe her biggest fans would have wanted something a little more positive, and we wouldn't have won. But I'll bet we could have finished right up there. And out here in the real world, I'll bet we still can. Here's the link. Watch out, Celine! Posted 6/21/07. Writing
or singing, Rick gets it done! (Have you told your friends?)
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Rick Horowitz
