VIBES Web3 Music Competition Week 1: "The Greens" (Original, but with apologies to Muddy Waters and Gary Larson!)

Youtube Link:

Hello everybody on HIVE, and especially the Vibes Community. My name is Jasper, and I'm writing (and singing) to you from Cape Town in South Africa! Welcome to Week 1 of the Vibes Web3 Music Competition!

The song I’d like to sing for you is an original song, but I do have to pay my respects to all sorts of inspirations!

Why did I want to write a funny song? The idea came to me when we knew that our first baby daughter was on the way, and that it would be nice to entertain her with other songs besides “Old McDonald” and “Baa Baa Black Sheep”!

Madison is now 2.5 years old!

The next idea that helped inspired the song was a cartoon by the famous Gary Larson of “The Far Side”. In it, there are a bunch of frogs on the stage in a dingy jazz bar, but instead of singing the Blues, they are singing the Greens! Here is a copy of that comic!

SOURCE: https://za.pinterest.com/pin/frog-sings-the-bluesi-mean-greens--294774738080473960/

So now I just needed an instantly recognizable blues song structure – for that I used the structure and classic lick from “Hoochie Coochie Man” by Muddy Waters, because this is probably the most widely known, nearly cliché version, of singing the blues!

Then, I took Gary Larson’s theme, and just expanded it to be about as long as “Hoochie Coochie Man” was in the first place, with three stop-time lick verses! The rest is history!

What was originally supposed to be a song just to entertain my family has actually become a song I play out in public, on the odd occasion I can find the time! While it is an original song, it certainly isn’t my most original song! Hahaha – thank you very much to Muddy Waters and Gary Larson for the idea!

My submission link:

Lyrics to “The Greens” by @jasperdick (original, with apologies to Muddy Waters and Gary Larson)

When I was a tadpole, back in 1985
My momma told me I'd be the greatest frog alive
But now I'm starving 'coz I haven't caught a fly
The rain's not falling and the pond is going dry!

I got the Greens, I got the Greens so bad...
I can't even remember all the nice mosquitos I've had...

My baby left my lily pad, she found some other bloke
I don't know what charm he had, besides a deeper croak...
When I go down to the water, I have to check and see
That there ain't some crazy otter, making eyes at me...

I got the Greens, I got the Greens so bad...
I can't even remember all the nice mosquitos I've had...

When I was a tadpole, some children caught my brother (in a jar)
And even more traumatic, some Frenchman ate my mother!
Then I was a polywog, and that's a painful puberty
Now I'm a full grown frog and there's a heron stalking me...

But not on facebook mama, I got the Greens so bad...
I can't even remember all the nice mosquitos (all the ni-ice mosquitos) I've had...