the blog quebecois

When my cousin came over to record, we'd usually have a cup of coffee (occasionally stronger refreshments were served) before heading down to the basement. In September 1983 the radio was ablaze with the news that the Soviet Union had shot down a Korean Air Lines jumbo jet that had strayed off course on a flight from Alaska.

So we were listening to some of that, when, inspired, I wrote down the first verse and pushed it across the table to my cousin, who read it and laughed.

That is the acid test of songwriting, innit? Make your cousin laugh -- next stop, The Ed Sullivan Show!

You will no doubt be amazed that the whole of it came together in twenty minutes. You're thinking: No way! That couldn't have taken more than ten, fifteen minutes, tops. Well, yeah, but we had to work out the harmonies.

Speaking of which, I never knew before that moment that my cousin could ad-lib perfectly good "Yahoooos!" The things you learn in the pressure cooker of the recording studio.

It was at times like that, with the world trembling on the brink of war, that the media (this was our theory, anyway) would turn our way and exclaim: "There's a couple of guys with guitars! They must have something intelligent to say about all this!"

As it turned out, we didn't. Like that ever stopped us.

Link Warning: Embedded QuickTime audio.

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Verse:

Cancel my trip to Korea
The skies are safe no more
First they lost my luggage
Then they lost the war

The valiant Red Air Force
Locked in mortal battle
With a deadly 747
armed with cameras

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Chorus:

Rotten stinking Commie pinkos
Dirty Soviet tricky finkos
Hear this now, you murderous lackeys
Americans on that plane, by Cracky!
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Verse:

A thousand heat-seeking missiles
Fired in comradely warning
Trespassers in Soviet airspace
Will not live to see the morning

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Bridge:

Unscheduled stopover in the Sea of Okhotsk
But a Boeing makes for a lousy boat
Water rushing in, cold and green
Boeing's even worse at making submarines!
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[Rpt. 1st verse, chorus]
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The Chase
Just Like A Woman