Richard III

When I was squeezed out wet and cold,
Into this cruel unpleasant world,
My mother held me in her arms and vomited,
My father took one look and ran,
We didn't hear from him again,
It was about the nicest thing he ever did.

The other children gave me hell,
I hated all of them as well,
Though I could beat off all the crap that they could hurl,
I kissed the girls - I cannot lie,
But I would always make them cry,
I also whipped the boys until they cried like girls.

They call me Richard or "the third",
It sounds exactly like you heard,
Ain't no one half as bad as me you'll ever see,
I find that rhyming slang absurd,
So you had better mark my words,
I am a good-for-nothing rat don't mess with me!

You say: "Did you just say a turd?!?",
No no, you heard me wrong - THE THIRD,
Sometimes I wonder if you're listening at all,
Don't expect me to excuse it,
I'm a creep and I can prove it,
Let me show you what I bricked up in that wall.

You don't like me I don't like you,
Let's face it what else can we do,
But you'll be shocked to hear I have a lot of fans,
Some women find the bad boys hot,
And so I give them all I've got,
They get so horny when they know my evil plans.

Buried like a zero and then dug up like a hero,
What a fickle pack of scoundrels people are.
Buried like a zero and then dug up like a hero,
What a fickle pack of scoundrels people are.

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Very clever.👍

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[notes]
I've had a "bad guy" song hanging around for a while but for the longest time
it was incomplete for all kinds of reasons. And for the most part it contained
a lot of profanities - certainly more than I'd post here.

Oddly though, I'd started to use rhyming slang when messing about with bits
and the Richard III/turd theme sort of took over. It wasn't particularly
tightly phrased or rhymed to start with but ended up in a very disciplined
8s-A
8s-A
10-12 C
8s-B
8s-B
10-12 C
Pattern that I've used quite a bit of late and which I put down to working
on verses with an accoustic guitar and knowing more than 2 chords in a key
progression but fewer than 5...

Rhyming Slang:
**************
For those unfamiliar is a London thing (anecdotally) originally conceived to
conceal information from the police etc. Classically (watch any British 1940/50s
movies set in London) full of stuff like "Apples & Pairs"=Stairs, "Trouble & Strife"
=Wife "China Plate"=Mate.
So "Down the apples and onto the frog before me trouble found out - sausaged me Gregory
at the Sherman and off to the rub-a-dub-dub for a Vera Lynn with me China then on for a Ruby"
Is a good night out in London.
It was in decline for a number of years but in the last 20 or so it's come back strongly
with a lot of new contemporary terms. Go figure.

Richard III (r1483-1485):
*************************
Was the last Plantagenet King of England and the last to die in battle. His defeat and death
at Bosworth Field in 1485 marked the start of the Tudor era and end of the Wars of the Roses.
I recently saw a book in a store based on this period with the strapline "The War that inspired
Game of Thrones". I despair, I really do.

The victors (as ever) control the historical narrative and Richard took one hell of a bashing
particularly at the hands of Shakespeare whose patrons were the victorious Tudor dynasty...
Richard (probably genuinely) believed his brother and predecessor (Edward IV) to be illegitimate
and there is a lot of historical evidence to support this not least of which being the fact
that his father and mother were in different countries for the year surrounding his conception and
birth. The view was that God moved in mysterious ways - modern medical science is more sceptical.

Nevertheless, murdering (or being complicit in the death of) Edward's male heirs after his death
(The Princes in the Tower) still looks like an amoral power grab even for the times.

"Riccardians" are people around today seeking to restore Richard's reputation and they believed
for a long time that the "Hunchback" Shakespeare gave him was pure Tudor propaganda - it's
clearly been painted on to contemporary portraits of him some years after his death.

Richard's body was dumped after the battle in a hole by a priory near Bosworth and lost until a
few year ago when it was found under a car park (really). They gave it a proper send off and
intered it at Leicester Cathedral near by. But not before scientific analysis determined it was
(a) almost definitely him and (b) that he actually DID have a crooked back but it was not nearly
as bad as the Tudors made out.

Supergrass
**********
The excellent British band Supergrass had a song called Richard III but this was because they
called all of their songs by random names until the fleshed them out / titled them. This
happened to be the third "Richard" that they had done. It's damn good though - check it out.

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Very good!! I did follow the discovery under the car park with interest. And absolutely, history is written by the winner. Without going into politics here, if people think fake news and foul politics are a new thing, they better spend some time reading history books. The only difference to now is that news took a much longer time to go around a country or a continent, by the time they reached one end it was already old, unlike the internet where you get constant bombardment of information.

Anyway, love the subject, very good to see lyrics like these. I just hope your well of creativity is very very deep - keep some for our future project ;)

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There was a ceremony in one of the cathedrals and think the remains were layed to rest there. My son in law who's a composer was commissioned to write a piece of music to commemorate it.

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What a great honour! And absolutley no offence meant to S-I-L but the Stephen Collins strip in The Guardian at the time of the funeral made me howl with laughter!

[img][img]https://i.guim.co.uk/img/static/sys-images/Guardian/Pix/pictures/2015/3/17/1426602701275/ea5ad8ab-2c66-4e09-b8c6-6b60e56e58d9-2060x744.jpeg?width=1920&quality=85&auto=format&fit=max&s=d846c6c512c4849684daebaca00660bc[/img][/img]

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Really enjoyed the read put to some ass kicking rock Thank you [wl]246042[/wl]

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