This all started when I had a bit of an unfortunate realization about one of my favorite musicals, The Music Man, particularly the fact that it’s set in 1912. If you remember your world history, or at least the first and second seasons of Downton Abbey, you may recall that this is two years before the start of World War One. I began speculating on Notes about the possible fate of the characters when the United States entered the war, which led as my muse is wont to do into speculations about future WW1 musicals.
entered the chat, as the phrase goes, and the rest is history. (So to speak). Without further ado, I present the recording you’ve all been waiting for: 76 Biplanes!Seventy six biplanes flying overhead
A hundred and ten maxim guns close at hand
They were shooting at rows and rows
Of Germans getting close,
The fear of every fightin maaaan
Seventy six biplanes blotting out the sun
With a hundred and ten guns in the firing line
There were over a thousand shouts
Of soldiers pouring out
Of the trench, which they left behind
There was phosgene gas and mustard gas and chlorine too
Pouring in blinding us all along the line
Get your gas mask on and pray you make it through
Make it throoough till they -say -its -time!
There were fifty mounted cannon in the battery
Thundering thundering louder than before
Lice and bugs of every size
And mortar shrapnel in your eyes
Wait why is this the first world war???
Seventy six biplanes in counter attack
While a hundred and ten maxim guns blazed away
To the rhythm of -boom -boom -boom
The Germans faced their doom
Surely this won’t bite us back one day!
My thanks once again to Scoot, because this is brilliant, and what Substack is and should be all about.
I may follow this later with In the Trench Where I Live, and made an attempt this morning, but couldn’t get the sound right. Making parodic musical songs about WW1 is hell. Anyway, there you are! Enjoy!
Do "Anything goes" next!
"CASH...for the munitions..."