Two Hangmen
Jun. 3rd, 2025 05:42 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
billroperI have a ludicrous number of musical influences. Of course, I have been listening to music for a very long time. :) And I learned by listening to the Beatles (especially McCartney), and Paul Simon (with and without Garfunkel), and Crosby, Stills, and Nash, and America, and Jimmy Buffett, and many, many others. And for someone who is almost completely unable to sing a harmony, I find my melodies weaving all sorts of harmonies inside of the chords that I play. That makes me happy.
One of the lesser-known bands that was an influence in my music was Mason Proffit. I would never have heard of them, but one of my college roommates owned one of their albums. Through the miracle of cassette tape, I shortly had my own bootleg. Many years later (and much like Jimmy Buffett paying the mini-mart back), I bought their CD, so I am now an honest man.
And one of my favorite songs of theirs was "Two Hangmen", which might have gotten more airplay if not for the extraordinary length of repetition of the last lines of the song, over and over for more than two minutes. Maybe there was a radio version. I hope so, because really, that was excessive.
But somewhere down at the core of it, "Two Hangmen" is a song about disinformation, about spreading messages that the government doesn't approve of, and consequences. And that makes it a song that still feels true to me today.
Maybe I will sing it at a filk some time.
But without the two minutes of repetition. :)
And here's the song.
One of the lesser-known bands that was an influence in my music was Mason Proffit. I would never have heard of them, but one of my college roommates owned one of their albums. Through the miracle of cassette tape, I shortly had my own bootleg. Many years later (and much like Jimmy Buffett paying the mini-mart back), I bought their CD, so I am now an honest man.
And one of my favorite songs of theirs was "Two Hangmen", which might have gotten more airplay if not for the extraordinary length of repetition of the last lines of the song, over and over for more than two minutes. Maybe there was a radio version. I hope so, because really, that was excessive.
But somewhere down at the core of it, "Two Hangmen" is a song about disinformation, about spreading messages that the government doesn't approve of, and consequences. And that makes it a song that still feels true to me today.
Maybe I will sing it at a filk some time.
But without the two minutes of repetition. :)
And here's the song.