Lyrics (c) 2001 J. Eiler
TTTO: Alice's Restaurant by by Arlo Guthrie
Notes: I'll credit Dave Weingart and Joe Bethancourt for inspiring this one.
None of this song is accurate, it was written for humorous effect. The Sci-Fi con I write about never happened. This is a mix of scuttlebutt, "Filk Urban Legend", and my own warped imagination. It's not as good as the original, but then I'm not Arlo Guthrie.
This song is called Leslie's Argo Song and it's about Leslie, and the filksong, but Leslie's Argo Song is not the name of the that song, it's the name of this song, and that's why I called this song Leslie's Argo Song.You can sing anything you want, except Leslie's Argo Song. You can sing anything you want, except Leslie's Argo Song. Sing about anything, scream and shout. But sing that song, she may knock you out! You can sing anything you want, except Leslie's Argo Song.Now it all started many years ago when Leslie wrote the Argo song - that 's that song, not this song - when Leslie had a few minutes left on an album. And she wrote the song in just a few minutes, and they played it for the microphones, and the recording machines, and other implements of destruction, and they put it on the tape, and Leslie didn't think anything more about it.
Until.
Until she started hearing this song at house filks, and and con filks. Little filks and big filks. She heard it on guitars, and on kazoos, and autoharps and zithers and mouth-harps and banjos and recorders and harps and it's probably a real good thing that most filkers don't play tubas.
And one of these days they're probably going to find some poor filker, naked and bleeding by the side of the road with his guitar in a very uncomfortable location where nobody wants a guitar to be. And when they get done with the plastic tire tracks, foot prints, dog-smelling' prints, they'll probably find twenty-seven dog-eared sheets of music with notes and chords and lyrics all over them.
When the filker wakes up in the hospital - he ain't gonna be naked in the hospital, but he will be wearing one of those southern-exposure night-gowns which is just about the same thing - and they're gonna ask him "What the heck happened to you?"
And he's gonna say "I don't know. Last thing I knew I was singin' some filk song and the lights went out." And it will be a generally painful and embarrassing experience for him, and he'll probably be really glad he doesn't play tuba.
But that's not what I came to talk to you about. Came to talk about Sci-Fi cons.
We had a Sci-Fi Con in the town I lived in, name of Greater Sparkleburg, where they had vendors and panels and blooper reels and a whole bunch of groovy stuff. And I was going through the vendor room seein' all the folks in costume - there was three Darth Vaders, and four Luke Skywalkers, and a whole bunch more Stormtroopers than they had in Star Wars. There was enough Borg to assimilate the whole blooming galaxy. There was elves and treants and fairies, and drag queens too!
And there was these folks looked like regular folks, but they was carrying guitars and backpacks, and everybody looked at them funny.
And I asked somebody "Hey, what're those folks wandering around over there with the guitars and the backpacks and the what-all." And the vendor kinda rolled his eyes at me and said "Kid, those are filkers." And I didn't have the slightest idea what he meant.
So I asked him "What's a filker." And he kinda rolled his eyes at me again and said "Kid, they play filk music."
Well, now I was really confused, so I started to ask a question again and he interrupted me with "Kid, the filk sing is in Room 604."
I went up there and I'll tell you the truth, I didn't see too much except for this massive cloud of so much smoke I thought the room was on fire. And some of the singing sounded like screams, too, but soon got itself sorted out.
I heard some of the strangest goings on. They were singing about asteroids falling and alien slime and magic circles. They were singing about Space Rangers and Lensmen and some guy named Door-sigh, but I never found out who he was.
And after midnight, they were singing about mutating haggis and sheep - and you REALLY don't want to go there.
And then the biggest, meanest, nastiest looking one of them looked over at me and said "Kid, it's your turn."
And that's how I got introduced to filking.
And the only reason I'm singing you this song is cause you may know somebody in a similar situation, or _you_ may be in a similar situation,and if your in a situation like that there's only one thing you can do and that's walk into the filksing wherever you are, just walk in and sing:
You can sing anything you want, except Leslie's Argo Song.Cause I sure don't want to be coming away from a filksing to find you naked and bleeding on the side of the road with your guitar in a very uncomfortable location where nobody wants a guitar to be. I most especially don't want it to happen to you if you play the tuba.
Because you know if one person, just one person does it they may think he's really all right, and they'll be happy. And if two people, two people do it, in harmony, they may think they're both great musicians, and they take both of them. And three people, three, can you imagine, three people walking in sing a bar of Leslie's Argo Song. They may think it's an organization. And can you imagine fifty people a day, I said fifty people a day walking in sing a bar of Leslie's Argo Song and sat down. And friends, they may thinks it's a movement.
And that's what it is - the Leslie's Argo Song Dandelion Resistance Movement, and all you got to do to join is sing it the next time it come's around on the guitar.
With feeling.
So we'll wait for it to come around on the guitar, here and sing it when it does.
Here it comes.
You can sing anything you want, except Leslie's Argo Song. You can sing anything you want, except Leslie's Argo Song. Sing about anything, scream and shout. But sing that song, she may knock you out! You can sing anything you want, except Leslie's Argo Song.That was horrible. If you want to sing and stuff you got to sing loud. Everybody else at the filk sing does. Even the ones like me who are off key. Especially them.
I've been singing this song now for twenty five minutes. I could sing it for another twenty five minutes. I'm not proud... ... or tired.
So we'll wait till it comes around again, and this time with four part harmony and feeling.
We're just waitin' for it to come around is what we're doing.
All right now.
You can sing anything you want, except Leslie's Argo Song. "But you can filk it!" You can sing anything you want, except Leslie's Argo Song. Sing about anything, scream and shout. But sing that song, she may knock you out! You can sing anything you want, except Leslie's Argo Song.And if you think I'm trying those high notes that Arlo finished the song with, you're CRAZY.