Foreign policy, courtesy of the Morning Zoo

November 20, 2006 2:08 PM

Looking for a Desert Storm-era humor song. The song was about Saddam Hussein, and I remember it from one of the dumb "morning zoo" type radio programs in Cleveland. The lyrics I remember are "He's a middle-east beast/He reads from right to left!/He's a wacky Iraqi."

Since people around here seem to do well with typed-out attempts at rhythm... dum dum DUM dum duuhm dum/(SPOKEN AS INTERJECTION) He READS from RIGHT to LEFT!/dum dum DUUUHM de da DUHM dum. If it helps at all, I was probably listening to a dumb top-40-type station at the time. I have no idea if it was done by that station or done somewhere else and picked up by them. If you could find the rest of the lyrics, that'd be cool. And if you could find the actual recording, that'd be plain old wow.

posted by ferociouskitty to media & arts (4 comments total)

It sounds like it might be to the tune of Superfreak by Rick James? That's about all I can offer, and it's hard to do the typed-out attempts at rhythm....
posted by JMOZ at 4:56 PM on November 20, 2006

Sounds a lot like the Capitol Steps.
posted by phrontist at 5:52 PM on November 20, 2006

I can remember one from an LA station (100.3 Pirate Radio) in the early 90's. It was called Blame It On Hussein and it went to the tune of Blame It On the Rain by Milli Vanilli. There's nothing left extant on the web today but the chorus went something like this:

Blame it on Hussein
For the price of gas

Blame it on Hussein
Oughta nuke his ass
posted by euphorb at 5:53 PM on November 20, 2006

A problem with many sub-Yankovic style parodies are the songs are done by local/metro radio personalities, and go stale in less than a month. So I offer this suggestion in case you don't get a better idea in the next few days.

How desperate are you to know? Would you invest a teeny bit of time and effort for a chance at the answer? There's a (benign) reason I ask. Based on your quote, you may well be talking about the song Middle East Beast written by Skid Roadie of Kansas City DJ fame. The song made the Dr. Demento show, so it probably got wider distribution -- like up to Cleveland -- than it might normally have done at the time. The Dr. Demento playlist page listing has a typo, by the way, it's not Skip Roadie.

So why the heck should you care? Well, because Skid Roadie is still around on KCFX, 101 the Fox. And a KCFX page lists an e-mail address and a telephone number for Skid. You could e-mail or call him and see if he remembers the lyrics and it's the song you want. He might even have a copy of the song available. C'mon, it's only two minutes of your time. At best, you get your info, even a shot at a recording. And what's the worst that could happen? It could be the wrong song: no major loss. He could ignore you: same deal. Or, he could abuse you as only Radio Personalities can and love to do. Okay, that might be unpleasant, but this here is MetaFilter. Already, every member opens him or herself to potentially much worse abuse every time they make a post.

Incidentally, the other Desert Storm/Hussein parody song mentioned here Blame It On Hussein is on the same Dr. Demento playlist. Looks like it's by John Mammoser and MJ Kelli (Kelli being the nom de plume of this guy). Mammoser has a really ugly website you can easily Google for, and he does sell some of his songs on CD with others downloadable, so if you're interested in that one, you could contact him and see whether it's for sale or download. Blame It On Hussein is not on his current song list, but the previously mentioned staleness might account for that.
posted by mdevore at 12:09 AM on November 21, 2006