the brief
jes a funi little titter 'bout a petty grifter travelling the world pulling scams, always staying just ahead of his angry pursuers
Better run boy was the 8th karosong to start channeling. And it was a dramatic departure from everything that had gone before.
It was fun! funny! and politically incorrect. It was my first taste of a funi-flavour karosong. (It would not be my last.)
When I went to Miami
I tried to pull a scamie
I tried to take a banker
to the cleaners
But it turned out he was Cuban
and his brother he was Reuben
and now I've got the Cuban
the Cuban Reuben Junta
after me me me me yeah
me me me me
It's a con man's song, a little ditty about a petty crook travelling the world pulling odd little scams, always staying just ahead of his angry pursuers. And it came with a very catchy but largely standard-form chorus after each verse.
You better run boy, run boy
you better run
You better run boy, run boy
you better run
It was fun to sing and fun to play. It was one of the few songs that I would actually play for other people, mostly our meditation students in Edmonton who knew that I had started channeling music.
This version of Better run boy 1.0 was recorded with my good friend Jeremy Sagar on the same Easter weekend night in 1994 as Bluebirds 1.0. It was Jeremy who suggested we add the extra voices in between the main lyrics and you can hear how much he contributed. It was great fun for both of us.
Now Edmonton's the place to see
the Oilers play at West Eddie
and Edmunchuck's the place
if you wantta see me.
You see it's got this lady there
who's beautiful and rather fair
Yes I've settled down but this is what
ma ma missus says to me
Jeremy tried to get me to adjust the lyric introducing my lady fair in the last verse, making it something funny like “she's short and fat and rather fair” but I couldn't break the pattern of the existing lyrics in my singing.
There is no 2.0 version of Better run boy. It just never happened.
There is however a 1.6 version of the song, in which 'current' gordon sings it as a duet with his younger 1.0 self. Look for it in the vault.
The duet comes from the period between the second and third phases when I first tried singing with the existing studio recordings of my younger self. I wasn't sure how well I would 'reconnect' to the song after the better part of 20 years. But once I started singing with my younger gordon the song came back pretty much just like that.
Yeah, just like that!
What? you can't read all of a sudden?
son keep your head down low but if
they ever ever catch wind of you
here in the city of ex-champions
well, well . . .
guess we better run boy, run boy, we better run
we better run boy, you bet your beautiful buns
we better run
we better run boy, get the guns boy, we better run
Singing this song with my younger self was truly a blast. There were always a couple of spots in the original recording that I thought I hadn't got exactly right, because I hadn't been quite sure what the delivery should be at the time. So I worked on getting those spots finalized in the new recording, even though the underlying original recording remained out of date.
the lyrics
Better run boy
an all-original 1.o karosong
-- 1 --
When I went to Miami
I tried to pull a scamie
I tried to take a banker
to the cleaners
(to Ed's dry cleaners)
But it turned out he was Cuban
and his brother he was Reuben
and now I've got the Cuban
the Cuban Reuben Junta
After me me me me yeah
me me me me
What! Juntas come in three?
Where's the other one?
He's the one with the gun,
who's saying . . .
You better run boy, run boy
You better run
You better run boy, run boy
You better run
-- 2 --
So I flew on to Hawai-i
where I met this Lady Di-ie
She looked a little flush so
I touched her up for lunch
(and what a spread)
But it turned out that her hubby
was this English chap name Chuckie
And now I've got Ch- Chuckie's
Chuckie's paratroopers after
me me me me yeah
me me me me
That's Bob. That's Bill.
Don't'cha just love those pommy
accents.
You better run boy, run boy
you better run
You better run boy, run boy
you better run
-- 3 --
So I flew on down to Sydney
where I tried to sell my kidney
to retire an old gambling debt
(her name was martha siddhartha, but
that's a whole other story)
Well the doctors they turned spastic
when they found out it was plastic
and now I've got the spastic, the
spastic plastic surgeons after
me me me me yeah
me me me me
Can't you hear them scapels? I can!
I can hear them clacking it out!
You better run boy, run boy
You better run (clackety-clack)
You better run boy, run boy
You better run (clackety-clack)
-- 4 --
Now Edmonton's the place to see
the Oilers play at West Eddie
and Edmunchuck's the place
if you wantta see me.
You see it's got this lady there
who's short and fat but rather fair
Yes I've settled down but this is what
ma ma ma missus says to me
ma missus says to me
son keep your head down low but if
they ever ever catch wind of you
here in the city of ex-champions
well, wellllll. . .
guess we better run boy, run boy
we better run
we better run boy, you bet your beautiful buns
we better run
we better run boy, get the guns boy
we better run
the vault
Better run boy, the 8th karosong to start channeling, was one of the few that I would play for other people. However, I only have one recording of the original guitar version, and that's with my daughters singing 'backup' sometime just before Christmas 1989. The girls were only 8 and 6 at the time, and the recording was made more in fun than for the record.
arc02 / 1.0 recording with Shan/an/thea — circa Dec 1989 [7]
I recorded the song with my good friend Jeremy Sagar on the Easter weekend of 1994, just days before I left Alberta for Ontario. It was Jeremy who arranged the music based on a demo I gave him (which I sadly don't have) and who suggested we throw in the extra voices between the verses.
"Sylvia" is a private joke.
arc01 / studio version with Jeremy Sagar — Easter 1994 [9]
In the period between the second and third phases, I started recording "then and now" duets with the three 1.0 studio recordings, including Better run boy. These are classified as 1.6 versions.
arc01 / "Then and now" duet — December 2015 [7]
These later recordings have the opening credits the original doesn't, plus a few minor tweaks to the lyrics in the "now" vocal, some of which I could not get quite right during the first phase.
