I’ve always liked a particular old American Western song. It pitted ultimate evil against some tough old birds, and the right side won. Click here for the original song“Tying A Knot In The Devil’s Tail”
So, I penned a local adaptation because I need to believe the right side can win here too.
At one time my comrade Dom and I worked for a human rights organisation run by and for people with mental health labels. We did some rights education and too much advocacy towards bureacracies. That’s the background to the story below.
Lyrics are by me, vocals and arrangements by Suno.com
‘The Devil’s still on hold’
‘The Devil’s Still on hold’
Mad Dom T and Crazy Bill M visited a psych ward a while ago. [Note 1]
They’d taken rights booklets, pamphlets, all they needed for a right niice show.
They advised the folk, educated the staff, and stood up for what is right.
Then when they finished a long days work, Dom said 'Let’s have a merry night!'
They went and got a drink or two, they were feeling mighty mellow,
Just wandering free and easy, then they heard a fearsome bellow.
Mad Dom looked, and said to Bill, 'I’ll be well and truly blowed!’
The two boys saw the Devil himself a prancin' down the road.
Says he ‘You orn-ery advocate skunks, you better had hunt your holes.
I've come up from H_ll’s Rim Rock to gather in your souls’.
‘Oh Dear Sir Devil, the two boys said,' We’ll come, we’re not impolite.
‘But if you want to claim any advocate souls, you’ll just need to do it right.'
Mad Dom passed over his phone, he acted quick as a wink.
‘If I’m moving to your h_ll, you gotta tell Centrelink’. [Note 2]
‘When I get down below’ said Bill, ‘I will need some help I guess.
'Here, fill in this short form, it’s from the NDIS.’ [Note 3]
Old Nick stood there phone in hand, ‘Press what to proceed?’ he asked, bereft.
Then puzzling through the forms he cried, ‘What the me is an ARF?’
Then Crazy Bill and Mad Dom sidled away, breaking into a mighty fine lope.
They’d bamboozled docs and bureaucrats; poor devil, he had no hope.
Behind they heard a pen fast scratching, language rather blue,
And faintly the tinny voice it said, 'You're number 666 in the queue.'
Honest to Heavan that day, the boys they played a blinder,
And maybe those advocates made this world just a little bit kinder.
'Cause if there's a little less devilment, and our world's a little less cold,
It's because, with Muzak and frightful oaths, the Devil, he’s still on hold.
Note 1 Dom and my ‘Blues’ names, a little affectation in the grand tradition of many Blues artists who incorporated personal attributes such as ”Big’, ‘Little’, ‘Blind’. ‘Lefty’ or ‘Tiny Legs’ and the rest in their stage names. It’s who we are, and we get to decide that.
Note 2 ‘Centrelink’ is one of our local Social Services mega-bureacracies and at times has been legend for its phone queues.
Note 3 The ‘National Disability Insurance Scheme’ is a ‘responsive, person-centred world-leading disability support system’ (it says so on the tin) also at times fabled for its complex documentation.
