Mandated government warning labels are now so ubiquitous that one day I fancied they were really brand labels, and the all the products bearing them were manufactured by a giant corporation called . .  .Government Warning. Not a bad name for a company, come to think of it.  Some generic cigarette marketer ought to use it.

That was sometime in 1995.

So I went and got together a toy electronic keyboard (Casio, $49), an ancient, battered Epiphone electric guitar lent to me decades before by a guy who never came to collect it, a bass of similar provenance, some kitchen pans and soup spoons, a tambourine, a Radio Shack microphone and, most importantly, shelled out $400 for an analog, 4-track Yamaha tape deck.

I drank a large amount of home-brewed beer, which had the unexpected consequence of not helping me to remember how to operate those musical instruments, my vox humana or learn to unravel the mysteries of the 4-track.

I wrote a song called Government Warning. I recorded and mixed it as best I could - I'm not one of those people who reads manuals, so the audio engineering, like the playing, singing and lyrics, are amateurish but sincere.

I auditioned the master before a pal of mine - I was living in New York City at the time. He turned pale and said it sounded like the anthem of one of those crackpot right-wing militias one reads about in The New York Times. I was quite flattered, of course, but understood it would be best to keep it under wraps from that point on, until I'd made my way to Florida and freedom.

Listen to this MP3 version if you dare !  The audio level is very low for some reason, so crank your volume up to max !  It may take a few minutes to download the song, but there is informative reading matter provided to help pass the time.

Government Warning (c) 1995, Paul Kotik.  Score, lyrics, all instruments, all vocals by Paul Kotik

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