Bamboozled

Always on the lookout for fresh words and phrases, I keep a collection in my journals; a list entitled "Titles;" and sometimes one of the phrases finds its way into use. "Jumpstart," an instrumental on my trio album; "Monkey In the Middle," which I am still working on; and now this, which I just finished polishing, all sprang from that list. I had the phrase,"we done been bamboozled," with the three-in-a-row percussive "b" syllables banging like an angry bass drum, setting the tempo and rhythm, and that's as far as it went for a year; just a seed–until the most recent shit hit the fan in US politics. It's a rocker, and, of all the songs I've written, only "It Could Have Been Worse" and "It's Gonna Rain, It's Gonna Pour" have sunk similar hooks into me, which made it easy to work on, as it was so often there, with a four-on-the-floor bass drum, in my head. I could have voiced it in the 1st person, which would offer the interpretive possibility that it was about a personal betrayal; or in the 2nd, in which you, not me, was the sucker; but we are all in this together, like it or not. 1st person plural: We the People.