I love misunderstood lyrics. We’ve all suffered that embarrassment of *knowing* the words to a song and then finding out, sometimes years after the fact, that we weren’t even close. The high comedy moment of our weekend revolved around that kind of misunderstanding.

After watching the Joe Strummer documentary, The Future is Unwritten, I was inspired to get around to learning Redemption Song on guitar. (The song doesn’t feature in the documentary at all, but Strummer covered the song on his last album with the Mescaleros. And I’m trying to learn the original Bob Marley version, but I digress…)

Anyway, the first line of the song is “Old pirates, yes, the rob I.” I was noodling around with the song, and my daughter, 3, walked in and said, “Daddy, that’s the ‘Oh! Pirate Rabbi’ song!” That she got that much, I’m taking as a promising sign for my efforts. I spent the rest of the weekend conjuring what a pirate rabbi might look like. Here’s what I came up with.

It would have been better if I could draw a parrot on his shoulder. Or if I could draw. I think that I have my Halloween costume all lined up for next year. If you want to check out more hilarious misunderstood lyrics, check out Kiss This Guy (from a misunderstood line in Hendrix’s Purple Haze). Amazingly enough, they have two versions of the same misunderstood lyric (1, 2).