Pro-War Folk Singer Finds She Has Stage All to Herself

BOSTON.  For Sharon Elliot, the “Eureka” moment of her life came a few years ago at the National Association for Campus Activities convention, a showcase for entertainers seeking bookings on the college circuit.

 

Sharon Elliot:  Indistinguishable from other folk singers, only more so.

“I was a month behind in my rent and desperate,” she recalls, “but when I showed up to audition there were probably forty other female folk singers just like me–long stringy hair, peasant dress–the full Judy Collins.”

 

“I’m more sensitive than you are.”

Faced with daunting odds, she was inspired by a woman standing in line behind her practicing “The Cruel War”, a song from the Civil War about a young woman who cuts off her hair and joins her lover on the battle lines.  “I thought to myself, I need something that will make me stand out from the crowd,” whose anti-war conformity hung in the air like tear gas at a peace demonstration.

 

“Iraq, Iran–one little letter separates them.  Let’s drop a big bomb and like totally decimate them.”

So she stole the march on the woman who inspired her, launching into a spirited rendition of “The Cruel War” with lyrics she improvised on the spot to emphasize the song’s implicit martial theme.  “It really is about crushing the other side like a bug, so you can return home and make love in a  field of daffodills,” she says.

 

“Where have all the flowers gone?  Killed them with Round-Up Weed Killer, every one . . .”

The reaction from the audience of college booking agents was surprisingly favorable.  “We’re looking for balance in the programs we offer,” said Maitland Jamieson of Vanderbilt University.  “For every wimpy post-adolescent androgynous wussy boy like John Mayer we book, we like to have someone with a more positive view of civilian casualties.”

John Mayer:  “Me and all my friends, we’re all misunderstood.  They say we stand for nothing, but actually we’re in favor of making a lot of money and having bodacious babes slobbering all over us.”

Elliot walked out of the convention with a solid list of gigs, and has since parlayed her contrarian approach into a moderately successful career playing out-of-the-way colleges that have a hard time paying for big-name acts with predictably left-wing views.

“Sharon is sensitive, but she makes an exception for the Taliban and al Quaeda.”

At Bethany Baptist College in Otterville, Missouri, a crowd that represents over eighty percent of the total student body crammed the school’s gymnasium on a recent Saturday to hear Sharon open her act with a cover of The Gap Band’s 80’s hit “You Dropped a Bomb on Me”.

 

The Gap Band:  “Sharon’s cool with us, although she should consider shaving her legs.”

“Sharon’s message is you can’t love everybody, which is what my momma always told me about dating,” says sophomore Krystal Muller as she snuggles next to her boyfriend Lyle Dunham.  “Some people really need to be wiped off the face of the earth, or else why would God make Tomahawk missiles and stuff?”

 

Tomahawk Land Attack missile:  Wicked awesome!

Eliot hopes that she will soon enter the rarified altitudes of celebrity where she will be referred to simply by her first name, like Prince or Cher, and make enough from commercial endorsements to cut back on a grueling concert schedule that has her on the road for two hundred dates a year.  “I’m talking to Round-Up Weed Killer about doing a voice over of ‘Where Have All the Dandelions Gone?’”

Copyright 2007, Con Chapman