Goodnight Keith Moon: “The Most Inappropriate Bedtime Story Ever”

Lit­tle known fact. My first adven­ture in pub­lish­ing began as a 16 year old, when I teamed up with my best friend, anoth­er ardent fan of The Who, and togeth­er we pub­lished a fanzine ded­i­cat­ed to the British rock band. We called it Tales from The Who, a name tak­en from a boot­leg con­cert album record­ed in our native Philadel­phia dur­ing the ’70s. To get the zine going, we bor­rowed an elec­tric type­writer, cut out pic­tures, col­laged it all togeth­er, made copies on a pho­to­copy machine, then start­ed mar­ket­ing the pub­li­ca­tion in Rolling Stone mag­a­zine. When actu­al sub­scrip­tions rolled into our P.O. Box, we could­n’t believe it.

Alas, Tales from the Who did­n’t enjoy a long run. We maybe pub­lished three edi­tions, if that. But it did teach me the val­ue of Ray Brad­bury’s say­ing — “The things that you love should be things that you do.” And, years lat­er, I still get pangs of nos­tal­gia when­ev­er I encounter Who mem­o­ra­bil­ia on the web, whether it’s footage of Kei­th Moon pass­ing out at a 1973 con­cert and a fan tak­ing over, or videos that iso­late the great drum, bass, gui­tar, and vocal tracks of The Who’s anthem, “Won’t Get Fooled Again.” And you should­n’t begrudge me when I give you this: Good­night Kei­th Moon: A Par­o­dy.

If you liked Adam Mans­bach’s Go the F**k to Sleep, you’ll like­ly enjoy Clare Cross and Bruce Wor­den’s par­o­dy of the chil­dren’s clas­sic Good­night Moon. This twist­ed lit­tle rock tale can be pur­chased on Ama­zon. But it also lives freely on the web, just as it ought to. It begins:

In the great green room / There was a tele­phone / And a dead Kei­th Moon.

And Tow­shend jump­ing over the moon.

And there were four lit­tle gents piss­ing on cement.

And two bro­ken sticks and a pile of sick.

Find the rest here, and, don’t be the “cool” par­ent who actu­al­ly reads this to your kids. It is, after all, “the most inap­pro­pri­ate bed­time sto­ry ever,” accord­ing to The New York­er.

via Coudal

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Wern­er Her­zog Reads “Go the F**k to Sleep” in NYC (NSFW)