Drive-Thru Pharmacy - Adventures in the Jersey Woods

Adventures in the Jersey Woods (2006)

This album was recorded by Adam Thibault at Rude Squirrel Studios in Mt. Laurel, NJ, and was released in December of 2006. It is a collection of orginal songs detailing local stories from all parts of New Jersey. Some, such as "Hindenburg" and "Zip the What-Is-It" are cold, hard fact, people and events that actually happened, more or less as told in the songs (hopefully more if we did a good job of it). Some, such as "Ninety-Nine Indians" and "Joe Mulliner" involve real people and events, but ones that may have been muddied as they have passed down through time. All of them are part of the fabric of New Jersey, things that make this state unique.

Recorded by:
Mike Block - trumpet & vocals
Gian Chung - clarinet
Will Daley - trombone
Larry Leso - alto sax
Bill McCall - vocals
Mike McCormick - vocals & guitar
Brian McGovern - bass guitar & vocals
Ray Solowij - drums & vocals
Andrew Thompson - tenor sax
Bryan "Teebs" Williams - guitar
Also appearing...
Adam Thibault - guitar (Imp Song and Joe Mulliner)
The Pharmettes: Whalen, Greg, Brandon, Dave the Jew,
Gabby, Jer, Rob, Rachel, Uncle Chuck, Chrissi, Jeni, Jess,
Will, Bill, Dave, and Tommy Gunns - background vocals

Ongs Hat

Background: The music was hammered out for this song by the team of Teebs and Block, who were attempting to create a one show throwaway song, but came up with this one instead. The lyrics tell the story of the town of Ong's Hat, an elusive ghost town located in Burlington County, which has a tragic history to go with its strange name. The best reading on Ong's Hat can be found in Henry Charlton Beck's Forgotten Towns of Southern New Jersey, which can be found at your local library.

Well Jacob Ong was a sight to see
As he walked into town that night
His silk top hat upon his head
Ready for the girls, the booze and the fights
Well Mr. Ong was a ladies’ man
He came every week into town
Mixing it up with the colliers and the smiths
Dancing to that sound

But Mr Ong was rude
To the lady he took that night
She knocked that hat right off his head
And stomped that top hat flat
The hat ended up at the top of a tree
Where for months there it sat
People would point and tell the story
So the town became Ong’s Hat.

Over the years the town began to die
Lost jobs had taken their toll
All that remained was a cluster of homes
And seven lonely souls
Then into the clearing moved a Polish couple
Chininski and his wife
They built a home with a room or two
And settled into their new life

But the misses went missing
And the mister didn’t seem to care
Fingers were pointed
And tempers flared
They found her body out in the woods
Her moldy clothes nailed to a tree
When the cops couldn’t find the murderer
The townsfolk all fled

Isn’t it funny how a town can go
From a boom to a bust?
Isn’t it funny how people’s lives
Can become just memories and dust?
Isn’t it funny how a town can go
From a boom to a bust?
Isn’t it funny how people’s lives
Can be so easily lost?

Ongs Hat today is just a clearing
On a road through the pines
No homes, no stores, no cellar holes
There’s nothing left to find
Just another forgotten town
That died before it’s time
Still swirling full of the memories
Of the girls, the booze, and the fights

Joe Mulliner

Background: With music and lyrics by Ray, this song is about the leader of a gang of scoundrals, the famed Joe Mulliner of the Pines, who plied his trade during the Revolutionary War. Again, the best reading on Joe Mulliner is found in Beck's Forgotten Towns of Southern New Jersey, although you can also learn something about the man here

The... first... punks... in...
Hemlock Swamp was Joe Mulliner and his cuthroat gang
An outragous law breaker, one day he would hang
A man of many passions, handsome at first glace
A modern day Robin Hood, this bandit loved to dance

Dancing! Bandit! Dancing! Bandit!

Joe... Mulliner...
If he had to, you'd feel his wrath
But if you were of pure heart he'd gladly shake your hand
Dancing with damsels, their evening's party crasher
This is something new to him, being a ska thrasher

Dancing! Bandit! Dancing! Bandit!

Joe's final run in with the law
Was in a maidon's palor
They hung him from the old oak tree
If only he were taller
Ancient folklore does decree
That Joe did exhist
So let's all go to Egg Harbor
And empty that grave of his!

Terror at the Jersey Shore

Background: This song was written at the last minute for the album by Ray and Mike, who hope to encourage stupid dances involving shark moves. This song is about the legendary great white shark attacks at the shore in 1916, the worst series of shark attacks on the shores of this nation in United States history. These attacks inspired, among other things, the movie Jaws. Read more about this, or check out Close to Shore: A True Story of Terror in the Age of Innocence by Michael Capuzzo if you like books.

A sickness hangs over this city
And we’re headed for a horrible war
A man can only hope to escape it at all
At the sanctuary of the Jersey shore
There golden sands and peaceful seas
Are just what the doctor called for
No one had the slightest idea
What the next twelve days held in store

A blue-grey ghost (HA HA HA HA)
Haunts this coast (HA HA HA HA)
Stay out of the water (HA HA HA HA)
It’s gonna be a slaughter (HA HA HA HA)

A train pulls into Beach Haven
Man and dog swim out to sea
A crowd of folks play under the sun
As it travels on peacefully
Shouts of terror fill the afternoon
Blood stains the ocean red
Despite all that the doctor’s do
Charles Vansant lies dead

The papers remain silent
And for days, everything’s quiet
‘Til Bruders ripped up by the giant
The second man killed by it
The water’s emptied clear down to the Cape
Sharks are killed by the hundreds
All the region can do is wait
For the next strike of the tyrant

SOLO

A blazing July afternoon
The boys sweat it out at the factory
The know they can go swimming soon
In the creek, they’ll all be happy
They don’t know what the old man saw
Float by like a terrible dream
A massive form with razor jaws
So many miles upstream

The shark struck so very swiftly
The boys flew through town for aid
They reacted very quickly
But for Lester, it was too late
Fisher dove in to save poor Lester
For that, his life he gave
Joe Dunn grabbed ahold the ladder
For that, his life was saved

A blue-grey ghost (HA HA HA HA)
Haunts this coast (HA HA HA HA)
Stay out of the water (HA HA HA HA)
It’s gonna be a slaughter (HA HA HA HA)

Steel nets and sticks of dynamite
They’ll save us all from the monster’s might
If we don’t find a way to win this fight
How many more will fall to the creature’s bite?

Zip, The What Is It?

This song is about a remarkable man from Jersey named William Johnson, a pinhead who made his living in the circus for an amazing sixty-seven years. You can read about Zip in Weird NJ.

It didn’t start as much at all
Just a negro boy with a head too small
But the circus boss found him one day
Made deal with his folks, took him away
“A circus freak, that’s how you’ll earn your bread
Wear monkey suit and shave your head
All around folks will want a glimpse
Of the monkey-man, Zip the What Is It?!”

Zip the What Is It? What is it?
His body’s big, his head is small
Zip the What Is It? What is it?
Name a freak, he tops ‘em all!
Zip the What Is It? What is it?
Plays his fiddle all day long
Zip the What Is It? What is it?
Guards his throne with a pop gun!

Year after year in his suit so hairy
Zip traveled the world with Barnum and Bailey
From princes to paupers, came to gape in awe
At his sloping head and square-set jaw
As the missing link from the Amazon wild
Zip offered himself for the Monkey Trial
A hit at the Big Top, Coney Island’s beach
That’s Zip, the Dean of the Freaks

Zip, he lived to a ripe old age
The man-monkey behind his cage
He didn’t start with much, but he made his way
The What-Is-It?, a wonder of the day
But a legend can't live forever
Zip went up to someplace better
His last words before he died
“Well, we fooled ‘em for a long time”

The Voyage of Cap’n Kidd (The Pirate Song)

The music for this song was written at practice one day by Teebs, Block, and Bickerson. When it came time for lyrics, they became about pirates on the basis that every song should be written about pirates, so it was written about the nortorious Capn' Kidd, who plundered the oceans and supposedly buried his treasure in, among other places, Cape May and Long Beach Island. You can read a bit about Captain Kidd

Sixteen bottles on a dead man’s chest!
Yo ho ho and a bottle of rum!

With Cap’n Kidd we set out
Upon the open sea
The hundred and fifty desperate men
Of the Adventure Galley

We left from New York City
Went down around the Cape
Came on up to India
And thar we lay in wait

But nothin’ much be happenin’
We ain’t found no prey
We ain’t got no plunder
So we raid the English today

Yo ho ho and a bottle of rum
A pirates’ life for me
We be out to steal some treasure
We don’t care from where it be

Our ship be springin’ leaks
And the navy’s on our backs
The Caribbean’s not safe
For pirates like us

So we bury our treasure in Jersey sand
A hundred paces from Kidd’s two trees
On to New York to meet our fate
Away from our beloved sea

Yo ho ho and a bottle of rum
A pirates’ life for me
We be out to steal some treasure
We don’t care from where it be

They decided Kidd had to die
So one morning, they strung him up high
Covered him in tar, so they say
Hung him from the bridge til he rotted away

Yo ho ho and a bottle of rum
A pirates’ life for me
We be out to steal some treasure
We don’t care from where it be

Sixteen bottles on a dead man’s chest!
Sixteen bottles on a dead man’s chest!
Sixteen bottles on a dead man’s chest!
Sixteen bottles on a dead man’s chest!
Sixteen bottles on a dead man’s chest!
Sixteen bottles on a dead man’s chest!
Sixteen bottles on a dead man’s chest!
Sixteen bottles!

Ninety-Nine Indians

Background: Horrible villian, or noble hero? This song, by Ray and Mike, is about Tom Quick, who lived near the Delaware River and dedicated his life to slaughtering one hundred Indians, including women and children, in revenge for the murder of his father by that nation. The legend has it that he'd killed only ninety-nine at the time of his death, and the Indians dug up his body and desecrated it in celbration, unaware that he had died of smallpox. Thus, Tom got his one hundred Indians, plus many more. If you'd like to read more about Tom Quick, there is a paper written by Theodore Shoemaker (1904), and a chapter on the man in Beck's The Roads of Home

The white man moves in and settles down to trade
His son mixes in like he’s just another brave
We’re the closest of friends, the Quicks and Lenape
We live beside each other, happy and carefree
But the white man come, they cheat us of our land
We decide that we cannot let this stand
So we killed the man, but we couldn’t kill his son
Everyone of us he kills he puts a notch in his gun

With his father lying dead, you Tom makes a vow
One hundred Lenape he’ll kill, it doesn’t matter how
Those that once were friends are not bitter enemies
Young Tom Quick and the vengeful Lenape
He finds our leader drunk at a local tavern
This was to be the start of a long and bloody pattern
Marches him down the road, he’ll not again see the sun
Everyone of us he kills he puts a notch in his gun

Everyone of us he kills he puts a notch in his gun
Everyone of us he kills he puts a notch in his gun
Everyone of us he kills he puts a notch in his gun
Everyone of us he kills he puts a notch in his gun

Men, women, children, year by year they fall
One after another, they all hear death’s call
So many gone, we’re all running scared
Of Tom Quick, Avenger of the Delaware
But Tom’s work is not finished at the end of his time
As he’s lain in his grave he’s killed only ninety-nine
Little do we know that Tom’s deadly ways are not done
Every one of us he killed he put a notch in his gun

The Imp Song

Background: This song was a labor of love for Adam, and is his first DTP song to be rocked out for DTP. The lyrics are actually a true story about a rash of Jersey devil appearences that happened January 16-23, 1909 and practically shut down South Jersey as people paniced. Although there are many sites on the internet that will attempt to tell this story, the only place that does it properly is McCloy and Miller's book, The Jersey Devil, found in local and school libraries accross the state, the classic work on the subject.

It’s January of 1909
A peaceful Sunday in the pines
A storm of snowflakes has hidden the earth
But it can’t hide a mother’s curse
In Bristol, a cop shot at it with his gun
Word is there’s tracks in Burlington
And there a two-legged creature with hooves
Is walking ‘round up on people’s rooves

Papa says not to worry, it’s probably some kids havin’ fun
It’ll all be done in a hurry, but papa you’re loadin’ your gun!

In Franklinville, dogs won’t follow the trail
Of the creature with the forked tail
A posse tracked him through Collingswood
But all they caught was a glimpse of his hooves
He’s chased through Moorestown and Maple Shade
Papers says folks are getting’ afraid
And while Burlington hides inside
The devil’s stalkin’ chickens in Riverside

Papa says there’s no reason to fuss, mama’s pacin’ the floor
Tommorow there’s no school for us, and Papa, he’s boltin’ the door

A panicked Thursday in the Jersey woods
Nothing is like it should
The evil creature with the cursed soul
Chased a worked up a telegraph pole
He terrorized a trolley in Clemonton
Broke down a door in Trenton
Mrs. White was sure scared silly
When the devil paid a visit to Philly

He was chased by a crowd through Germantown
Almost hit by a car on Washington
He visits a Westville women’s club
And sent those ladies on the run
He perched on the roof of the Chief’s home
When he came to visit Collingswood
The firemen turned a hose on him
But he swooped down and scattered them

Hindenburg

Background: Written by Mr. Michael Block with lyrics by committee, this song is about that ill fated Nazi airship, The Hindenburg, that crashed and burned at Lakehurst, NJ in 1937.

Flying high across the sky came the largest of its kind
A soaring ship, built to fit, the German’s growing pride
She did not fail after setting sail, and in a couple days
People from the towns all around would come on down and say

Come on, get your tickets for the Hindenburg
Hurry up now, tickets are selling fast
Come on everybody, tickets for the Hindenburg
Let’s go, it’s gonna be a blast

The colossal giant kept her course, she stayed quite steady
So smooth she flew that the people knew, the future had come already
Uncle Sam’s men kept an envious eye, on the ship from bridge to frame
But as she drew near her pier, she’d find her lasting fame

Come on, get your tickets for the Hindenburg
Hurry up now, tickets are selling fast
Come on everybody, tickets for the Hindenburg
Let’s go, it’s gonna be a blast