Nothing But A Lie in the News

A Lament for our Fallen in Iraq

Published in the Courier News 08/08/04

If Sleepy Hollow's colorful show-biz treasure, Mona Abboud, cashed in on her Iraq War protest project the way filmmaker Michael Moore has been doing with his Fahrenheit 9/11, she could just buy Sleepy Hollow Road instead of fighting to keep down the level of traffic flowing along it.

But Mona, who recorded the classic Christmas satire song Pretty Little Dolly and makes her living acting out voice-overs for TV and radio commercials, doesn't plan to make $100 million selling the protest song she wrote. Described by her as "a lament" to our rising toll of war dead, Nothing But A Lie became available Friday for free downloads on the site www.nothingbutalie.com. A CD version will follow in a few weeks for a nominal price.

Nothing But A Lie has a spooky, sad Irish-ballad feel to it — along the lines of, say, Danny Boy, if Danny Boy were being performed by a lone singer at the Geneva Folk Festival. It's available in two versions, a male one sung by Gerry Dignan of Joliet and a female one sung by Louise Dimiceli-Mitran of Chicago.

Mona says the lyrics and tune came to her while she was reading the newspaper.

"Every day I read the obits of the soldiers who have been killed. I think that's the least we can do — to read that this young man wanted to be a coach and this one wanted to be a dentist. One day as I sat on the couch after reading two of those obits, this song just came into my head, word and music, as if I could hear Willie Nelson singing it.

"I never got the feeling I WROTE it so much as that I wrote it down" as it streamed into her head from some unknown muse, she says.

Bubbling as always with that emphatic Olive Oyl-like voice that roller-coasters between giggles and tears, Mona still has the scrap of paper she used to jot down the lyrics. It's a receipt for an interlibrary loan book from Dundee Township Public Library.

"One died today, two yesterday, and five the day before," her pencil-scrawled lines go. "So tell us soon what we can do to end this needless war. ... "

Mona can't read or write music. "I'm not really a songwriter or a singer. I'm a co-MED-ian," she gushes. Even Pretty Little Dolly, which she recorded while guesting on Johnny Carson's show in 1966, had been written by a friend. So she hustled down to Village Music in West Dundee, sang this thing she had channeled to guitar teacher Dan McIntyre, and had McIntyre write it down in musical notation.

Through her voice-over work, she had made friends with Andy Mitran. Known to generations of Chicago-area kids as Captain Andy on Bozo's Circus, Mitran now runs a recording studio in Chicago called Mitran Mitran Music. He agreed to record Nothing But A Lie. To sing it in alternate versions, he brought in his wife — Elgin native Louise Dimicelli-Mitran, a veteran of the Old Town School of Folk Music faculty who works as a music therapist — and Gerry Dignan, a member of the Chicago Symphony Chorus.

They later decided the tune sounded too unadorned with just acoustic guitar and solo voices. So they lined the singing with music played on a Native American flute by Al Jewer, a Chicago studio musician.

"We honor and respect our troops, and hold our flag up high. But please don't make them shed their blood for nothing but a lie. "

Andy Mitran said both versions of the song can be streamed off of noithingbutalie.com in mp3, Realplayer or delayed-file formats.

Meanwhile, Mona keeps hoping that someone like Willie Nelson, that voice she heard in her head on the Day of Inspiration, can be convinced to record it. A CD version is coming in a few weeks on the Mitrans' record label, Laughing Cat Records. She and the Mitrans also are trying to get a number of Chicago-area singers to contribute similar songs that can be issued in a collection CD they would call Voices for Peace.

And if Willie Nelson happens to be reading this and looking for something to record on his next album ...

Next up for Mona Abboud, by the way? We'll hear her soon as the voice of a Guys and Dolls-style bug, dining out with her boyfriend in the kitchen wastebasket, in an animated TV commercial for a household insect spray.

And we'll see her back on the couch in her Sleepy Hollow cottage, still reading those obits from Iraq. It's the least we all can do.

08/07/04

http://www.suburbanchicagonews.com/opinions/columnists/gathman/e08gathman.htm