top of page
Let the Buyer Beware
Little girl with flying pigtail on bouncy tractor at playground
Little girl with flying pigtail on bouncy tractor at playground
fourfeetdownmd.jpg
2000px-Adhesive_bandage_drawing_nevit.svg.png
00:00 / 01:04

Click here for the "ellipsis" EP
Let the Buyer Beware

Scanlon the scam artist says:

“Maybe you should try it, Your Honor.  My service I mean.  It’s called '1-900-LULLABY.'  Great idea, huh?  You have a hard day, still tense when you go to bed, can’t sleep.  So you call me and my tape lulls you off and you find your dreams, huh?  Just $3.00 a minute.  Can I help it if 90% of my customers fall asleep before they can hang up the phone?  I’m doing my job, right?  Doing what they asked for.”

He sings...

SCANLON: I say

Caveat emptor, I say

Let the buyer take care,

It’s a jungle out there,

I swear!

I say

What am I but a businessman who

Meets a certain demand?

Once you’ve shaken my hand,

All’s fair.

I’m no sneak thief running in the night,

No wallet-snatcher vanishing from sight,

My principles are clear:

I’m just out to make a dollar,

Don’t get hot beneath the collar, ‘cause...

I am just a hard working man who

Has found a lucrative way

To let the other guy pay

His bills...

I say

If you want to hold on to all your

Precious family jewels,

Don’t entrust them to fools

Or shills

And if each and every rube could have his day,

He’d surely turn the screw the other way.

It doesn’t seem quite fair,

Just because I got an angle

Everyone says, “Let him dangle!”

Well, you been down on your luck, you tell me

You got a wife and three kids,

And you been hittin the skids...

How sad.

I say

If you’re stupid enough to fall for

Any carrot I pick

At the end of a stick,

Too bad!

Don’t tell me I’m unkind

Just because some men are blind.

Let the buyer beware!

Words and music ©1995

Written for the Newspaper Clipping Assigment of the New Tuners Musical Theatre Workshop, Chicago, IL

bottom of page