Texas Medley

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The Texas Medley or Texas Motel Medley is a brief suite that was featured by Zappa in his 1988 tour beginning in late February, 1988. It consists of three Beatles songs with the words re-written to reflect the recent exposure of evangelist Jim Swaggart with a prostitute in in a Louisiana motel on February 21, 1988. The medley was apparently first performed on February 28, exactly one week later.

The suite consists of the these three songs:

1. Norwegian Wood - re-styled as "Norwegian Jim", the words describe the encounter of Swaggart with a prostitute. An amusing insertion is the repetition of a riff from Leonard Bernstein's song "I Feel Pretty" from "West Side Story."

2. Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds - re-styled as "Louisiana Hooker with Herpes" with appropriate lyrics.

3. Strawberry Fields Forever - re-styled as "Texas Motel", but the refrain changes constantly.

Zappa targets, in addition to Swaggart, fellow evangelists Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell, as well as Reagan administration figures, John Poindexter and Edward Meese. The last two are usually referenced at the end of some incomprehensible lyric (often from the original song) as "actual testimony" probably meant as a reference to the less than candid public testimony of these figures at the Iran-Contra hearings in 1987.

The suite is widely available but usually not for long because of copyright issues. It runs about nine minutes in length.