Wretched Records and Crappy Covers No. 89

"GOODBYE, JANNA."  - Jesus

Fat Stevens

Following the photo shoot for Swedish folk singer Cornelis Vreeswijk’s homage to Evert Taube, the six-string acoustic cradled in the sweaty embrace of Cornelis’s ample, unburdened loins required months of intensive counseling and a full refinish. So traumatized was the guitar, nicknamed “Raggmunk” after Cornelis’s favorite potato pancake recipe, he (yes, it's a he) never played the same again. Some say that the humiliation Raggmunk was forced to endure at the hands of a hack photographer bent on transforming his subjects into steamy sex symbols caused Raggmunk to lose his will to carry a tune. Nevertheless, the guitar remained close with his owner, Vreeswijk, often spending many hours with him on the couch—not playing, though, but watching their favorite films, Lee Hazlewood’s Cowboy in Sweden and Torgny Wicket’s Anita: Swedish Nymphet. And when Vreeswijk succumbed to liver cancer in 1977, Raggmunk mustered the strength to perform an elegy to his mate at his funeral. Appropriately, it was a meditation on the song “Nudistpolka” (no translation necessary) from the infamous Cornelis sjunger Taube LP (“sjunger” means “sings”). It was also Raggmunk’s last performance. As he downstroked the final chord of his poignant tribute, Raggmunk did so with such cathartic force that his strings snapped, filling the mouse-quiet cathedral with a ringing cacophony of profound sorrow. Raggmunk then collapsed on the altar, just a few feet from Vreeswijk’s coffin (a reinforced refrigerator box), his neck breaking off in the process. Sobbing, Cornelis’s brother, Gard, scooped up the broken and now deceased Raggmunk and placed him tenderly in the cardboard casket atop the corpse of his brother. Luckily for Raggmunk, this time Cornelis was wearing pants.

Yes, this is a work of fiction. No need to get upset.