If you’re feeling less than festive about the chronic loosening of public funds that enable the media extravaganzas we call the Olympic games, then here’s a song for you. Vancouver-based klezmer musician Geoff Berner has released an alternative Olympic anthem, entitled “Official Theme Song for the 2010 Vancouver/Whistler Olympic Games (The Dead Babies Were Worth It).”
Berner is a true klezmer purist, i.e., noisy, sloppy, drunken, and deliciously subversive. Here’s a sample lyric:

All you terrific foreign visitors –
We’re so glad that you’re here,
For our eight billion dollar, two week party
That we’re putting on this year.
Of course the credit goes to the government;
When they approved the eight billion bucks,
They cost cut out the office that
investigates childrens’ deaths.
The Dead, Dead Children Were Worth it,
The Dead, Dead Children Were Worth it,
The Dead, Dead Children Were Worth it,
The Vancouver/Whistler Olympic Games…

Click here to hear the song. Above to see a video of the Berner classic “Whiskey Rabbi.”