CAPTAIN VIDEO
Lyrics and music by David Essig

David Essig


When I was a little boy back in 1953,
My daddy spent his Christmas bonus
And he bought our first TV.
Entertainment in the home,
A picture small but bright ...
There was Dinah Shore, and Omnibus -
Ed Sullivan on Sunday night.

There I was, just a little man, a schoolboy,
And every afternoon,
Me and all of the Video Rangers 
Would go racing for the Moon.
TV in its infancy - now what more did we know
Than the cardboard cutouts and rocketships
Of Captain Video?

(Chorus) 
And it's goodbye, Captain Video -
They shot your rocket down;
They burned you up and used you
For seven cents a pound.

Twenty-five years later, in a hotel in New York,
I read that Captain Video had died the night before...
Cold and lonesome in some room 
On the south side of the Bronx,
Where the walls are papered with memories
And the old men live like monks.

Now they said it was the bottle that killed him,
But it was his broken heart.
The night they melted down the kinescopes
It damn near tore him apart.

Now I'm one of a million 
Middle-aged kids from coast to coast;
We throw away the set, 
But we don't forget
About Captain Video.

(Chorus) 
And it's goodbye, Captain Video -
They shot your rocket down;
They burned you up and used you
For seven cents a pound.





(Contributed by Lou Rugani - The Music of the Stars - April 2009)