Music, good and bad, I attach to people, events and places.
Barbara Ellen (English folk song). Sung round piano at a friend’s house near Bradford in the early fifties, with the names of the song's protagonists (BE and Jemmy Coe) switched romantically to two blushing members of our party. Allowed me to hover near a young woman I had my eye on. All I got was close.
Tijuana Taxi (Herb Alpert), People (Barbra Streisand). Echoing through a thousand juke boxes in early 1966, during the first weeks of my six-year stay in the USA
Songs for Swinging Lovers (Sinatra). Background music to late summer 1959 as I courted Miss T who became Mrs LdP. She cannot now identify a favourite track. Mine might well be: I Thought About You:
Two or three cars parked under the stars, a winding stream,
Moon shining down on some little town,
And with each beam the same old dream
Lord dismiss us with thy blessing. (Second verse). Sung at end of term at Bradford Grammar School:
Bless thou all our days of leisure
Help us selfish lure to flee
Sanctify our every pleasure
Pure and blameless may it be.
It didn’t work.
Italian national anthem.
Part of first stanza
Fratelli d'italia
L'Italia s'è desta
Dell'elmo di Scipio
S'è cinta la testa
Chorus
Stringiamoci a coorte!
Siam pronti alla morte
Chorus has doubled-up gig-like tempo. During his Ferrari glory years Schumacher used to conduct the anthem at this point from the prize-winner’s podium until told to desist for some rubbishy nationalistic reason.
Lili Marlene. German army song in WW2, adopted by British army. My father, almost totally deaf, became aware of it in 1948 and sang it tunelessly in moments of reminiscence.
Barbara Ellen (English folk song). Sung round piano at a friend’s house near Bradford in the early fifties, with the names of the song's protagonists (BE and Jemmy Coe) switched romantically to two blushing members of our party. Allowed me to hover near a young woman I had my eye on. All I got was close.
Tijuana Taxi (Herb Alpert), People (Barbra Streisand). Echoing through a thousand juke boxes in early 1966, during the first weeks of my six-year stay in the USA
Songs for Swinging Lovers (Sinatra). Background music to late summer 1959 as I courted Miss T who became Mrs LdP. She cannot now identify a favourite track. Mine might well be: I Thought About You:
Two or three cars parked under the stars, a winding stream,
Moon shining down on some little town,
And with each beam the same old dream
Lord dismiss us with thy blessing. (Second verse). Sung at end of term at Bradford Grammar School:
Bless thou all our days of leisure
Help us selfish lure to flee
Sanctify our every pleasure
Pure and blameless may it be.
It didn’t work.
Italian national anthem.
Part of first stanza
Fratelli d'italia
L'Italia s'è desta
Dell'elmo di Scipio
S'è cinta la testa
Chorus
Stringiamoci a coorte!
Siam pronti alla morte
Chorus has doubled-up gig-like tempo. During his Ferrari glory years Schumacher used to conduct the anthem at this point from the prize-winner’s podium until told to desist for some rubbishy nationalistic reason.
Lili Marlene. German army song in WW2, adopted by British army. My father, almost totally deaf, became aware of it in 1948 and sang it tunelessly in moments of reminiscence.
Isn’t it grand boys to be bloody well dead? (Folk song?) A later “awareness” song of my dad’s.
I like the thought of your father singing Lili Marlene tunelessly in moments of reminiscence, if only because it is the sort of thing that I do. The ephasis being in tunelessly though the desire is always present to hit the right notes.
ReplyDeleteI hope by the way your cold is better. I did not intend to sound unsympathetic. (I no longer take colds as lightly as I used to). Or indeed to be unappreciative of the sonnet, but with Lucy I think that you might pursue the Petrachian, Miltonic form with more determination. It has the merit of ending less neatly and therefore more naturally.
ReplyDeletePlutarch: My dad's two songs had different functions. LM was a private soliloquy, whereas "To be bloody well dead" demanded participation which I was always prepared to provide, the song being one of my favourites too.
ReplyDeleteOne can't be sympathetic with every Englishman suffering pulmonary defects; there'd be no time for rhododendrons.
Both you and Lucy seem to have a thing about the WS's rhyming couplet. You call it neat while she accuses it of having "a sometimes rather heavy 'boom-boom' (ending)". But surely there's nothing more artificial than a sonnet and with the WS form it may be possible to retrieve the final lines from an otherwise poorly constructed initial twelve.
Barbara Ellen is one of my favourites (as a "folkie")
ReplyDelete"Lord dismiss us..." was the end-of-term song for my Maidstone Grammar School and could be quite emotional to young hormones.
It was something I was looking forward to singing on the day I departed. However, being subject to horrific migraines I turned up at school that last day, started a migraine and went home early, thus missing my last school service.
Avus: One can never predict the links that music brings; these ones are modest but significant for all that.
ReplyDeleteHave I ever asked you whether you listen to music on the Bimmer or the Claude Butler? I don't think I'd ever dare. Ah, I've just remembered; you don't even listen in the car, do you? That's reassuring.
Related to me visiting you in Pittsburgh - Ode to Billy Jo, and Nancy Sinatra- These Boots are Made for Walking.
ReplyDelete