Quite apart from basketball, I have a lot of different interests. I have a tendency to wear my mind up my sleeve. I have a history of losing my shirt. It's been one week since I blogged at you. I like music a great deal, is what I'm trying to say. I like jass bands, rappers, rock-'n'-rollers, and vaudevillians. I especially like Tin Pan Alley and Broadway. I'd give a pretty penny for the tenor at the Met; I'd give a quarter for a Cole Porter lyric and three for a melody by Strauss. "It's smooth! It's smart! It's Rodgers! It's Hart!"
On the lighter side of music is outright parody: Weird Al, that band that recorded "No Pigeons" in response to TLC's "No Scrubs": Yes, the list goes on of bands I don't listen to, not even a little. But parody - when mixed with a real capacity for ironic distance and a sincere musicality - has the chance to transcend its object. Tom Lehrer is one such parodist. You may remember his hilarious "New Math" but he took on any number of odd intellectual and political subjects in his few songs: folk music* ("Folk Song Army"), an optimistic interpretation of nuclear holocaust ("We Will All Go Together When We Go"), and even overzealous songwriting ("Clementine"). This latter is what I'd like to talk about.
*Probably his most scathing pronouncement was that "Little Boxes" was the most sanctimonious song ever written. Heh.
The conceit of "Clementine" is simple and well-executed: What would Cole Porter or Duke Ellington or Mozart or Gilbert and Sullivan do with a simple song like "Clementine"? It's a cute idea, and Lehrer's mastery of the composers' various tropes** propels the song to that rarefied air* of "songs you show to your friends and parents and future children".
*Which apparently means "less dense air," you know, like the stratosphere!
**Granted, he mocks "Night And Day" which is brilliantly direct for all its harmonic and lyrical complexity. But it's still pretty funny, Tom.
Lehrer introduces "Clementine" facetiously:
"...The reason most folk songs are so atrocious is that they were written by the people, and if professional songwriters had written them instead, things might have turned out considerably differently. For example, consider the old favorite "Clementine": In a cavern, in a canyon, dah dah dah dah-dah dah-dah dahhhh, a song with no recognizable merit whatsoever..."
And then Lehrer moves on into the parody.
So, yeah, "a song with no recognizable merit," whose most obvious merit is that it's so recognizable. I think that's hilarious. I think that is about the wittiest throwaway line I have ever heard. And I haven't seen anyone on the Internet that seems to have picked up on this. Maybe it was just so obvious, but I felt that I had to post it and explain it for all of you to read. Later.
Next time, on "Pearls of Mystery covers lyrics forgotten by the Internet," we cover "Don't Pass Me By" by Ringo Starr and its horrifying description of a car crash victim likely suffering serious brain damage. (No, seriously)
On the lighter side of music is outright parody: Weird Al, that band that recorded "No Pigeons" in response to TLC's "No Scrubs": Yes, the list goes on of bands I don't listen to, not even a little. But parody - when mixed with a real capacity for ironic distance and a sincere musicality - has the chance to transcend its object. Tom Lehrer is one such parodist. You may remember his hilarious "New Math" but he took on any number of odd intellectual and political subjects in his few songs: folk music* ("Folk Song Army"), an optimistic interpretation of nuclear holocaust ("We Will All Go Together When We Go"), and even overzealous songwriting ("Clementine"). This latter is what I'd like to talk about.
*Probably his most scathing pronouncement was that "Little Boxes" was the most sanctimonious song ever written. Heh.
The conceit of "Clementine" is simple and well-executed: What would Cole Porter or Duke Ellington or Mozart or Gilbert and Sullivan do with a simple song like "Clementine"? It's a cute idea, and Lehrer's mastery of the composers' various tropes** propels the song to that rarefied air* of "songs you show to your friends and parents and future children".
*Which apparently means "less dense air," you know, like the stratosphere!
**Granted, he mocks "Night And Day" which is brilliantly direct for all its harmonic and lyrical complexity. But it's still pretty funny, Tom.
Lehrer introduces "Clementine" facetiously:
"...The reason most folk songs are so atrocious is that they were written by the people, and if professional songwriters had written them instead, things might have turned out considerably differently. For example, consider the old favorite "Clementine": In a cavern, in a canyon, dah dah dah dah-dah dah-dah dahhhh, a song with no recognizable merit whatsoever..."
And then Lehrer moves on into the parody.
So, yeah, "a song with no recognizable merit," whose most obvious merit is that it's so recognizable. I think that's hilarious. I think that is about the wittiest throwaway line I have ever heard. And I haven't seen anyone on the Internet that seems to have picked up on this. Maybe it was just so obvious, but I felt that I had to post it and explain it for all of you to read. Later.
Next time, on "Pearls of Mystery covers lyrics forgotten by the Internet," we cover "Don't Pass Me By" by Ringo Starr and its horrifying description of a car crash victim likely suffering serious brain damage. (No, seriously)
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