Strip-mining songs
Apr. 23rd, 2005 03:12 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
james_davis_nicollI'm listening to a recording of Ray Charles singing AMERICA THE BEAUTIFUL. Now, in many ways ATB is superior to THE STAR SPANGLED BANNER (Humans can sing ATB without risking spontaneous resonant cranial liquifaction) but when I pulled up a copy of the lyrics of ATB I noticed something about it that illuminated an aspect TSSB banner that I had sort of been aware of but never overtly noticed:
if you are pillaging songs and in particular national anthem lyrics [1] for titles, TSSB is an unusally rich ore. Lots of nice short phrases in there that would look good on a book spine. I know for a fact that both DAWN'S EARLY LIGHT and TWILIGHT'S LAST GLEAMING have been used and that is just from the first two lines. I think IN DREAD SILENCE REPOSES has potential and hasn't been used yet as far as I know.
ATB is somewhat less rich. O BEAUTIFUL FOR PILGRIM FEET doesn't really work for me. COMFIRM THY SOUL IN SELF-CONTROL sounds like a good idea but not for a book title. I _like_ ALABASTER CITES GLEAM/ UNDIMMED BY HUMAN TEARS but what first comes to mind is that the best way to arrange that is to remove the humans. A post-plague story, maybe. Or maybe a Simakian post-human setting, like CITY.
In fact, of all the national anthems I know the lyrics for, and I know three, TSSB is the most fruitful source of titles. I hate O CANADA for many reasons and now the relative poverity of its lyrics is among them. The official version has 60-odd English words, fewer if you don't count repeated lines. None of them could be used as titles except perhaps satirically and even there, I think Peter C. Newman inserted a NOT between NORTH and STRONG.
I like some of the previous versions (the Weir, for example) but as title ore they aren't much better. Plus, does it bother anyone else that our nation anthem has been revised more often than the CRC Handbook of Chemistry and Physics?
Actually, O CANADA IS kind of a nervous sounding anthem, very worried about keeping the place safe. The recurring theme is that we're standing on guard. Fear us, world! We are alert and relatively motionless!
1: Which admittedly ATB isn't.
if you are pillaging songs and in particular national anthem lyrics [1] for titles, TSSB is an unusally rich ore. Lots of nice short phrases in there that would look good on a book spine. I know for a fact that both DAWN'S EARLY LIGHT and TWILIGHT'S LAST GLEAMING have been used and that is just from the first two lines. I think IN DREAD SILENCE REPOSES has potential and hasn't been used yet as far as I know.
ATB is somewhat less rich. O BEAUTIFUL FOR PILGRIM FEET doesn't really work for me. COMFIRM THY SOUL IN SELF-CONTROL sounds like a good idea but not for a book title. I _like_ ALABASTER CITES GLEAM/ UNDIMMED BY HUMAN TEARS but what first comes to mind is that the best way to arrange that is to remove the humans. A post-plague story, maybe. Or maybe a Simakian post-human setting, like CITY.
In fact, of all the national anthems I know the lyrics for, and I know three, TSSB is the most fruitful source of titles. I hate O CANADA for many reasons and now the relative poverity of its lyrics is among them. The official version has 60-odd English words, fewer if you don't count repeated lines. None of them could be used as titles except perhaps satirically and even there, I think Peter C. Newman inserted a NOT between NORTH and STRONG.
I like some of the previous versions (the Weir, for example) but as title ore they aren't much better. Plus, does it bother anyone else that our nation anthem has been revised more often than the CRC Handbook of Chemistry and Physics?
Actually, O CANADA IS kind of a nervous sounding anthem, very worried about keeping the place safe. The recurring theme is that we're standing on guard. Fear us, world! We are alert and relatively motionless!
1: Which admittedly ATB isn't.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2005-04-23 07:49 pm (UTC)[1] Yes, I mean English, not British or UK.
no subject
Date: 2005-04-23 07:54 pm (UTC)I was looking at GOD SAVE THE [GENDER APPROPRIATE MONARCH]* but I don't think that is what you have in mind. Also, given the pro-Scots romanticization of SF, I don't think verse six is going to go over well.
* note: An intergendered monarch may be a problem. Must come up with the right term before the issue comes up.
Do you mean
Date: 2005-04-23 07:58 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-04-23 07:58 pm (UTC)The English anthem is that fine thing by Blake, full of much-quoted phrases like "chariots of desire."
no subject
Date: 2005-04-23 08:03 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-04-24 02:57 am (UTC)Unofficially, Jerusalem is definitely getting the nod; and we sang it tonight along with Billy Bragg and Martn Carthy.
no subject
Date: 2005-04-23 08:11 pm (UTC)Despite having nothing to do with national anthems, I am reminded of the four chapters of Kingdom Come: "Strange Visitor", "Truth and Justice", "Up in the Sky", and "Never-ending Battle".
Canada will never change its flag
Date: 2005-04-23 08:22 pm (UTC)Or it would have been autocratically pciked by Pierre Trudeau, when he patriatrated the constitution (ending a process that took well over a century). That would worked out well, I am sure.
no subject
Date: 2005-04-23 08:25 pm (UTC)It's not a good source for story titles, but I don't think that that is its primary purpose.
The best part about The Star Spangled Banner is its drinking song nature. If you go around listening to drinking songs of that ilk, you'll notice that quite a lot of them are a real challenge to sing: I think that's supposed to be part of the fun: the drunker you get the harder it is to make the note spread.
Emma and I have both tried to memorize the earlier song to the tune, "To ANacreon in Heaven," but as far as I can tell it's really unsingable, as oppoaed to nearly unsingable as The Star Spangled Banner is.
Even though "This Land is Your Land" in its entirety is a protest song against the private ownership of land, I think it makes a wonderful anthem. And it's singable.
no subject
Date: 2005-04-23 08:32 pm (UTC)Didn't George Bush use it in one of his campaigns? I guess it was like using BORN IN AMERICA....
The Travellers filked it in the 1950s, replacing place names from the US with ones from Canada. I guess that's only fair, since Guthry seems to have been somewhat influenced by the tune from WHEN THE WORLD'S ON FIRE.
no subject
Date: 2005-04-23 08:36 pm (UTC)BORN IN THE USA, I mean. You know, the one with "I got in a little hometown jam/ so they put a rifle in my hands/ Sent me off to Viet Nam/ To kill the yellow man.
I'm guessing whoever wanted to use it as a campaign song didn't actually listen to it.
no subject
Date: 2005-04-23 09:56 pm (UTC)I refuse to allow them to have my culture, damn it.
no subject
Date: 2005-04-24 05:24 pm (UTC)The Star-Spangled Banner is a right fine tune, but it really comes into its own when you sing it at the tempo of, you know, a popular song. As the funereal dirge it's usually played as it's no wonder people think it's fearsome. Played for fun, it's a lot easier to sing, too.
no subject
Date: 2005-04-24 07:12 pm (UTC)It's not about how sad we are, guys, it's about making it through the onslaught in one piece, which is actually a pretty nifty sentiment if only we weren't the onslaught ourselves these days.
no subject
Date: 2005-04-28 05:17 pm (UTC)Don't get me wrong
Date: 2005-04-23 08:27 pm (UTC)I think ATB _sounds_ great, especially when Ray Charles sings it. You can fill the whole room singing it and the range of notes does not require a painful castration partway through the song. It's just not much use for titles.
Re: Don't get me wrong
Date: 2005-04-23 09:23 pm (UTC)The lyrics don't even ruin my day, except that so many patriotic songs around the world focus exclusively on the pretty landscapes and the blessings of God. If I want to sing about why I love my nation, I'd rather it be something either unique or idiomatic about our character.
Re: Don't get me wrong
Date: 2005-04-23 10:17 pm (UTC)Do you know any of the lyrics of "America the Beautiful" beyond the first verse? It's hard to imagine you do, if you think it's about nothing but "pretty landscapes and the blessings of God."
O beautiful for pilgrim feet
Whose stern impassioned stress
A thoroughfare of freedom beat
Across the wilderness!
America! America!
God mend thine every flaw,
Confirm thy soul in self-control,
Thy liberty in law!
O beautiful for glory-tale
Of liberating strife
When once and twice,
for man's avail
Men lavished precious life!
America! America!
God shed his grace on thee
Till selfish gain no longer stain
The banner of the free!
Indeed, "America the Beautiful" is unusual among patriotic songs in that it acknowledges that we're a work in progress and that we need one another's help.
Re: Don't get me wrong
Date: 2005-04-24 07:15 pm (UTC)Re: Don't get me wrong
Date: 2005-04-24 02:56 am (UTC)"The Battle Hymn of the Republic" is full of great titles, but you'd never get the
Confederatessouth to agree on it as a national anthem.Re: Don't get me wrong
Date: 2005-04-24 03:40 pm (UTC)It's a damn shame that Reconstruction failed but it did. It's time for the civilized peoples of the US to have their own independent homelands, unburdened by rustic flat-earthers and slavery nostaglists.
What you folks need is a rousing political slogan for Northern Emancipation.
My America includes Que-- wait, wrong slogan.
True North, Strong and Free? Already in use by someone, I think.
O Freedom, O Freedom?
Re: Don't get me wrong
Date: 2005-04-25 12:06 am (UTC)On Wisconsin! On Wisconsin!
Grand Old Badger State!
We, thy loyal sons and daughters,
Hail thee, good and great!
A little worrisome to have a place with over 60% German ancestry to hail anything in their national song. On the other hand, it's the place that had its local Republican Party split to the far left.
No titles, though, unless you're Barry Longyear.
Carlos
no subject
Date: 2005-04-23 08:31 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-04-23 08:46 pm (UTC)I know there was a third patriotic song that we all had to learn in '67, one much worse than O CANADA or A PLACE TO STAND but ha ha! I have forgotten what it is. I know I really, really loathed it, though. Tune like a mosquito's whine, I remember.
no subject
Date: 2005-04-23 10:28 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-04-23 10:29 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-04-24 05:28 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-04-23 10:45 pm (UTC)just trying to help --rgl
no subject
Date: 2005-04-24 03:21 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-04-24 01:07 am (UTC)Star Spangled Banner
Date: 2005-04-23 10:53 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-04-23 11:59 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-04-24 10:39 pm (UTC)Strip-mining songs
Date: 2005-04-24 02:44 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-04-24 03:07 am (UTC)OTOH, compare _God Defend New Zealand_. "Hear our voices, we entreat!" "Guard Pacific's triple star..." "Asking thee to bless this place" etc. At least Canada is standing on guard itself; New Zealand is just hoping God will do it for us.
(I still love our anthem, though, because it's ours. And the tune's pretty, if you sing it at a decent speed.)
no subject
Date: 2005-04-24 03:29 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-04-25 02:49 pm (UTC)