Strip-mining songs

[james_davis_nicoll]

I'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.

Comments

[redbird]

The English [1] national anthem has also been frequently been used for this purpose.

[1] Yes, I mean English, not British or UK.

[king-tirian.livejournal.com]

Yes, ATB is a pathetically small song, and God Bless America is even less interesting and more crowd-pleasing. Perhaps "The Stars and Stripes Forever" would be more to your literary satisfaction? I don't know about changing your anthem -- over the long term I would suspect that it's more annoying to adopt a new flag every generation as we were wont to do down here for a while.

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".

[thespian.livejournal.com]

'Home and Native Land' has been used repeatedly, though. and 'True Patriot Love', if I recall.'True North, Strong and Free', too. so far as catch phrases go. These all lend themselves to non-fiction titles, really though.

[james-nicoll.livejournal.com]

Huh. A PLACE TO STAND repeats the theme of an anthem celbrating the idea remaining in one place. What an odd recurring motif. Where did the proto-Canadians come from that it lacked solid land? Are we the lost Atlantians?

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.

Star Spangled Banner

[seawasp]

I love that song. And I have no problem singing it; it's not at all a wide range. The other would-be candidates are usually lukewarm wussy little things.

[dawn-guy.livejournal.com]

I like the original French lyrics to Oh Canada ("car ton bras sait porter l'epee, il sait porter la croix" moves me even though I'm definitely not Roman Catholic) as well as the additional English verses, e.g.

Oh Canada! Where pines and maples grow,
Great prairies spread and lordly rivers flow.
How dear to us thy broad domain
From East to Western Sea:
A land of hope for all who toil,
The True North strong and free
[your glorious freedom operators are standing guard. call now!]

Strip-mining songs

[(Anonymous)]

I'd like to read an SF novel called 'Girt by Sea'.

[zeborah]

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!

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.)

[sunshaker.livejournal.com]

Do you figure there are any good book titles worth stealing from A MAPLE LEAF FOREVER?

[beamjockey.livejournal.com]

I've always been fond of O BEAUTIFUL FOR PILGRIM FEET. And, to repeat something I've written on another occasion when this came up, I think A THOROUGHFARE FOR FREEEDOM BEAT may be a reference to Route 66. Or maybe Jack Kerouac.