Making It Better

The Many Sides of Neil Sedaka (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

From Prompts for the Promptless, Episode 11:  Remake!  To remake is to make anew or in a different form. 

Here is a short list of things that you can remake.  It’s short because this is Friday and nobody wants to read a long list on a Friday.  (Never mind write one, if you want to know the real reason.)

1.  Your bed.  But don’t remake the beds of your children unless you want to risk scarring their little self-confidence psyches for life.  I read that somewhere, but never worried about it myself and remade my kids beds all the time.  Because seriously, what a mess.

2.  Plans.  Even if they are carved in stone.  Just get yourself a new stone.

3.  Lego and Puzzles.  Although if I had my way I would super glue the pieces together and never put myself through that agony again.

4.  Movies.  When there seems to be nothing new under the sun, movie makers start reminiscing about some classic film or other that was immensely popular back in the day and which made a whole shit load of money.  Then they start to believe that with a few changes, they could update, remake and improve upon it.  Plus rake in another whole shit load of cash.  Sometimes they’re right.  Sometimes they are sadly mistaken.

5.  Songs.  There can be as many versions of a song as there are people to sing it and genres of music to set it to.   If we like the original a lot, chances are we won’t be happy with a remake, simply because it doesn’t sound ‘right.’  If we dislike the original, a remake can turn out to be a happy surprise.

In the sixties I loved the original version of Breaking Up is Hard to Do by Neil Sedaka, including every single ”down-doobey-do-down-down”.  We were heavily into making up nonsensical gibberish lyrics to go with a beat back then.

Then I grew up a little, and so did Neil I guess.  I love this slower, jazzier version of the song even more.  Remakes can be a beautiful thing.

 

April Friday

In my mind, April is my brothers month, just like May is mine, and June and November belong to  my sisters.  He was born on the 19th, a Good Friday in 1946.  It’s been half a year already since he was ‘stolen’ from us, no longer a child of course, but still a child of the earth and the universe and lost to us much too soon.

So here’s a rather melancholy tune for our last April Friday.  Poetry set to music.  I guess I’m still in my saudade mood.  Bring on the rain.

A fairy offering wishes, illustration by John Bauer to Alfred Smedberg’s The seven wishes (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

The Stolen Child

(Words by W.B.Yeats-Music by Loreena McKennitt)

Where dips the rocky highland
Of Sleuth Wood in the lake
There lies a leafy island
Where flapping herons wake
The drowsy water-rats
There we’ve hid our faery vats
Full of berries
And of reddest stolen cherries

Come away, O human child
To the waters and the wild
With a faery, hand in hand
For the world’s more full of weeping
Than you can understand.

 

Where the wave of moonlight glosses
The dim grey sands with light
By far off furthest Rosses
We foot it all the night
Weaving olden dances
Mingling hands and mingling glances
Till the moon has taken flight
To and fro we leap
And chase the frothy bubbles
Whilst the world is full of troubles
And is anxious in its sleep.

Dream Fairy (Photo credit: Alexandria LaNier)

Come away, O human child
To the waters and the wild
With a faery, hand in hand
For the world’s more full of weeping
Than you can understand.

 

 

 

Where the wandering water gushes
From the hills above Glen-Car
In pools among the rushes
That scarce could bathe a star
We seek for slumbering trout
And whispering in their ears
Give them unquiet dreams
Leaning softly out
From ferns that drop their tears
Over the young streams

The Visit (Loreena McKennitt album) (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Come away, O human child
To the waters and the wild
With a faery, hand in hand
For the world’s more full of weeping
Than you can understand.

 

 

 

 

Away with us he’s going
The solemn-eyed
He’ll hear no more the lowing
Of the calves on the warm hillside
Or the kettle on the hob
Sing peace into his breast
Or see the brown mice bob
Round and round the oatmeal chest.

For he comes, the human child
To the waters and the wild
With a faery, hand in hand
For the world’s more full of weeping
Than you can understand.

 

Setting The World On Fire

When there’s all kinds of things I should be getting done on a Sunday afternoon, I like to go to YouTube and listen to music from my youth (and even more ancient times than that).  I’m not saying this is a good plan to have, but it’s a lovely open-ended one.  If you don’t like a lot of discipline and structure in your life, I suggest you try it.

The worst case scenario is that you end up with some strange tune in your head for about three days.  But there’s also definite perks involved.  Like discovering a cover of a song that you like just as much, if not better, than the original.  Sorry to all you Peach Stealing Monkey fans out there, but I’d never heard of them until today.  “I Don’t Want to Set the World on Fire” was, is, and ever shall be an Ink Spots hit from the 1940′s.  It lives on in a video game called Fallout.  Another new thing I learned today.  Proving one is never too old to learn something, no matter how irrelevant or useless the information might seem to be at the exact moment in which it is duly noted.  These random facts could pop up in a trivia game at some point in the future making you look brilliant, you just never know.

So here’s the version I like enough to share on this sunny cold Sunday in our non existent Spring.  The one in which we couldn’t set the world on fire if we tried because of all the stubborn snow still hanging about.  Hope you’re having a lovely lazy Sunday doing whatever it is you love to do.

 

Going Listy in the Moonlight

Moon (Photo credit: shahbasharat)

Daily Prompt:  The Satisfaction of a List

Who doesn’t love a list? So write one! Go silly or go deep, just go list-y.

Ten Songs I Like About the Moon

1.  It’s Only a Paper Moon  Ella Fitzgerald http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gapCK5_rMuY

2.  Bad Moon Rising  Creedence Clearwater Revival  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4YlTUDnsWMo

3.  Moon River  Andy Williams http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5QaFd59bjCE

4.  Harvest Moon  Neil Young  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qj6xkMl0yyg

5.  Fly Me To the Moon  Rod Stewart http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kfd9z968CbY

6.  How High the Moon  Emmy Lou Harris   http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H2cgpNr-dpo

7.  Dancing in the Moonlight  King Harvest  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g5JqPxmYhlo

8.  Moondance  Van Morrison  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jy25lRydw6A

9.  Blue Moon  Dean Martin  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SC3gFEkgrT0

10.  Yellow Moon  Neville Brothers  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PTJyExd4dmw

Honorable mention as well to Moonlight Sonata by Ludwig Van Beethoven, a piece I would like more if I had not been forced to mutilate it on the piano as a child.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vQVeaIHWWck

Moon and Saturn / Maan en Saturnus (Photo credit: Arjan Almekinders)

 

 

 

Beans In My Ears

Beans (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

This great but extremely dangerous little song was Number 30 on the charts in 1964.  I can remember singing along to it on the radio.  What I cannot remember is exactly why.  Guess I’m just a sucker for repetitive lyrics and a catchy tune with a message.  Len Chandler and the Serendipity Singers meant it as a statement about adults not listening to their children.  What followed the songs release was a number of radio listener complaints and doctor reports about children putting objects in their ears, so the song was banned and black listed.

This is one of the reasons we can never go back to the sixties.  It’s just too scary.  Listen at your own risk.  Hide the beans.

 

The Telephone Doesn’t Ring (aling-aling-aling)

Awwwww….ooooooooh!

It’s been a long hard day, all alone at work,  holding down the fort for over nine hours without a break.  So I’m tired, and a little punch drunk maybe, because this song on YouTube is the funniest thing I’ve ever heard in my entire life.

I’m sure tomorrow I’ll wonder what was so funny about it.  Whatever.  Spanish Doo Wop.  Amazing stuff.  This is a track from Bang Bang Lingo Lingo Vol. 7.  I kid you not.  So turn up the volume, make up some doo wop lyrics and sing along.

Because it will probably feel SO good to stop.

 

Into the Dark

Happy easy listening Sunday everyone.  I love this guy and his cover of the Death Cab for Cutie song.  Beautiful lyrics, beautiful voice.

“I Will Follow You Into The Dark”

Love of mine some day you will die

But I’ll be close behind

I’ll follow you into the dark
No blinding light or tunnels to gates of white

Just our hands clasped so tight

Waiting for the hint of a spark

If Heaven and Hell decide

That they both are satisfied

Illuminate the NOs on their vacancy signs
If there’s no one beside you

When your soul embarks

Then I’ll follow you into the dark
In Catholic school as vicious as Roman rule

I got my knuckles bruised by a lady in black

And I held my tongue as she told me

“Son fear is the heart of love”

So I never went back
If Heaven and Hell decide

That they both are satisfied

Illuminate the NOs on their vacancy signs
If there’s no one beside you

When your soul embarks

Then I’ll follow you into the dark
You and me have seen everything to see

From Bangkok to Calgary

And the soles of your shoes are all worn down

The time for sleep is now

It’s nothing to cry about ’cause we’ll hold each other soon

In the blackest of rooms
If Heaven and Hell decide

That they both are satisfied

Illuminate the No’s on their vacancy signs
If there’s no one beside you

When your soul embarks

Then I’ll follow you into the dark

Then I’ll follow you into the dark

 

Pink Shoelaces

Pink Shoelaces (Photo credit: CraigSnedeker)

This morning I “Liked” a page on Facebook called Groovy Reflections.  ”Peace, Love Grooviness. Groovy Reflections™ is dedicated to the celebration of life and song. Our greatest wish is that everyone can find peace in their lives and in their hearts.” 

Well, how in the world could I NOT like that?

Next thing I know there’s a link on my news feed for this video by Dodie Stevens who celebrates her 67th birthday today.  Happy Birthday Dodie!  If you don’t know who Dodie Stevens is, you are about to find out.  I don’t remember ever hearing her name before (although I’m sure I must have) but I KNOW ALL THE WORDS TO THIS SONG!  Isn’t the memory a strange and wonderful thing.

Now I’ve got a guy and his name is Dooley He’s my guy and I love him truly He’s not good lookin’, heaven knows But I’m wild about his crazy clothes

He wears tan shoes with pink shoelaces A polka dot vest and man, oh, man Tan shoes with pink shoelaces And a big Panama with a purple hat band

He takes me deep-sea fishing in a submarine We go to drive-in movies in a limousine He’s got a whirly-birdy and a 12-foot yacht Ah, but that’s not all he’s got

He’s got tan shoes with pink shoelaces A polka dot vest and man, oh, man Tan shoes with pink shoelaces And a big Panama with a purple hat band

Now Dooley had a feelin’ we were goin’ to war So he went out and enlisted in a fightin’ corps But he landed in the brig for raisin’ such a storm When they tried to put him in a uniform

He wanted tan shoes with pink shoelaces A polka dot vest and man, oh, man He wanted tan shoes with pink shoelaces And a big Panama with a purple hat band

Now one day Dooley started feelin’ sick And he decided that he better make his will out quick He said “Just before the angels come to carry me I want it down in writin’ how to bury me.”

Wearin’ tan shoes with pink shoelaces A polka dot vest and man, oh, man Give me tan shoes with pink shoelaces And a big Panama with a purple hat band

My musical tastes are so stuck in the 60′s and 70′s it’s kind of scary.  But how amazingly delightful is this, to see Dodie Stevens some 40 years later, still looking and sounding great.

Obviously I’m enjoying a wonderful, peaceful, lazy, do-nothing kind of Sunday afternoon.  Hope you are too.

 

Adventures in Album Cover Creation

Hey, wanna buy an album cover? Yeah, just the cover. There’s nothing inside. When I come up with a band and some songs I’ll let you know.

This great idea comes from Edward Hotspur with step by step instructions on how to create just such a thing.  You’ll have to go there to find out how I did this, because I’m way too lazy to repeat it all.  Obviously he is good at doing this and explaining things, because even I got it.

So give it a try!  It’s fun!  Maybe there’s a market for this!  Maybe not!  Whew.  Enough excitement for one morning.

 

I’d Like To Teach The World To Sing

English: European Turtle Dove (Streptopelia turtur). Shot taken in Israel עברית: תור מצוי, ישראל (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Daily Prompt: I Got Skills

If you could choose to be a master (or mistress) of any skill in the world, which skill would you pick?

I´d like to build the world a home
And furnish it with love, grow apple trees
And honey bees and snow white turtle doves.
I’d like to teach the world to sing in perfect harmony.
I’d like to hold it in my arms and keep it company.

It’s the real thing what the world wants today.
That’s the way it will stay with the real thing.
It’s the real thing, won’t you hear what I say?
What the world needs today is the real thing.

I’d like to see the world for once
All standing hand in hand — standing hand in hand.
And hear that echo through the hills
For peace through all the land – it´s the real thing.

I’d like to teach the world to sing in perfect harmony – perfect harmony.
I saw on the peace that echo goes on and never goes away.

It’s the real thing what the world wants today.
That’s the way it will stay with the real thing.
It’s the real thing, won’t you hear what I say?
What the world needs today is the real thing.

It’s the real thing what the world wants today
That’s the way it will stay with the real thing…

I’d like to teach the world to sing (Photo credit: fatskier)