Origins: songs that were just always here

Subject: Origins: songs that were just always here
From: mg
Date: 24 Jan 03 - 03:03 AM

Well, I was looking for the words to my old man..as per usual I didn't find them..but I was thinking..that song has always been here...even before we first heard it...I am trying to think of others that have been...put on my thinking cap...American Pie..City of New Orleans..Song for Ireland..Volga Boatmen...Muss I Den..All through the night...Turning toward the morning...Streets of Laredo...you know what I mean? If one person hadn't written them someone else would have sooner or later.. Any others? mg

Subject: RE: Origins: songs that were just always here
From: Genie
Date: 24 Jan 03 - 03:20 AM

Somes when I hear a new song, I find myself thinking: "That can't be a new tune -- It seems like I've known it all my life."

I understand that when the tune that eventually became "Yesterday" occurred to Paul McCartney, he had that kind of feeling and (after humming it) asked John Lennon what the name of it was.


A couple of other tunes that I've had that feeling about are Dan Fogelberg's "The Leader Of The Band," and Jed Marum's "Letter From Lilac Acres." Seems like I've known those tunes forever, yet I cannot place other songs with the same tunes.

Genie

Subject: RE: Origins: songs that were just always here
From: IanC
Date: 24 Jan 03 - 04:43 AM

Mary

Know exactly what you are saying, but My Old Man is in the DT.

:-)

Subject: RE: Origins: songs that were just always here
From: Noreen
Date: 24 Jan 03 - 05:06 AM

Or did Mary mean my old man by Ewan MacColl?

So many songs come into that category, mary, that I can't think of one at the moment!

Subject: RE: Origins: songs that were just always here
From: *daylia*
Date: 24 Jan 03 - 10:45 AM

Well there's the timeless schoolyard "Nyah nyah-nyah nyah nyah". If you perchance remember the words but forget the tune, play "C A-D C A" on the piano (or instrument of your choice) and stick out your tongue for the full effect. Preferably while visualizing your grade-school principal.

Subject: RE: Origins: songs that were just always here
From:
Date: 24 Jan 03 - 11:02 AM

Fields of Athenry

Fiddler's Green

Dirty Old Town

Subject: RE: Origins: songs that were just always here
From: Joe Offer
Date: 24 Jan 03 - 11:32 AM

(click here to search for "My Old Man"). You'll be amazed.
-Joe Offer-

Subject: RE: Origins: songs that were just always here
From: fsharpdim7
Date: 24 Jan 03 - 11:49 AM

how 'bout Steve Goodman's my old man?

Subject: RE: Origins: songs that were just always here
From: Cluin
Date: 24 Jan 03 - 11:55 AM

Or Joni Mitchell's "My Old Man" (on Blue)

I wonder if it's the same one the big yellow taxi took away?

Subject: RE: Origins: songs that were just always here
From: Amos
Date: 24 Jan 03 - 01:55 PM

Mary --

I wrote a tune once that had that effect on people -- they were sure it had been around forever and I "couldn't have" written it. I just shut up about it, decided to take it as a compliment. It ended up being attached to "Across the Miles and Over the Years", a song I think I gave to the Mudcat Songbook. Oh yes, here it is.

The point is that it is a strange reflection on our group sense when something comes along that matches all our thinking so well that it just shoulda been there all along. An aesthetic miracle. Thanks for raising the point!


A

Subject: RE: Origins: songs that were just always here
From: GUEST
Date: 27 Jan 03 - 04:04 AM

refresh

Subject: RE: Origins: songs that were just always here
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 27 Jan 03 - 06:42 PM

As I've said before, I don't really believe there are too many (if any) completely original tunes that are much good. Most times it's a question of a few odd notes and played in a different sort of time, or at a different speed, or bits from different tunes introduced to each other. Enough to justify a copyright, but when you get down to it pretty well all tunes belong to families, which is another way of saying they are variants. It's fun working out the family tree, and you find some strange relatives sometimes.

That's talking about tunes, rather than songs.I find it odd the way people quite often say "tune" when they mean "song" and "song" when they mean "tune", as if they meant the same thing. Or for that mattrer "song" when they are talking about a set of words that hasn't found itself a tune as yet. I prefer to be fairly strict about keeping the words in their different places. For me a song is what you get when the words are joined up with a tune.

I had a nice thing happen with a song I wrote a few years ago - sang it in a session on Sunday, and a lady who hadn't heard me sing it before was gobsmacked when somene told her I'd written it. "But I thought I'd always known that one since I was a child" she said. (And she's the same age as me.) I was flattered. That almost qualifies it as a folksong.

Subject: RE: Origins: songs that were just always here
From: Bill D
Date: 27 Jan 03 - 07:01 PM

some song themes have universal appeal, and the same basic song re-appears...yet a few are so 'right' that they become classics...we just don't all agree WHICH ones..*grin*

and some tunes are so obvious that they get used, re-used and OVER used until we have no idea where we got them.

(and that childhood taunt.."nyah, nyah, _nyah,^nyah, nyah, _nyah...I read an article in "Popular Psychology" years ago that claimed that it WAS an "Ur-Melody", that would and did arise with no history...long technical explanation of why those tones went beyond mere music)

Subject: RE: Origins: songs that were just always here
From: Amos
Date: 28 Jan 03 - 03:39 PM

God, Bill, I remember so MANY lyrics to that tune -- "I've got chocolate and you-u-u d-o-o-on't"; "(Name) is in trouble, ha-ha-ha-ha-haaa-ha!"; "You-u-u-re a bloooockhead!" "Neener, neener, neener....".

Ur Melody! Wow!! So what's the theory, prof? Where would an Ur Melody come from? Inherent mathematical ratios in the chromosomes? Hmmmmm? :>)

A

Subject: RE: Origins: songs that were just always here
From: Bill D
Date: 28 Jan 03 - 04:03 PM

yep...almost that! They claimed that the tones involved were natural resolutions of math and frequencies that the mind can easily understand...I cannt remember the 'exact' words...(you remember the tones played to the aliens in "Close Encounters"?....sorta like that

Subject: RE: Origins: songs that were just always here
From: Mudlark
Date: 28 Jan 03 - 04:11 PM

Hmmm...wonder if "Happy B'day to you" falls in that category?

Subject: RE: Origins: songs that were just always here
From: Liz the Squeak
Date: 28 Jan 03 - 04:13 PM

We've had this discussion before - the ner ner ner-ner ner was likened to the first line of 'Cry baby Bunting' which is why it was so familiar to a lot of folk who'd learned it by a form of osmosis.

LTS

Subject: RE: Origins: songs that were just always here
From: JennyO
Date: 28 Jan 03 - 10:12 PM

It's Bye Baby Bunting. I remember it from my childhood.

Lots of variations on words, and VERSES! - according to Google.

Jenny

Subject: RE: Origins: songs that were just always here
From: Strupag
Date: 29 Jan 03 - 04:56 PM

Many year's ago I sung to my old auntie Anna, the Shoels of Herring, by Ewan MacColl, she was a hundred percent certain that she had heard the song many years's previously.
Could this be an example of what you mean Mary?
I learned later that Ewan MacColl used the style and phrase of traditional songs to write this song.

Subject: RE: Origins: songs that were just always here
From: GUEST,ClaireBear
Date: 29 Jan 03 - 06:48 PM

I've always believed that if we could actually isolate and play the Music of the Spheres, it would turn out to be the Ur-melody mentioned above -- the deities' ultimate joke: "nyah-nyah-neh-nyah-nyah!"

Isn't "Ur" one of those lost continents, like Atlantis? Or was that just in one of my father*'s trashy novels?

Claire

*Dad was a respected historian with a weakness for Edgar Rice Burroughs.

Subject: RE: Origins: songs that were just always here
From: *daylia*
Date: 29 Jan 03 - 11:16 PM

Webster's Dictionary lists "Ur" as "city of ancient Sumer; site in S Iraq NW of Basra."

Hmmm, seems Iraq's been just so 'tauntalizing' for a such a long long time ...

Subject: RE: Origins: songs that were just always here
From: Genie
Date: 29 Jan 03 - 11:27 PM

Dont' forget that "Nyah, nyah, nyah, nyah, nyah" is also "A tisket, a tasket," and "Tell Me A Story?" "It's Raining, It's Pouring," and "Ring Around A Rosey."


And how about "The Bear Went Over The Mountain," aka "For He's A Jolly Good Fellow," also used by Beethoven?

Genie

Subject: RE: Origins: songs that were just always here
From: JennyO
Date: 30 Jan 03 - 09:54 AM

Here are some different words for Freeze a jolly good fellow:

Let's all get drunk and run naked
Let's all get drunk and run naked
Let's all get drunk and run naked
And lay in a bloody great pile.

Thanks, Rhymin' Simon!

Subject: RE: Origins: songs that were just always here
From: GUEST,ClaireBear
Date: 30 Jan 03 - 01:19 PM

Dunno where I heard this, but I understand that the 5-note "Nyah-nyah-neh-nyah-nyah" tune is ubiquitous throughout the world as a children's playground tune. I specifically remember hearing that it's used in China ... can anyone confirm? (There MUST be a thread about this, but where to look?)

Anyway, that's what's behind my "Music of the Spheres" theory. And I'm only half kidding! It would be the ultimate cosmic joke.

ClaireBear