Silly requests

Subject: Silly requests
From: Joybell
Date: 14 Nov 03 - 12:30 AM

I spent a lot of years working in restaurants and worked, close to customers, singing requests with a guitar or banjo. I had many silly requests, including duet pieces like "Duelling Banjos" - when I was alone, but I think the weirdest were:
                      Do you do "Chipmonk songs?"
                                 "Any low songs?" (I am a soprano)
                                 "Any Torvil and Dean?"
Usually the requests came from well-meaning customers who liked me and so I rarely was able to give suitable responses.
What are other singers'/musicians' silliest requests? With suitable responses if you like.

Subject: RE: Silly requests
From: Alaska Mike
Date: 14 Nov 03 - 01:24 AM

Hi Joybell   I was playing guitar and singing ballads in a quiet coffee house in Tucson one time when a young man, quite seriously, ask me to play Inna Godda Govida. I told him I didn't even know how to spell it. Still don't.

Mike

Subject: RE: Silly requests
From: Joybell
Date: 14 Nov 03 - 01:33 AM

Hello Mike, Sounds interesting. Is it related to "Mister Saturday Dance" do you suppose? If you ever find it I'd love to know. Joy

Subject: RE: Silly requests
From: Blackcatter
Date: 14 Nov 03 - 01:44 AM

Torvil and Dean - weren't they ice skaters?

Subject: RE: Silly requests
From: GUEST,Clint Keller
Date: 14 Nov 03 - 02:20 AM

I'm not a performer, but I did have an interesting request from my little niece Gabrielle. I was in the living room with my guitar and she said "Can you sing 'Jesse Chair'?"

I said "I'm not sure I know it; how does it go?"

She sang "Jesse Chair / Had a little horse -- don't you know it?"

"No, where'd you hear it?"

"I just now made it up."

clint

Subject: RE: Silly requests
From: Kevin Sheils
Date: 14 Nov 03 - 12:03 PM

Well as it's a restuarant

Do you do "Chipmonk songs?"

Tell them there's no Chip Monk on the premises but in the kitchen there is a Fish Friar

"Any low songs?"

Sweet Chariot?

"Any Torvil and Dean?"

I'd skate around that one, or get the Fish Friar back.

Subject: RE: Silly requests
From: Joybell
Date: 14 Nov 03 - 03:26 PM

Yes Blackcatter, Ice skaters alright! I can only assume that they skated to music that the requester liked. Can't imagine it would have been played by one voice and a guitar though.
Kevin I like those answers. I thought about the "low songs" and was tempted to tell them "No because I am the High Priestess Nefertiti"
Clint what a lovely story. Did she teach you her song? Gabrielle's request is not very different from the adults who told me "You must know it, it's my favourite song!"

Subject: RE: Silly requests
From: Amergin
Date: 14 Nov 03 - 03:36 PM

they probably meant bolero....rofl

Subject: RE: Silly requests
From: GUEST,ClaireBear
Date: 14 Nov 03 - 03:40 PM

Once my band was entertaining at a Renaissance-themed feast for (I kid you not) the middle management of K-Mart.

One particularly drunken lout asked us to sing him "a mandrill." It probably should have occurred to us that he meant "madrigal," but it didn't, so after giving it a few minutes' thought we sang the Watersons' "I Went to Market," adding a verse about apes with large, spectacularly colored behinds.

It did not go over especially well.

Subject: RE: Silly requests
From: TheBigPinkLad
Date: 14 Nov 03 - 03:53 PM

The late Peter Sellers related in a Michael Parkinson interview how a comment from a punter was the final straw to his giving up the music biz. He played drums in a jazz outfit (Spike Milligan was the trumpet player and Harry Egington (yes, he of ying-tong fame) was the singer. Circa 1945 at a gig in Birmingham, England, someone went up to Sellers and stared for a minute:

Punter: "Kin yow play 'Any umber-rellas?'" (they have strange accents)

Sellers: "No, sorry, we don't know that one."

Punter: "Shit fice."

Subject: RE: Silly requests
From: Nigel Parsons
Date: 14 Nov 03 - 03:55 PM

Torvill & Dean also skated to something from (I think) "Barnum", probably singable and entitled "Follow The Band", or "Come, follow The Band"

Come on some Ice Skating fans, help me out here!

Nigel

Subject: RE: Silly requests
From: PeteBoom
Date: 14 Nov 03 - 04:03 PM

Hah - "Can youse guys play that one that goes (tunelessly) dumm-dumm-dumm-dumm-DUUUUUUUUUUM-dumm-dumm-dumm." So we played the flogging reel... ;-)

Pete

Subject: RE: Silly requests
From: Amergin
Date: 14 Nov 03 - 04:14 PM

my silly requests are always the same....to shut up.

Subject: RE: Silly requests
From: Cluin
Date: 14 Nov 03 - 04:14 PM

Yeah, I always get a kick out of those folks that come up and request some obscure song their grandfather used to sing and when you say "Sorry. Don't know that one.." and are about to suggest something else that might be related to it, they insist on singing the song to you right there and then, totally tunelessly, in the middle of your set, and really think you're going to learn it like that.

The only ones worse are the ones who come up and wave you over to talk, while you are still in the middle of singing a verse or chorus.

"Hey buddy! I'm workin' here! Maybe I should come to your office Monday and throw tennis balls at you while you're trying to talk on the phone or do your books"

Subject: RE: Silly requests
From: Louie Roy
Date: 14 Nov 03 - 04:39 PM

Like the old story goes about the guy playing in a bar and after returning from the restroom a lady came over and asked him if he knew (his pants were unsipped and his balls were showing)and he replied no but if you'll humm a few bars I'll sure try to play it

Subject: RE: Silly requests
From: fat B****rd
Date: 14 Nov 03 - 04:44 PM

Afriend of mine played bass in an organ bass drums trio. One night after the organist had played his best Jimmy Smith number a bloke came up and asked him "Can't you plair summat wi' a bit a tune to it"

Subject: RE: Silly requests
From: Cluin
Date: 14 Nov 03 - 05:00 PM

"Can you play something good now?"

Sorry. All we know is crap.


"Youse Guys SUCK!"

Well, you swallow.


"I wanna hear "I'm An Asshole"!"

Okay... You're an asshole. We get some strange requests, folks...


"Free Bird! Free Bird! Free Bird!"

Plane Crash! Plane Crash! Plane Crash!



All true quotes from our gigs (although some were just friends and acquaintances joking with us).

Subject: RE: Silly requests
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 14 Nov 03 - 05:01 PM

"Low" songs maybe meant bawdy? Should have slapped his face...

Subject: RE: Silly requests
From: Burke
Date: 14 Nov 03 - 06:04 PM

Joybell, Inna Godda Govida is a real song & was well known. It was not an appropriate request. In-a-gadda-da-vida (I looked it up) is a 17 minute rock song by Iron Butterfly from 1968. It's one of the few albums I ever bought in High School.

Subject: RE: Silly requests
From: Alaska Mike
Date: 14 Nov 03 - 06:25 PM

Thanks Burke, that has plaqued me for decades. I remember the song vividly, just never saw it spelled before. Got to write that down.

Mike

Subject: RE: Silly requests
From: GUEST,Clint Keller
Date: 14 Nov 03 - 07:58 PM

No, I never learned "Jesse Chair." Gabrielle dismissed me when she found I was ignorant. A few years earlier she caused a lot of innocent mirth by not being able to pronounce my name. Called me "Uncle C*nt," (to put it as politely as I can).

Gabby was a jewel.She's all grown up now and has a lively & lovely daughter of her own, and it serves her right.

clint

Subject: RE: Silly requests
From: Mr Happy
Date: 14 Nov 03 - 08:51 PM

a guy with a mediocre guitar style & also not in tune with anynody else was in our local sesh & asked us to join in with 'Angel'.

We didn't know it.

He seemed astonihed, he said 'you MUST know it!'


Nope.

& still don't.

Subject: RE: Silly requests
From: GUEST
Date: 14 Nov 03 - 10:25 PM

"butch" Wunderlich showed me the best answer to "Can you play dueling banjos?" We heard that request from somewhere in the darkened (thank God) audience and he leaped to his feet, grasped his banjo by the tone rime brace and weilding it like an epee challenged me with "en garde". Took me a full ten minutes before I could stop laughing. If I had a dollar for every time I have been asked to play Dueling Banjos (and, damn it, there is just the ONE banjo!!!!) I'd buy a Gibson Mastertone.

Once I hollored back; "Squeal like a pig!"

CBW/OC (without cookie)

Subject: RE: Silly requests
From: Sorcha
Date: 14 Nov 03 - 11:04 PM

Oh we get Dueling Banjos all the time and we do it with 2 banjos...as it should have been done...my least favorites are Orang Blossom Special (we have all REFUSED to learn it) and, of course, Danny Boy....

Weirdest I ever heard of was at a bar in Atlantic City, South Pass Wyoming....rich, very drunk private pilot kept asking for Dueling Banjos....every time he asked, he put a $100 bill in the tip jar, so they kept playing it.......made over $1,000 that night.....

Our standard response...'No, we don't know that one but we know another one with a lot of the same notes...."

Subject: RE: Silly requests
From: M.Ted
Date: 15 Nov 03 - 01:35 AM

To some it may seem strange, but I always enjoyed playing requests--I liked it so much that I used to stroll the tables and ask for requests. This meant that when someone asked for something while I was doing a set, I could just say, "I'll come over later".

Usually I'd only do a verse (if I knew it), and then the chorus a couple of times(which was almost always enough to make people happy)--then move on to something else--

I certainly would have done "In A Gadda Da Vidda"(which, apparently, was a deliberate garbling of "In the Garden of Eden") but no one ever asked me for it.--For "Dueling Banjoes", I'd usually just Travis pick the melody(which is enough for people to recognize it) and then say, "Sorry, I don't know it", which was good for both a laugh and a tip.

When someone wanted to do the singing thing, I accompanied them, and then got their table to join in with them. Also good for a tip and a lot of laughs.

Once, I was asked for "Running Bear" , "Sink the Bismark" and "Please, Mr. Custer" by the same table--they didn't think I knew them, but I surprised them. There was a chef who always used to ask me to do "Purple Rain" as a country song--

For a while, I played Russian gypsy music in a duet--when we strolled , we would be asked to play "Somewhere, My Love" and "Those Were The Days" at almost every table. We also got a lot of requests for "Sunrise, Sunset", and everyone always sang along--

Subject: RE: Silly requests
From: M.Ted
Date: 15 Nov 03 - 01:40 AM

Just read my post, and realized that it sounds like I did the worst lounge show you ever saw-there was more to it than that, though--at least I think there was!

Subject: RE: Silly requests
From: Blackcatter
Date: 15 Nov 03 - 01:50 AM

Yeah - we believe you Ted . . . really, we do.

Which airport Ramada did you play in again?

Subject: RE: Silly requests
From: Joybell
Date: 15 Nov 03 - 05:14 AM

Just as I thought. It doesn't matter which side of the world you are on the experiences are so familiar. I too actually enjoyed doing requests and the silly ones were not as numeruos as the reasonable ones - just funnier. I once earned $50 (Aus.) not quite as much as you Sorcha, by singing "The Tenessee Waltz" three times over for the same drunk. He liked crying into his beer. "Danny Boy" has many wonderful memories and I have never tired of singing it. Once I told a group of diners that I had always wanted to shatter glass with my voice just before I sang "Danny Boy" for them. At the very point of the high note at the end, someone on the other side of the restaurant,who couldn't have heard my comment, dropped a glass on the floor and it broke with a loud crash. Wonderful!

Subject: RE: Silly requests
From: Alaska Mike
Date: 15 Nov 03 - 11:05 AM

My mother could actually shatter a glass with her voice when I was a kid. My Uncle Walter (Not the bear dancer) would try to encourage her to do it each year at our big Thanksgiving feast. My mother finally told him that he would have to bring the glass if he wanted it shattered, and it would have to be very expensive, delicate crystal for it to work. Uncle Walt brought a very nice crystal goblet to dinner that year and mom's voice shattered it spectacularly. Then for several years he brought in various pieces for her to break. None of these would shatter and mom would tell him that he should have spent more money and brought in a nicer piece. He finally got the message and quit asking.

Thanks for rekindling this old memory,
Mike

Subject: RE: Silly requests
From: C-flat
Date: 15 Nov 03 - 02:35 PM

The post from The Big Pink Lad reminds me of another one of Peter Sellars' stories (or it might have been Milligan) about a request for "That's what you are"
The band leader said it didn't sound familiar but he'd check his pad and if they had it they would play it.
After a quick, but fruitless, search, they continued with their planned set list only to be approached again by the same man, insisting that they MUST know "That's what you are" as it was a famous hit.
Again the band leader explained that, despite the mans' insistence, neither he or any of the band were familiar with the song.
Eventually the band leader, out of desperation, suggested that the man sing a couple of bars of the tune to help identify it, at which he began to sing............
"UNFORGETTABLE, That's what you are...."

Subject: RE: Silly requests
From: Firecat
Date: 15 Nov 03 - 03:25 PM

"Torvill & Dean also skated to something from (I think) "Barnum", probably singable and entitled "Follow The Band", or "Come, follow The Band""

Not 100% on those, but when I went to see them at Sheffield Arena when I was 10, they did a routine to some stuff out of "Mack And Mabel" and they won a bronze at the Lillehammer Winter Olympics with a routine to "Let's Face The Music And Dance", so that's probably what the requests were for.

Subject: RE: Silly requests
From: bill\sables
Date: 15 Nov 03 - 04:46 PM

I used to play with a fellow who took requests from the floor and expected me to know them all, One night he was asked to sing "Itchy Fanny" by a drunk, He couldn't think of any song by that name and nor could I. When he asked the drunk to sing a few lines he came up with a Cliff Richard song "It's so Funny, why we don't speak any more"

Subject: RE: Silly requests
From: Joybell
Date: 15 Nov 03 - 05:11 PM

Mike, what a great story. Christmas is coming perhaps I could try the trick for real on my kids.
Firecat and others re Torvill and Dean. Yes I thought that might be the case but it still seemed a bit funny. People are usually a bit more specific. The Chipmonk request still puzzles me. When they ask for songs like Chipmonk songs it can't be for the songs themselves, surely.
I like "Itchy Fanny" - it's a bit like "By Me a Biscuit Shane" except that's deliberate.
I did get deliberate joke-title requests along with requests for "Running Bear" so that they could all sing "Without his pants on" at the end of EVERY line.
I've just remembered that I once was asked for a popular standup comic's routine. A comedian who didn't sing! They wanted his routine!

Subject: RE: Silly requests
From: Don Firth
Date: 15 Nov 03 - 05:38 PM

         I recall a hoot decades ago in a big houseboat down on Seattle's Lake Union. A couple dozen people there and eight or ten singers. One fellow named Chuck brought this ditzy little chick: wide-eyed, all boobs and butt, no brain, just ganglia. After we got well under way, she said, "Do any of you know any fast songs?" So we tried various things that really moved along: square dance songs, that sort of thing. After a few of these, again she asked, "Does anybody know any fast songs?" We dredged our memories and tried again, but she just sat there looking disappointed. So, with a shrug of the shoulders we pressed on.
        Later in the evening one of the fellows who knew several songs from Oscar Brand's Bawdy Songs and Backroom Ballads and a few from Ed McCurdy's Dalliance series launched into one of his riper ditties. She perked right up.
        "That's what I mean!" she said gleefully. "Fast songs!"
        "Fast," i.e., dirty!
        Late in the evening, things began breaking up. As Chuck led her toward the door, she was pretty bleary-eyed and tottery, having consumed copious quantities of liquid refreshment.
        A few days later I ran into Chuck        
         "Uh . . . how did it go?" I asked him, the possibility of a recitation of lurid details piquing my prurient interest.
        "Not good," he growled. "As soon as I got her into my car, she barfed all over the front seat!"
        
        Tales from the Good Old Days.

Don Firth

Subject: RE: Silly requests
From: Gareth
Date: 15 Nov 03 - 07:01 PM

Mmmm ! - And from the floor 'Can you do "Over the hills and far away" - With actions !'

Yup - UK 'Catters know how baaaaad I am !!!

Gareth

Subject: RE: Silly requests
From: Ebbie
Date: 15 Nov 03 - 08:31 PM

Rather than Torvil and Dean, might the fan have been asking for something from 'Jan and Dean'? Just a thought.

Subject: RE: Silly requests
From: Blackcatter
Date: 16 Nov 03 - 02:11 AM

How bout Dean & Martin - no wait . . .

Subject: RE: Silly requests
From: M.Ted
Date: 17 Nov 03 - 12:51 AM

It seems to me that one we used to do a version of"The Sheik of Araby" where the audience was encouraged to respond with "with no pants on"--it never occurred to me how well it fits with "Running Bear"--

As to the "Torvill and Dean"--I remember once at a party someone calling "Brooks and Dunn" "Something and Dean"--could be that--

Subject: RE: Silly requests
From: Joybell
Date: 17 Nov 03 - 01:28 AM

Actually "without his/her/your pants on" fits with lots of songs. It does fit quite well with "Running Bare/Bear" but it's only barely funny for barely a minute or so.
Torvil and Dean was what the customer wanted alright - it was when they were touring Australia and very popular. As for the Chipmonks - well I never fathomed that one.

Subject: RE: Silly requests
From: JennyO
Date: 17 Nov 03 - 08:49 AM

One of my favourite bands has been known to say "We've just had a request, but we're going to play anyway."

From Martin Pearson (well known here for his comedy routines) -

'Drunk "Dju do requests?"

Martin "No"

Drunk "Good - dju do Tubular Bells?"

Subject: RE: Silly requests
From: Doug Chadwick
Date: 17 Nov 03 - 03:26 PM

A request for something by Torvill & Dean does have a precedent. After their 1984 World Championship/Olympic successes in which they danced the free programme to Bolero, my sister-in-law bought a record that was clearly labeled as

                                        "Ravel's Bolero by Torvill & Dean"


It made it into the UK charts.


Doug C

Subject: RE: Silly requests
From: Thomas the Rhymer
Date: 17 Nov 03 - 04:16 PM

After playing for a few hours, a woman comes up and asks... "could you play something that I've heard before?"... I say well, sure... what would you like to hear? She says... "I don't care what it is... I just want to hear you play something that I know"... ttr

Subject: RE: Silly requests
From: Joybell
Date: 17 Nov 03 - 04:35 PM

Doug, You may have it! Thank you.
Thomas, yes I actually got that kind of request sometimes.
JennyO, Martin Pearson is a master when it comes to hecklers isn't he? Of course because he's so good at the quick comeback he gets repeat offenders who feed him the same lines. Hell of a job comedy!

Related to the silly request is the silly question. I was once asked,"What are you doing with that voice?" I took it as a compliment but I said "I use it for singing, but sometimes for speaking and sometimes for calling the dog." And while we're on dogs - a lady who was leaving the resturant at the same time as I was spotted my German Shepherd waiting in my car. She said, "Better than a man dear! Better than a man!" No comeback for that one.

Subject: RE: Silly requests
From: Don Firth
Date: 17 Nov 03 - 05:55 PM

Jean Redpath has had a nearly forty year career of doing concerts and making recordings. She said that once during a reception after one of her concerts, a woman, apparently of the opera, art song persuasion, commented to her, "You have such a lovely voice. Have you ever thought of doing anything with it?"

Don Firth

Subject: RE: Silly requests
From: Joybell
Date: 17 Nov 03 - 06:09 PM

So even singers like Jean Redpath get that question, Don. I wonder if Dame Nellie Melba was ever asked if she sang blues. I would make that "folk songs" but I know she was expected to sing them.

Subject: RE: Silly requests
From: JennyO
Date: 17 Nov 03 - 10:59 PM

Joybell, John Warner and I love going to Martin Pearson concerts. We know he is always going to have a witty comeback for the hecklers. In fact, we have been known to heckle him, just to see what he says. He knows John, so it is all in good humour.

We also like to sit in the front row and heckle the Wheeze and Suck Band. They expect it of us.

Jenny

Subject: RE: Silly requests
From: Sandra in Sydney
Date: 18 Nov 03 - 08:59 AM

Joy - one of my friends was in UK a few years ago listening to something classical on the BBC when he heard the announcer intone that Roy Bailey was wasting his excellent voice by singing folk.

He passed this remark on to Roy when he next saw him, but I don't remember his answer.

sandra (ps Joy, we will be having Martin here in Sydney in a few weeks, singing the serious stuff, not doing comedy & I assume he might song some of John W's songs - I've heard him do several of them)

Subject: RE: Silly requests
From: Homeless
Date: 20 Nov 03 - 10:48 PM

From an Alvin and the Chipmonks album we had many years ago when I was a kid....


The Chipmonk Song

(all right you Chipmunks!
Ready to sing your song?
-I'll say we are!
-Yeah! -Let's sing it now!
Okay, Simon?
-Okay!
Okay, Theodore?
-Okay!
Okay, Alvin?
Alvin?
ALVIN!
-OKAY!!!)

Christmas, Christmas time is near
Time for toys and time for cheer
We've been good,
but we can't last
Hurry Christmas, hurry fast
Want a plane that loops the loop
Me, I want a hula hoop
We can hardly stand the wait
Please Christmas, don't be late.

(Okay fellas get ready.
That was very good,Simon
. -Naturally.
Very good Theodore. -Ahhh.
Ah, Alvin, you were a little flat, watch it.
Ah, Alvin. Alvin. ALVIN!
-OKAY.)

Want a plane that loops the loop
I still want a hula hoop
We can hardly stand the wait
Please Christmas,don't be late.
We can hardly stand the wait
Please Christmas, don't be late.

(Very good, boys
-Lets sing it again!
Yeah, lets sing it again!
No, That's enough, lets not overdo it
-What do you mean overdo it?
-We want to sing it again!
Now wait a minute, boys
-Why can't we sing it again?
-[chipmunk chatter]
Alvin, cut that out..
Theodore, just a minute.
Simon will you cut that out?
Boys...)

Subject: RE: Silly requests
From: GUEST,Tinker from Chicago
Date: 21 Nov 03 - 10:32 AM

In an American bar I was once asked by a lady to sing something in German. Before I could respond, her fiance, a German, said in English, "Don't be silly, dear. He's an Irishman. They never bother to learn other people's languages."
I turned to him and said, "Wirklich? Und viefiele Irische Woerter haben Sie?" which roughly means, "Really? And how many words of Irish do you know?" She laughed a lot. He didn't.

Subject: RE: Silly requests
From: Dave Bryant
Date: 21 Nov 03 - 10:48 AM

Once after I'd sung The Farmer's Boy, someone aked me if I knew any country songs.

I've often been asked the question "Is your voice trained ?" and my usual answer is "Well it never leaves any mess around the house."