Things you say from songs

Subject: Things you say from songs
From: Cool Beans
Date: 07 Aug 04 - 11:48 AM

Talking with friends about when to see each other, my wife said, "Let's get together, yeah, yeah, yeah". And who among us has not said (especially to one's children)"You can't always get what you want, but if you try some time..." etc. etc.?
And I often say to our household feline companions, "Come in, cats, and check your hats"
Which song lyrics have beceome part of your speech?

Subject: RE: Things you say from songs
From: Mary in Kentucky
Date: 07 Aug 04 - 12:25 PM

Tomorrow is Sunday,
Monday is the day
That your captain will call you
And you must obey...

Over the river and through the woods
To grandmother's house we go...

CEL-E-BRATE, CEL-E-BRATE...

Subject: RE: Things you say from songs
From: Geoff the Duck
Date: 07 Aug 04 - 12:27 PM

Okay! You've got me...
What songs are the lines from?
Quack!
Geoff the (slightly perplexed) Duck.

Subject: RE: Things you say from songs
From: Jeri
Date: 07 Aug 04 - 12:28 PM

My mom used to be fond of 'que sera, sera'. Unfortunately, I sort of adopted it, and it's not a good thing. Too close to "the will of Allah" or just plain old "yeah...whatever." It may actually be countered by "but if you try sometimes, you just might find, you get what you need."

I, and a lot of people I know have adopted 'good, though' as it was used in...well, it was originally a Utah Phillips story (Moose Turd Pie), not a song. I think it's a song now, though.

Subject: RE: Things you say from songs
From: The Shambles
Date: 07 Aug 04 - 02:07 PM

This is a bit chicken and egg. Don't the things we say appear in songs-or is this not 'necessarily so'?

Subject: RE: Things you say from songs
From: Geoff the Duck
Date: 07 Aug 04 - 03:45 PM

Actually - thinking about it, when I first met the lady who later became Mrs.Duck our conversations almost always consisted of lines from songs. It bacame a bit embarrassing when we were making romantic comments, and almost every one of them had already been used and published. It made it hard to take the process of being romantic seriously.

Mind you - I also come from a background of scientific research papers, so I expect any quote to be accompanied by reference to chapter and verse of the original.
Quack!
GtD.

Subject: RE: Things you say from songs
From: michaelr
Date: 07 Aug 04 - 03:49 PM

I've been saying "same as it ever was" in place of "same as always" ever since that Talking Heads song came out.

Cheers,
Michael

Subject: RE: Things you say from songs
From: SINSULL
Date: 07 Aug 04 - 03:51 PM

There but for fortune...

Subject: RE: Things you say from songs
From: fat B****rd
Date: 07 Aug 04 - 04:04 PM

"it aint the meat, it's the motion" and "I shake my head and slowly walk away" crop up in my pretentious everyday speech.

Subject: RE: Things you say from songs
From: Cool Beans
Date: 07 Aug 04 - 04:10 PM

"Let's get together, yeah, yeah, yeah" is from "Let's Get Together" from the movie "The Parent Trap." "Come in cats and check your hats" is from Fats Waller's "The Joint is Jumpin'".

Subject: RE: Things you say from songs
From: Metchosin
Date: 07 Aug 04 - 04:43 PM

Build a little birdhouse in your soul
Take a load off Fanny
Independant as a hog on ice

and as above, Same as it ever was.

Subject: RE: Things you say from songs
From: Metchosin
Date: 07 Aug 04 - 04:50 PM

All you ever do is blather and smoke....

Don't know if it counts, but stuff from Firesign Theatre seems to crop up too, like:

Where things are more truly real than when you drive by

and

Bailiff, whack his peepee.

Subject: RE: Things you say from songs
From: Little Robyn
Date: 07 Aug 04 - 05:40 PM

'See you later aligator' from the song of the same name.
Sometimes with other bits added -
'In a while crocodile'
'Too soon baboon'
Or from the kids - 'See you later aligator, don't forget your toilet paper.' They always thought it was hilarious.
Our family always had lots of these sayings, many of them not PC, especially from Charlie Drake. I think my Mum was the main culprit, tho' we added our favourites too.
Robyn

Subject: RE: Things you say from songs
From: Jerry Rasmussen
Date: 07 Aug 04 - 05:42 PM

There are many lines from hymns that crop up in my mind, not always spoken aloud. It works the other way for songwriters, too. I found myself saying "Whatever it takes..." until it morphed into the first line of a song I wrote. I don't sing the song often, but I find that the phrase keeps surfacing in my mind... again, often not spoken.

Jerry

Subject: RE: Things you say from songs
From: GUEST
Date: 07 Aug 04 - 06:36 PM

It ain't what you do it's the way that you do it....that's what get results.

Subject: RE: Things you say from songs
From: Joybell
Date: 07 Aug 04 - 08:07 PM

Quite often True-love and I have whole conversations that are lines from songs. We don't go a day without using lots of them. It's hard to use the more flowery ones, that I favour, in public but I think them at people. I pass a pair of strangers walking hand in hand and I think, "He took her by her lily-white hand...." or after ordering lunch at the local cafe I add silently, "....that we may have our dinner sweet, That we may have our dinner sweet". Joy

Subject: RE: Things you say from songs
From: Bert
Date: 07 Aug 04 - 08:15 PM

Yes Jeri, our family use "Good Though" quite a lot.

Subject: RE: Things you say from songs
From: GUEST
Date: 07 Aug 04 - 08:33 PM

Would you please share information about who recorded the song "See you later Aligator" and when.

Thanks.

I always thought this rhyming saying came from African American jive talk.

I remember saying "See ya later, aligator" to which someone might respond "After while, crocodile." Another rhyming statement like this is "What's the word, mocking bird?" to which someone might respond "What I said, cabbage head."

As to words from songs that might find its unwelcome way into conversations , how about "Don't worry, be happy."

Subject: RE: Things you say from songs
From: Little Robyn
Date: 07 Aug 04 - 09:05 PM

See you later alligator was sung by Bill Hayley back in 1956.
This is meant to be a blicky but I don't think it works for me.
http://www.rockabillyeurope.com/lyrics4/s0016.htm
Robyn

Subject: RE: Things you say from songs
From: Joe_F
Date: 07 Aug 04 - 10:44 PM

Utah Phillips did not invent the joke that ends "Good, though". He merely moved it, rather implausibly, from a Maine lumber camp to a southwestern railroad crew. Mooseturds in Arizona?

It's a very good joke, IMO -- wit, malice, & humor.

A line I quote fairly often is: This. I know. From nothing.

Subject: RE: Things you say from songs
From: katlaughing
Date: 07 Aug 04 - 11:47 PM

Straighten up and fly right was one I used to hear my parents use once in awhile

Teach your children well

R-E-S-P-E-C-T!

Goodnight, Irene

Ace in the hole

Let your smile be your umbrella

Subject: RE: Things you say from songs
From: fat B****rd
Date: 10 Aug 04 - 02:25 PM

See Ya Later Alligator was written by Robert Guidry who later became Bobby Charles.

Subject: RE: Things you say from songs
From: Matt_R
Date: 10 Aug 04 - 02:34 PM

Good god...I can speak in whole conversations using nothing but song quotes.

Subject: RE: Things you say from songs
From: PoppaGator
Date: 10 Aug 04 - 02:42 PM

For those of us not in the know, can anyone relate the Utah Phillips joke/story?

Subject: RE: Things you say from songs
From: mike the knife
Date: 10 Aug 04 - 02:48 PM

"lend me ten bucks (pounds) and I'll buy you a drink"
"Same as it ever was"
"noone speaks English and everything's broken"

and many more that elude me...

Subject: RE: Things you say from songs
From: Wyrd Sister
Date: 10 Aug 04 - 04:05 PM

"Normal? If you're normal I intend to be a freak for the rest of my life!" (see Bonzo thread)

Subject: RE: Things you say from songs
From: Cluin
Date: 10 Aug 04 - 04:10 PM

"Gonna get me some strange."

---from an old Kristofferson song ("Gettin' By, High, and Strange")



Incidentally, an anagram of Kris Kristofferson = Risk foreskin frost

Subject: RE: Things you say from songs
From: Blackcatter
Date: 10 Aug 04 - 04:26 PM

Not the exact version Utah recorded but:

In a younger life, Utah worked on a railroad. He was what was called a "gandy dancer," a man who used a lever to raise a rail so that people could work on rail-road ties and the road bed. Well, one of the unspoken jobs was that of cook. It was unspoken because it was not in the job descriptions of gandy dancers and some one had to cook or people would starve.

The result is that the person who complained the most got to cook the
meals. So Utah was made cook. He hated it.

One day, UP was crossing a meadow when he found a giant moose turd (fece). UP resolved that he was tired of being the cook.

So he rolled the turd back to the caboose (he was much more descriptive of this), where he made a beautiful pie shell, plopped the turd inside, and covered it with a beautiful crust.

Over dinner, the other workers ate their food. One of the meanest looking, most powerful guys was there. They were expecting a good dinner after a hard day of work. UP gave everyone slices of the pie without telling them. He was hoping to jog some to take the job from him. The big mean guy took his fork and placed a big slice into his mouth and started chewing. The big mean guy burst out and shouted:
"My God, that's moose turd pie! . . . It's good, though."

Subject: RE: Things you say from songs
From: PoppaGator
Date: 10 Aug 04 - 04:39 PM

Blackcatter, thank you. Made my day!

Subject: RE: Things you say from songs
From: Nerd
Date: 11 Aug 04 - 02:01 AM

The folklorist/singer Saul Broudy did his whole dissertation on the Moose-Turd Pie joke. It had graphs of audience reaction and all kind of fancy analysis!

Coincidentally, I did MY folklore dissertation on the way folkloric phrases (like "See you later, alligator") enter pop culture, and then often become folkloric phrases again. I focused mainly on proverbs, though, so "see you later" was not actually one of my examples.

Bill Haley did a lot of songs based on children's folklore. In addition to "See You Later" he did songs on "pat-a-cake," "here we go round the mulberry bush," and other rhymes.

And Cluin, sad but true: an anagram of my real name: penis with neck!

Subject: RE: Things you say from songs
From: GUEST,Wesley S
Date: 11 Aug 04 - 07:29 PM

I'm fond of saying "You don't need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows"

Subject: RE: Things you say from songs
From: Bert
Date: 11 Aug 04 - 08:14 PM

Here's a quarter, call someone who cares.

Looking through the entries above I was surprised to see Ace in a Hole. I thought "No one sings that nowadays - last person I heard was Sparky". Then I saw who had posted it.

Subject: RE: Things you say from songs
From: Gorgeous Gary
Date: 11 Aug 04 - 08:24 PM

"What was I thinking?" a-la Christine Lavin.

And in the mornings, I can often be heard muttering the "blah-blah-blah-blah-blah-blah-blah-blah" from the chorus of the Austin Lounge Lizards' "Old Blevins" as I stagger towards the bathroom.

And probably dozens of others; I just can't think of them at the moment. After all, "Every line a straight line, every pause a song cue" is one of my personal mottos (not from a song mind you, but still a motto...).

-- Gary

Subject: RE: Things you say from songs
From: GUEST,KingBufu
Date: 19 Aug 04 - 05:23 PM

Here is a link to the audio of Moose Turd Pie:

http://www.utahphillips.org/stuff/mooseturdpie.mp3

"It's Good Though" is a staple of my vocabulary.

Subject: RE: Things you say from songs
From: Cluin
Date: 19 Aug 04 - 05:44 PM

I just dropped in to see what condition my condition was in.

Subject: RE: Things you say from songs
From: Myrtle
Date: 19 Aug 04 - 05:49 PM

I tend to use "I think I'm going slightly mad" quite frequently, also "no retreat baby, no surrender" !

Subject: RE: Things you say from songs
From: GUEST,Claire
Date: 19 Aug 04 - 05:52 PM

"no none ever said it was gonna be easy"

Subject: RE: Things you say from songs
From: Ellenpoly
Date: 19 Aug 04 - 06:00 PM

"You can't always get what you want..."

Subject: RE: Things you say from songs
From: JennyO
Date: 19 Aug 04 - 10:33 PM

talking about my political leanings: "It's not easy being green"

Subject: RE: Things you say from songs
From: fleabag
Date: 20 Aug 04 - 06:48 AM

I am forever using lines from Monty Python songs "Always Look On the Bright Side" and also Rogers and Hammerstein oldies (There is nothing like a dame or I'm Just A girl who can't say no). The seem built to supply quotes - Also Muppet songs as mentioned above - I can't resist quoting I never harmed an onion every time I peel one.

You could indeed create your daily conversations wholly from songwords, just watch them on Whose Line Is It Anyway.

Subject: RE: Things you say from songs
From: Roger the Skiffler
Date: 20 Aug 04 - 09:06 AM

(Bert, I still "do" Ace in the Hole!)
"I just don't look good naked anymore"

among many others, some already mentioned.

RtS

Subject: RE: Things you say from songs
From: HRH ted of hull
Date: 20 Aug 04 - 09:14 AM

Step right up and be a smarty, come and join the Nazi party.

Subject: RE: Things you say from songs
From: Cool Beans
Date: 20 Aug 04 - 09:42 AM

HRH Ted,
    How exactky do you work that one into conversation? I bet even Mel Brooks couldn't do that.

Subject: RE: Things you say from songs
From: HRH ted of hull
Date: 20 Aug 04 - 09:44 AM

Easy! I'm a member of the gay wing of the BNP!

Subject: RE: Things you say from songs
From: Steve Parkes
Date: 20 Aug 04 - 10:02 AM

I do it all the time ... only trouble is, my kids aren't old enough to remember most of the songs and Mrs P is ... of the wrong taste to know them. Someone on a book club forum asked me if i was somebody-or-other (I use a pseudonym there) and I replied "It ain't me babe, no, no, no" ... and got a frosty silence in return. (Might have been a warm silence, and my imagination turned the temp down.)

Yeah, alligator/crocodile was Jive talk; not thawe had it here in the UK, but it filtered down through films (and maybe "Life with the Lyons"). Not a song, but overheard at a beat party:
1st beatnik Like, make with the cake, Jake.
2nd beatnik Cake's all gone, John.
1st beatnik Crazy man! Gimme two slices!

Subject: RE: Things you say from songs
From: Doug Chadwick
Date: 20 Aug 04 - 01:44 PM

When my kids were small, if they had a fall from a bike or some other minor tragedy that resulted in no real damage other than to their pride, I would respond with

    pick yourself up, dust yourself off, start all over again

My eldest daughter was in her twenties when the song came on the radio. The look of surprise on her face, when those oh too familiar words came out of the speakers, was a joy to behold.


Doug C

Subject: RE: Things you say from songs
From: JennieG
Date: 21 Aug 04 - 01:16 AM

A thousand years ago, when I was in high school and we all sang "See you later alligator", our French teacher came out with "Toute a l'heure, alligateur" - I'm not sure about the spelling - but I have used it ever since. It's worth it for the stunned looks it produces.

Cheers
JennieG

Subject: RE: Things you say from songs
From: Dave'sWife
Date: 16 Mar 07 - 12:58 AM

while this is not from a song, a guy I used to date was fond of saying (with regard to his graphically violent novels and short stories) :

"If you can't stand the meat, get out of the abattoir" (french for slaughterhouse).

That phrase leaked over into the film business (in which my husband works and I used to work) and now film folk we know use it to tell eachother they are in the wrong business if they are complaining about violence or violent content.

of course, it's a variation on "if you can't stand the heat, get out of the kitchen."

Subject: RE: Things you say from songs
From: fat B****rd
Date: 16 Mar 07 - 03:50 AM

My shit's f***ed up.

Subject: RE: Things you say from songs
From: Scrump
Date: 16 Mar 07 - 04:35 AM

I sometimes say to people I meet "Semolina pilchard climbing up the Eiffel tower, elementary penguin singing Hare Krishna".

They never know what the heck I'm talking about and bugger off pretty sharpish.