The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #64154   Message #1047702
Posted By: Dave Bryant
04-Nov-03 - 11:50 AM
Thread Name: Enrage Your Audience Stories?
Subject: RE: Enrage Your Audience Stories?
I have been quite a few pubs which have displayed signs along the lines of:

Any badly behaved or uncontrolled children will be sold into slavery.

Several songs which I sing have words which would not be acceptable to some polite company. I tend to vary which words I use depending on the audience. In the "lobster Song" I get much more of a laugh by using the word "leg" rather than the word that would rhyme with "grunt". Mind you if I subsequently used the supressed word instead of a word to rhyme with leg, it would bring the house down and probably cause very little offence - once they laugh, they can hardly show outrage.

Mind you I was once chided by an American Tourist for using the word "bloody" in the song "With her head tucked underneath her arm" - when I explained that "The Bloody Tower" was a location in the Tower of London, she told her husband that he should cross it off their itinery. Unless I was singing specifically for children, I would be very loathed to change the words of any traditional song to make it more acceptable.

I was very amused by the quote "Do you realise that every song you sang was heterosexual thereby excluding a large percentage of the female population?". Surely the female who made it, was excluding the percentage of the male population who happen to be gay as well. Since a large percentage of traditional songs are about heterosexual relationships, perhaps she should find some other genre of music.

My most embarassing moment was when I asked for a lady to help me sing "I touched her on the toe" a stunningly attractive girl volunteered. It was only when I got to the last line of the chorus that I realised that she was black. Since then I have always sung "My darling draw near" rather than the very non PC original.