songs that something ruined

Subject: songs that something ruined
From: Cara
Date: 27 Jul 99 - 12:40 PM

On the "Romantic Songs" thread, I said that "Lay Lady Lay" was ruined for me by listening to it with the wrong person. Yecchh. I hope someday to reclaim it (the song), but in the mean time, what songs have circumstances ruined for you? My story isn't that funny (Boy meets girl, boy buys girl drink, boy flirts with girl, boy plays "Lay Lady Lay", nah nah nah, blah, blah, blah, girl hates boy...)but I'm sure there are some funny ones out there.

Another time, a friend of mine was playing "The Band Played Waltzing Matilda", a song that always left me misty, and inserted an insulting verse about a mutual acquaintance of ours into it that cracked me up. The song has never been the same since.

Now you...

Subject: RE: songs that something ruined
From: Marion
Date: 27 Jul 99 - 01:07 PM

"The Times They Are A-Changing" lost much of its appeal when it became a Bank of Montreal jingle.

Also, the great pub hymn "Lord of the Dance" lost something when Michael Flatley (excuse me while I spit) decided it should be about him.

Marion

Subject: RE: songs that something ruined
From: Penny S.
Date: 27 Jul 99 - 01:33 PM

Marion, I thought I was the only one. Penny

Subject: RE: songs that something ruined
From: OSh
Date: 27 Jul 99 - 01:55 PM

Well, just about all the songs in Pulp Fiction and Resevior Dogs I have negative associations with now!

Funny how some parts of the films stick out in my mind w/ the songs come on!

John OSh

Subject: RE: songs that something ruined
From: GeorgeH
Date: 27 Jul 99 - 01:57 PM

Marion and Penny S: Nah, you have to join the queue for the Michael O'Flatulence appreciation club over the appropriation of "Lord of the Dance". (Except our state TV station seems to drool over him, to the extent of spending money on making programmes to flatter his ego and promote his derivative shows . . )

Oops, sorry, not a subject to get me started on . .

BTW what's this about it being a "Pub hymn" - that's a new one on me . .

G.

Subject: RE: songs that something ruined
From: Sheye
Date: 27 Jul 99 - 02:04 PM

Maybe not ruined, but definitely took on a different light, was "It's A Wonderful World" by the great Louis Armstrong, when it was played in Good Morning Vietnam, with shots of the world decaying and dying in the background.

Sheye

Subject: RE: songs that something ruined
From: Marion
Date: 27 Jul 99 - 02:24 PM

George, I call it a pub hymn because while I've always liked the song, the few times that I've heard it sung in church it has seemed out of place - the congregation seemed self-conscious singing it. On the other hand, I was once down at the Old Dublin Pub close to Easter and the band did Lord of the Dance and lots of people were up to dance - it felt just right then.

Speaking of Michael "Liberace on Speed" Flatley, his work just seems in poor taste to me generally. I do Celtic stepdancing myself, and it's definitely not supposed to be a male nipple dance.

(I don't mean to come across as a total purist - I loved Riverdance even though they move their arms sometimes.)

But I think Flatley's appropriation of the title "Lord of the Dance", which refers to Jesus Christ in the song, goes beyond tacky to irreverent.

Subject: RE: songs that something ruined
From: Cara
Date: 27 Jul 99 - 02:54 PM

John--

I'm with you on the "Reservoir Dogs" thing. That ear scene was utterly gruesome. I love the CD, but I can't get over the association of that scene with "Stuck in the Middle With You". Ugh.

Subject: RE: songs that something ruined
From: MAG (inactive)
Date: 27 Jul 99 - 04:32 PM

Here is a much more plebian example:

My most recent ex had a thing about having "our song;" 'course it took me about 6 months to find out I was the sixth in 2 years, and everybody had a "song" -- being a Kate Wolf fan, I shared her records, and --- you guessed it; "Give yourself to Love" became "Our" song.

Fortunately, I was a fan first, so "Great Divide," et. al. I still enjoy a lot.

I fing the whole concept banal, NOI for those of you who have an "our song."

MA

Subject: RE: songs that something ruined
From: Paul S
Date: 27 Jul 99 - 04:36 PM

Anytime that a song I like is put into a beer commercial. Example: I was mortally offended when Labatt's grabbed Smokestack Lightnin', a few years back.

Subject: RE: songs that something ruined
From: Rick Fielding
Date: 27 Jul 99 - 05:59 PM

Right after we'd listened to Willie Nelson sing "Whiskey River" live in concert my 4th wife told me she was in love with a married man who lived in Winnipeg.

Subject: RE: songs that something ruined
From: ivy b
Date: 27 Jul 99 - 06:56 PM

anyone who ever tries to sing 'all around my hat' in the company of myself and several friends tends to find they never get beyond the first verse because we all shout out on the last line 'because its my ****ing willow and its my ****ing hat' which i suppose has stopped an otherwise rather enjoyable song from being anything other than a giggle-fest. this is slightly off the point but these are some more ways to stop people requesting over sung songs :- start ' a holiday, a holiday and the first one of the year, Lord Donalds wife she stayed at home and decided to wash her hair'and then end, or start 'on the 14th of may at the down of the day /i had a shag in the woods' and then also end ; or for those people who STILL insist on asking for greensleeves, give them all 47 verses untill they plead with you to stop and promise never to ever mention it again. the last one is particularly succsessfull.

Subject: RE: songs that something ruined
From: Penny S.
Date: 27 Jul 99 - 08:02 PM

Here's another

Subject: RE: songs that something ruined
From: Penny S.
Date: 27 Jul 99 - 08:09 PM

Marion, First, I was disappointed by Flatley, because I had seen this absolutely brilliant Irish dancer (I don't know who) on Gaye Burne's show, in a tiny snatch at the end of something I video'd. He was dancing against an American black tap dancer, but what was amazing was that he did a Nijinsky - he went up and stayed up, briefly. And he was light and wiry and almost ethereal. Flatley isn't. I thought I was going to see that skill and I didn't. I also saw someone who, instead of his manner saying "Look at this", was saying "Look at me".

Somewhere there is a thread where I have posted about the BBC trail to his performance. I won't repeat it. I think I put it stronger than irreverent when I phoned them.

Penny

Subject: RE: songs that something ruined
From: Barry Finn
Date: 27 Jul 99 - 09:24 PM

Lizzy Linsay: She's gone with Lord Ronald MacDonald.

Lincoln Duncan: Just like a dog I was rear ended (befriended)

Sitting On Top Of The World: Shitting on top of a squirrel.

I can still sing Lizzy Linsay without the Ronald but I can't even hear the other two without hearing it rearranged now. Barry

Subject: RE: songs that something ruined
From: Bugsy
Date: 27 Jul 99 - 11:17 PM

A while ago I was in a Folk Club In Australia and a guy who was just learning he guitar and who always read the words (you know) did the worst version of "The Wreck of the Edmond Fitzgerald" I have ever heard,and to make matters worse, he mad a cock up on the 7th verse, said "Oh Sorry" and STARTED AGAIN!!

By the way, how did Christie Moore get away with using the tune on "Wish I was back home in Derry"?

Subject: RE: songs that something ruined
From: The_one_and_only_Dai
Date: 28 Jul 99 - 03:56 AM

Really, really p*ssed off about Daimler-Benz misappropriating the Janis Joplin song for a TV ad...

In typical Germanic fashion, the point seems to have been completely missed, and a sly dig at materialistic values becomes... well, Lord won't you buy me a Mercedes Benz.

I ask you.

Subject: RE: songs that something ruined
From: John in Brisbane
Date: 28 Jul 99 - 06:22 AM

Ruined is going a bit to far, but my wife and I spent a marvellous evening on the beach of a small island in Thailand with some local Law students. They played, sang and harmonised beautifully, particularly Eagles songs. When they started singing "OH-O, DESPEWAADO.." we found it very hard to contain our mirth. I can never hear the song now without thinking of The Life of Brian and "Welease Woger".

Cheers, John

Subject: RE: songs that something ruined
From: Roger the zimmer
Date: 28 Jul 99 - 08:27 AM

I used to like Roy Orbison's "Crying" but can't hear it now without remembering Philip Pope's "Cwying" version from BBCtv's "Only Fools and Horses". It will always be "cwying" for me from now on!

Subject: RE: songs that something ruined
From: Peter T.
Date: 28 Jul 99 - 09:46 AM

I have an opposite (something ruined by a song). I was once beginning a nice late evening with a lady whose favourite piece of romantic music (see that thread) was the last 20 minutes of Richard Strauss' Der Rosenkavalier that someone had given her on a tape. Now the last 20 minutes of DR is perhaps the most beautiful, uttery romantic, seductive, shimmery music ever written -- 3 sopranos singing exquisitely. In theory, there really is nothing better and it has a nice shape to it, and so on. You can just wallow in it, on one condition.
The only problem is if you know anything about what they are singing (in Austrian German) -- which this lady didn't, but I did (a bit like Rick's Wedding Story, another thread). It is an utterly tragic blending of an older woman losing her young lover to a younger woman, his guilt at leaving her, the younger woman's uncertainty about whether she can match up, and about a million other poignant thoughts all woven together: aging, death, the loss of perfection, stoicism in the face of heartsick pain. It is heart-rending adult music -- maybe the only truly adult opera music ever written. The lady in question had sort of gotten used to using this music as a warm up, while it made me feel suicidal. After about 5 minutes of this, we had a big fight about whether it was going to stay on or not. That was that for that. Still love the music; still makes me feel suicidal.
yours, Peter T.

Subject: RE: songs that something ruined
From: Mudjack
Date: 28 Jul 99 - 10:37 AM

Bob Dylan singing Bob Dylan songs. America's most prolific song writer and the man has maybe half a dozen songs that are listenable. I may have stomped on someone's musician icon, but his whiney scratchy mumbling of a song is not music to my ears and in most cases I don't discover his songs until some else covers them and then it's "WOW, what a great song!". I apologize to my younger brother for slamming his saint, that's just how I hear Bob Dylan songs.
Mudjack

Subject: RE: songs that something ruined
From: Bonedaddy
Date: 28 Jul 99 - 10:55 AM

Mudjack...thank God...I'm not alone anymore. Dylan doin Dylan made it hard for me to make it through the sixties without losing friends. As to songs that were situationally ruined, Like a Rock for obvious reasons. I really hate good songs and bad commercials. BD

Subject: RE: songs that something ruined
From: JR
Date: 28 Jul 99 - 11:01 AM

Thanks Mudjack... It had to be said.

Subject: RE: songs that something ruined
From: Cara
Date: 28 Jul 99 - 12:29 PM

Aaaawwww, you guys are in troooouuuble...

just murder your throat and sing through your nose and thenm you'll sound just like Bob Dylan

Subject: RE: songs that something ruined
From: GeorgeH
Date: 28 Jul 99 - 12:54 PM

Mudjack and Bonedaddy and others . . . beware the wrath of Janet Ryan . . .

And back to Riverdance . . I've not seen it live but guess it would be great, but I really can't see what all the fuss is about - and IME this is the reaction of most of us who have loved and been moved by Irish step dancing for many a year . . Still, it did bring that tradition to a much wider audience, and the music was great. Also, over here there was a wonderful "short" on tele about a young girl being inspired by RD to take up stepping, following through to her first feis (?sp) . . Certainly it's the only good thing I've seen derived from RD. IMO the choreography of much of LotD tends to crassness in the points which are important to the narritive. Still, my daughter and I had great fun discussing how it could have been made more effective . . (not a very challenging subject in this instance). And the music seemed much poorer

What about the "New Riverdance"? I was dismayed that they seemed to have to import pastiche bits of other traditions for their interludes . . so there was pastice Flamenco, and pastiche new-age medieval chant (complete with candles . .) There's so many aspects of Irish music they could have brought in to complement the dance side . .

But it still doesn't manage to ruin my enjoyment of "the real thing" . .

Oops, rambling again - sorry!

G.

Subject: RE: songs that something ruined
From: Bill D
Date: 28 Jul 99 - 01:04 PM

I think Dylan simply became an icon to impressionable ears during a time when there were 'things to be said'...and he did manage to say some of them..."It's Allright, Ma" "Hattie Carrol", and a couple others are quite memorable, but boy!...the REST!!...unless the song IS a classic, his singing style is tedious and grating...trouble is, some people persist on getting the medium so tied to the message that they become emotionally committed to anything Dylan chooses to do...

(it happened with Picasso in art, and Picasso became so cynical that he produced some real crap in his later years, because he was convinced that the general public wouldn't know the difference...not sure Dylan was that 'sensitive')

(now I'll cower in the corner with mudjack and bonedaddy and JR and dodge the incoming missles)

Subject: RE: songs that something ruined
From: annamill
Date: 28 Jul 99 - 01:05 PM

When I worked in Greenwich Village in NY in the coffee houses, Bob Dylan use to play for passing the basket. As a freelance waitress, I got to know the owners pretty well. (Even lived with one for a while) Dylan was not considered very good. When he was picked up by a major record company (Columbia, I think) everyone was totally shocked. I think his song "Positively 4th Street" was about the attitude in the Village about his singing. West 4th and MacDougal was the center of the village at the time.

Later, when I moved up to Woodstock, where his manager lived and Dylan hung out, I worked in a restaurant/coffee house called "The Expresso Cafe". Dylan would come in now and then, as he was friends with the owner, Bernard. His fame made him very obnoxious. Well, maybe he was always like that. I didn't know him very well in the village.

Now here comes a real shocker. Don't tell anyone, as I live in Jersey. I don't like Bruce Springsteen's voice for the same reason I didn't like Dylan's voice. Both wrote some good songs, but they were better done by someone else. (This is real blasphemy here in Jersey)

Has anyone ever heard Robin Williams do "I'm on Fire" like Elmer Fudd? "Fiiiwwer". I can't hear that song without thinking of Elmer doing it and laughing.

annap

Subject: RE: songs that something ruined
From: Matthew B.
Date: 28 Jul 99 - 01:22 PM

Whew. I'm so glad you said that, anna. I thought I was the only one who couldn't stand their voices.

As for a song being "ruined," I've always had a favorite Yiddish lullabye, called Oifn Pripetshik, probably the most well loved of all Jewish lullabyes. In the movie Schindler's List, there's a heart-wrenching scene where a huge group of children are being led to their deaths by female Nazi guards, all holding hands as if they were being led to a nursery school picnic. In the soundtrack, a children's chorus sings that song as they are led away.

I have never been able to hear that song since, without feeling the pain of that scene.

Subject: RE: songs that something ruined
From:
Date: 28 Jul 99 - 01:33 PM

I don't agree with the criticism I've read about Bob Dylan's singing. For instance, I think that his two albums of blues,traditional and folk songs, "Good As I Been To You" and "World Gone Wrong", are really beautiful.His version of "Love Henry" and "Delia" are absolutely great. Roberto

Subject: RE: songs that something ruined
From: Peter T.
Date: 28 Jul 99 - 03:06 PM

Totally Biased -- I think the early Dylan voice, up till about John Wesley Harding, was an amazing instrument, with a few notes (like a drone, perhaps). After that it got whiny, and less expressive. He seemed to hit more notes and did less with his voice. It is a voice you have to develop a taste for. I kept trying to hate it, and got over that.
Woody Guthrie never had a great voice: Leonard Cohen was blessed with a leaden voice -- There is hope for all of us.
yours, Peter T.

Subject: RE: songs that something ruined
From: Dan
Date: 28 Jul 99 - 03:11 PM

Any Christmas song like by any avaricious pop singer like B. Streisand who insists on her own imprimatur on it and jazz it up and change the beat and f--- it up beyond recognition.

Subject: RE: songs that something ruined
From: Rick Fielding
Date: 28 Jul 99 - 04:04 PM

Thank you Peter T. The FIRST Dylan album on Columbia astonished me. (and still does) After that? Hmmmm, some good, some bad.

Subject: RE: songs that something ruined
From: Jeremiah McCaw
Date: 29 Jul 99 - 02:22 AM

Hmm...almost wandering from the thread...

Seems I read that Dylan once started a set (old days in Greenwich Village) by saying, "I have suffered for my art; now you will suffer for my art!"

Penny S: Might you have that un-named "Irish" dancer confused with Barishnikov? He did do some duets with tap virtuoso Gregory Hines (and a film called "White Nights"). Hines apparently described a "Nijinski". They were both doing a leap, and Hines said he gave it everything he had and looked over at "Mike" at the apex. Hines said Barishnikov was still on his way up and grinning down at him.

Subject: RE: songs that something ruined
From: Matthew B.
Date: 29 Jul 99 - 05:36 PM

Anything performed on the Lawrence Welk show or sung by the Kings Family.

Subject: RE: songs that something ruined
From: Penny S.
Date: 29 Jul 99 - 08:36 PM

It wasn't Barishnikov. He was definitely doing step dancing, speaking with an Irish accent, and discussing the different traditions of tap/step. There was a passage in New Riverdance which had a duel between Irish and Afro-Americans on a similar theme. What he did did not take him up high, but the Nijinsky-like part was that at the peak of the jump. he paused before coming down. He did it several times. Each time the camera was only showing his legs (and from the position against the musicians behind it wasn't camera trickery) so I couldn't work out if he was lowering his centre of gravity in some way. If he was keeping the correct arm position throughout, I don't know any way it could be done.

Penny