BS: Your own funeral

Subject: Your own funeral
From: Callie
Date: 07 Mar 00 - 09:09 AM

Ok. I'm feeling cheery this morning. So if you had to choose the music that will be played at your own funeral, what would you choose?

Mine: The Beatles' Blackbird; the melody of "My Lagan Love" played on cello, Phil Ochs' "When I'm Gone" and maybe Elvis Costello singing "Favourite Hour"

Over to you ...

--Callie

Subject: RE: BS: Your own funeral
From: kendall
Date: 07 Mar 00 - 09:26 AM

Gently down the stream of time..Ed Trickett. And, the last few lines of William Cullen Bryants Thannatopsis.
...So live, that when your summons comes to join that innumerable caravan that moves to that mysterious realm, where each shall take his place in the silent halls of death, thou go, not like the quarry slave at night, scourged to his dungeon, but, sustained by an unfaltering trust, approach thy grave like one who wraps the covers of his couch about him, and lies down to pleasant dreams.

And on my head stone: I knew if I lived long enough, something like this would happen.

Subject: RE: BS: Your own funeral
From: Crowhugger
Date: 07 Mar 00 - 09:37 AM

Well, Callie, good morning!

Your cheeriness matches my own today. Let's see now...

Whilst people assemble and wait, or arrive late, fish for kleenex, look to see who paid for the biggest floral arrangement, etc: "Please Don't Bury Me" over and over until it's time for the emcee, er, minister, I mean, to begin.

Singalong hymn substitutes:

"Jennie Jenkins" but the attendees MUST make up verses -- in fact, maybe each person, upon arrival, mysteriously received a small card with a colour on it, but no clue yet as to why. You know, kind of an ice breaker, in case the opening theme doesn't bring on a serious case of the giggles. Not enough colours? Just look at what they name paints...

"Let's Not Just Have a Sniffle" With all the verses a Mudcat thread can conjur. Plus a few more if those present feel creative.

Recessional: "Art Thou Troubled?" A lovely song by the inimitable Georg Frideric Handel. If I'm dead, then it seems fair that one song die too, so it MUST be played by bagpipes and organ! Yes, together. No offence intended to pipers or organists. I simply cannot imagine those instruments pulling off the dynamics necessary for this gem.

Please, no private e-mails about how am I doing. Much better now, thanks. This thread is very therapeutic. Thanks Callie. Gotta go write my codicil now. (Just kidding, honey.)

Subject: RE: BS: Your own funeral
From: Allan C.
Date: 07 Mar 00 - 09:40 AM

Surely one of the best funeral songs ever written was performed by the Crash Test Dummies:

At My Funeral
by Brad Roberts

I'm still young, but I know my days are numbered

1234567 and so on

But a time will come when these numbers have all ended

And all I've ever seen will be forgotten

Won't you come to my funeral when my days are done

Life's not long and so I hope when I am finally dead and gone

That you'll gather round when I am lowered into the ground
When my coffin is sealed and I'm safely 6 feet under

Perhaps my friends will see fit then to judge me

Oh when they pause to consider all my blunders

I hope they won't be too quick to begrudge me

If I should die before I wake up

I pray that the Lord my soul will take but

My body, my body - that's your job

Well I can't be sure where I'm headed after death

To heaven, hell, or beyond to that Great Vast

But if I can I would like to meet my Maker

There's one or two things I'd sure like to ask

Won't you come to my funeral when my days are done

Life's not long and so I hope when I am finally dead and gone

That you'll gather round when I am lowered into the ground

Subject: RE: BS: Your own funeral
From: canoer
Date: 07 Mar 00 - 09:44 AM

"Safe in the Harbor" -- Eric Bogle

Subject: RE: BS: Your own funeral
From: catspaw49
Date: 07 Mar 00 - 09:44 AM

"Lay Down Your Weary Tune"

Spaw

Subject: RE: BS: Your own funeral
From: Wesley S
Date: 07 Mar 00 - 09:54 AM

I love a song by the Rev Gary Davis called "I Will Do My Last Singing In This Land Someday". Also "While I'm on My Journey" by the Weavers

Subject: RE: BS: Your own funeral
From: Tony Burns
Date: 07 Mar 00 - 10:03 AM

"Bury Me In My Shades" Shel Silverstein.

Subject: RE: BS: Your own funeral
From: Amos
Date: 07 Mar 00 - 10:06 AM

Just give me a tight Dixieland quartet, warming up with the Muskrat Ramble, reeling off the Saints, fading to a solo horn doing a heartfelt Taps. Then it's yours truly off to Bill Gates' place to see if they're interested in more offspring. May as well start right next time, eh?

A

Subject: RE: BS: Your own funeral
From: Giac
Date: 07 Mar 00 - 10:12 AM

No funeral. Just friends getting together, talking about how weird I was and making music. The song?? Hmmmmmm. "All My Life's A Circle."

Giac

Subject: RE: BS: Your own funeral
From: Bert
Date: 07 Mar 00 - 10:25 AM

http://www.mudcat.org/bert/songs/plastic.html

Subject: RE: BS: Your own funeral
From: GUEST,Roger the skiffler
Date: 07 Mar 00 - 10:39 AM

I don't intend having a funeral, having left my body to the Inspector of Anatomy for transplant, research or teaching. Any bits over after the med students have finished laughing will get a free cremation. I suspect my everloving, being a churchwarden, might organise something with her own choice of music but I suppose "Ain't it grand to be bloomin' well dead" might be fitting!
RtS

Subject: RE: BS: Your own funeral
From: Mbo
Date: 07 Mar 00 - 10:40 AM

Dang Amos! You stole my idea! Except I want "Josh's Medey: Oh What A Friend We Have In Jesus/ Oh Didn't He Ramble" followed up by "South Rampart Street Parade." Then "Amazing Grace" on massed pipe and military band..."Just One Life" by Brian May..."Sail On" by Dick Gaughan..."Ave Maria" with Pavarotti singing it....and the reunited Electric Light Orchestar singing "I'm Alive." Hoooo...wouldn't the guests get a kick out that?

--Mbo

Subject: RE: BS: Your own funeral
From: Steve Latimer
Date: 07 Mar 00 - 10:46 AM

My best friend has made me vow that I play Willie Nelsons' "Angel Flying Too Close to the Ground" at his funeral.

I'm unsure, but I hope that I'll have a lot of time to think of one.

Subject: RE: BS: Your own funeral
From: GUEST,Patrish
Date: 07 Mar 00 - 11:21 AM

I too like Roger have left my bits to Leeds University Pathology Department. But I have left instructions that the money that would have been spent on the box etc. has to be spent on a wake with lots of singing and some dancing and all my friends having a whale of a time - knowing that if its possible I will be there. (I don't like to miss out on a good time)
Patrish

Subject: RE: BS: Your own funeral
From: Amos
Date: 07 Mar 00 - 12:06 PM

Geez...Mbo, if you want a funeral that long you'd better get cooking and build a HUGE life of creative contributions to the world, so your scads of adoring admirers will stand still for it! Think John Lennon, crossed with Dylan and two dollops of ELO. Gotta get prodigious, me lad...and put that away, its not the prodigious I meant...I meant prolific...

Subject: RE: BS: Your own funeral
From: Clinton Hammond2
Date: 07 Mar 00 - 12:24 PM

The Prophet, by Kris Kristofferson.... Mostly for the first couple of lines...

Followed by Who Dies, by James Keelaghan...

And then even though I hate the song, and the man who wrote it, it's the attitude I'd rather have at my funeral, Jimmy Buffets, 'Why Don't We Get Drunk And Screw'

And anybody who cries gets a right boot up the arse!!!
LOL!!!!!!

{~`

Subject: RE: BS: Your own funeral
From: paddymac
Date: 07 Mar 00 - 12:25 PM

I could care less about the funeral. What I would like is a wake to rival Finnegan's. In my practice, I'm finding it more frequent for clients to make arrangements in their wills for various kinds of festive send-offs. Maybe that's because I make it a practice to present that as an option for their consideration.

Subject: RE: BS: Your own funeral
From: Troll
Date: 07 Mar 00 - 12:33 PM

Nobody made much of a fuss when I was born and I don't want a fuss when I go. Sing The Jug of Punch and go spent some time with your kids. Celebrate life in your own way. Have a party if you like but do it for yourselves, not for me.

troll

Subject: RE: BS: Your own funeral
From: Wesley S
Date: 07 Mar 00 - 12:35 PM

I almost forgot - play ANYTHING but "Amazing Grace" It has GOT to be the most overdone funeral song. IMHO.

Subject: RE: BS: Your own funeral
From: Lonesome EJ
Date: 07 Mar 00 - 12:50 PM

No joyful music at my Funeral. I want everybody to weep and moan. There'll be time enough for happy memories later. How about a couple of hymns:The Old Rugged Cross and He Walks with Me. Bridge Over Troubled Water would also hit the right mood. And Dan Milner's Leave Her, Johnny Leave Her. Vivaldi's Fireside Largo would assure that no one left with a dry eye.

Subject: RE: BS: Your own funeral
From: rangeroger
Date: 07 Mar 00 - 12:51 PM

A celebration wake instead of a funeral for me.
Emmylou Harris singing "Until I Gain Control Again". Darrel Evans "I Lay me Down."
And my tombstone to read "I forgot to get married" Unless,of course,something happens between now and then.
rr

Subject: RE: BS: Your own funeral
From: Amos
Date: 07 Mar 00 - 12:58 PM

Well, once disincarnate, I propose to go up to Silicon Valley and find a millionaire to father/mother my next round. So my funeral should have a loop endlessly replaying Do You Know the Way to San Jose?. I don't like long funerals, anyway...And Tony Bennett singing...guess what?

A

Subject: RE: BS: Your own funeral
From: Eric the Viking
Date: 07 Mar 00 - 01:14 PM

It's already in my will!-Jimmi Hendrix-all along the watchtower.

Subject: RE: BS: Your own funeral
From: Jon Freeman
Date: 07 Mar 00 - 01:35 PM

I don't really care what songs. My only hope/wish is that I have enough money to pay for friends to have a few drinks and a good time.

Jon

Subject: RE: BS: Your own funeral
From: MK
Date: 07 Mar 00 - 01:49 PM

I don't plan on checking out until I can figure a way to take my guitar collection with me.    8-)

Subject: RE: BS: Your own funeral
From: Peg
Date: 07 Mar 00 - 02:12 PM

ooh I like that Jimi Hendrix idea! I love that version...great song.
I have sung at a funeral, a Scottish Gaelic lament no one understood the words to but which everyone agreed was right for the occasion...but this was without question one of the hardest things I have ever done, emotionally...trying to hold it together to sing a sad song while feeling like crying (and when everyone around you is crying)is no easy task...I pretty much broke down in tears as soon as I finished...and I have been to memorial services where the music chosen for that person was just heartbreaking..."Forever Young" by Rod Stewart, for a friend who was murdered...
I never thought about this for myself...maybe "Dun Ringtill" by Jethro Tull...

peg

Subject: RE: BS: Your own funeral
From: Clinton Hammond2
Date: 07 Mar 00 - 02:25 PM

COOL CHOICE PEG!

I hadn't even thought of that....

I'm gonna append mine with that in mind...

Too Old To Rock And Roll, Too Young To Die
Followd by Broadsword

Peg, we gotta bury the hatchet and have a cyber conversation sometime... obvious past differences aside, I think we have a lot in common!

Subject: RE: BS: Your own funeral
From: Quirk Malarkey
Date: 07 Mar 00 - 02:25 PM

i heard a song a few years ago that might be fun to hear that i'ld like, as my remains are disposed of in the most efficient way possible. preferable for the roses. the chorus goes: send me to glory in a glad bag don't waste a fancy coffin on my bones just put me out on the curb, next tuesday let the sanitation office take me home. -- doodlezak

Subject: RE: BS: Your own funeral
From: Llanfair
Date: 07 Mar 00 - 02:40 PM

"who knows where the time goes" for me, please, whilst my ashes are sprinkled in the Irish sea. Bron.

Subject: RE: BS: Your own funeral
From: Peg
Date: 07 Mar 00 - 03:16 PM

clinton--
why? because we both like Jethro Tull? That includes a few million other people...

peg

Subject: RE: BS: Your own funeral
From: Linda Kelly
Date: 07 Mar 00 - 03:41 PM

Since I live over the cemetary wall I think it would be safe to put me in a bin bag and just throw me over the top of the fence to the strains of 'Good year for the Roses' (Elvis Costello version) which, If I am allowed to biodegrade, in situ, it will be!

Subject: RE: BS: Your own funeral
From: Amos
Date: 07 Mar 00 - 03:43 PM

Smokin', Peg!

I sang at my mother's funeral -- two songs which I did very badly because I was finding it hard to sing. The songs, and I think she mighthave chosenthem serself had she been asked, were Finnegan's Wake just for the last line, really, and the plaintiff verse from His Eye Is on the Sparrow". But I left a whole verse out of the former, and barely managed to get the latter out, and I had to change my strings afterward, too...

Rust.

Subject: RE: BS: Your own funeral
From: Bill D
Date: 07 Mar 00 - 04:33 PM

oohhh...can I continue living till I have looked at ALL the songs and chosen wisely?..I have 30 or 40 choices right now..(guess it'll have to ne a LONG service and wake, huh?)

regarding Michael K's post.."I don't plan on checking out until I can figure a way to take my guitar collection with me.  8-) "...I heard a guy sing something years ago called "Can I Take My Martin with me to Heaven when I die?".....haven't heard it since

Subject: RE: BS: Your own funeral
From: MK
Date: 07 Mar 00 - 04:48 PM

Bill D, A close and quite psychic friend of mine has assured me that ''everything you are'' you get to take with you when you leave ''this earthly plane.'' That somehow the personality and soul, are inextricably intertwined...so I figure, if I can manifest a body, or at least an upper torso with arms and hands...perhaps I can manifest a 1938 OOO-28 and D-45, and keep on pickin'.   8-)
(I'd settle for that, and just leave the rest of collection to Fielding.)

Subject: RE: BS: Your own funeral
From: Dave (the ancient mariner)
Date: 07 Mar 00 - 04:50 PM

Dvorak Stabat Mater Dolorosa Eternal Father (for those in peril on the sea) Flowers of the forest on the pipes Then let slip my cable at 30 degrees west longitude. Yours,Aye. Dave

Subject: RE: BS: Your own funeral
From: Dave (the ancient mariner)
Date: 07 Mar 00 - 04:52 PM

Forgot to mention; use the words to the hymn not the other version of Eternal Father. Yours,Aye.Dave

Subject: RE: BS: Your own funeral
From: Dave (the ancient mariner)
Date: 07 Mar 00 - 04:53 PM

Forgot to mention; use the words to the hymn not the other version of Eternal Father. Yours,Aye.Dave

Subject: RE: BS: Your own funeral
From: GUEST,Walrus
Date: 07 Mar 00 - 05:28 PM

For me? Well for a hymn I thought "I have a sweet hope of Glory In my soul" - It's one we used to "sing away" members of my old ECW Regiment who had died - Then you can carry me out to "The Parting Glass" and plant me and hoist a glass to my memory.

Regards

Walrus

Subject: RE: BS: Your own funeral
From: katlaughing
Date: 07 Mar 00 - 05:44 PM

The River Where She Sleeps by Dave Carter and Tracy Grammar
I Walk in Beauty
Ah, Sweet Mystery of Life (has to be done on a quavery old organ!)
Songs of the Indian Flute by John Rainer, Jr. (the whole thing!)
Ou Sube a Terra...on pipes
The Drowning Plains
White Wings... on cello, whistle, and fiddle

as well as several more...like Bill, I want plenty of time to go through all, but I am sure of the ones I've listed.

By the by, just a suggestion to any who wonder about how we will know of one another's passing, I have written a *goodbye, luvya* letter to you all, that my fmaily has been instructed to post when and if I ever go.**BG**

Like Amos, I will immediately be looking for a good family, so you young'uns, if I come knocking ya better keep up the good music, 'cause I don't want any tone deaf parents next time around!

Anyone know where I can get sheet music to the last three?

Subject: RE: BS: Your own funeral
From: Callie
Date: 07 Mar 00 - 05:45 PM

Well, good morning everybody! I can see folks have been busy posting while I slumbered. Thanks, Alan C, I'd forgotten that great Crash Test Dummies Song.

I forgot to mention that I'd also like Plastic Jesus played, and that song that Lee Hayes wrote about his own death. I don't remember the words, but it 's something about sprinkling his ashes on the compost, eating the resulting vegetables, and then "and excrete me with a grin".

Long live Mudcat!

--callie

Subject: RE: BS: Your own funeral
From: Murray MacLeod
Date: 07 Mar 00 - 06:04 PM

When I first heard the late great Roy Buchanan's instrumental version of "Sweet Dreams" in 1972 my immediate reaction was: that is the music I want to depart by. Nothing I have heard since has made me change my choice ....

Subject: RE: BS: Your own funeral
From: GUEST,The Beanster
Date: 07 Mar 00 - 07:16 PM

Without a doubt, Mozart's Requiem, K. 626 by the Boblingen Bach Choir--the WHOLE thing. (!) Aside from the religious lyrical content (which I consider worthless), it's such a beautiful piece of work--and the relatives will like it...

Too bad I won't be there. :)

Subject: RE: BS: Your own funeral
From: Callie
Date: 07 Mar 00 - 07:48 PM

You could consider changing the words (in the tradition of folk!) in preparation for the sorry day ...

Subject: RE: BS: Your own funeral
From: Amos
Date: 07 Mar 00 - 08:11 PM

I dunno, Beanster -- if you can'thave fun at your own funeral, where can you have fun? As the old sailors are wont to say, "First turn of the screw pays all bills...". The picking part is probably hard, but nothin to stop you from grinning and tapping your ectoplasm!

Subject: RE: BS: Your own funeral
From: Paul G.
Date: 07 Mar 00 - 08:15 PM

Two songs that I can think of...First, Jim Ballew's "When I Die", and just for the sake of vanity, a song I wrote for a dying friend called "When This War Is Over"...

pg

Subject: RE: BS: Your own funeral
From: kendall
Date: 07 Mar 00 - 08:22 PM

I have the words to Send me to glory a glad bag if anyone wants them

Subject: RE: BS: Your own funeral
From: Ebbie
Date: 07 Mar 00 - 08:32 PM

At my brother's funeral, they played a tape in which he sang, I Will Meet You in the Morning and a John Denver-recorded song, (It's Good to be) Back Home Again. Pretty good choices. For myself, the instrumental of Autumn Leaves.

Subject: RE: BS: Your own funeral
From: Bill D
Date: 07 Mar 00 - 08:42 PM

I guess if they just play and sing "The Vacant Chair" and cry for a few minutes, that'll do...then they can have a wild wake and sing anything they want...

Subject: RE: BS: Your own funeral
From: Bill D
Date: 07 Mar 00 - 08:44 PM

oh...and just because it's PURTY.."Will There Be Any Stars in My Crown"