Help: Little Boxes (Malvina Reynolds) ticky-tacky?

Subject: RE: Help: Little Boxes (Malvina Reynolds) ticky-tacky?
From: GUEST,Cricketer Chris
Date: 08 Aug 11 - 10:11 PM

Here's the cricketing version of Pete Seeger's little ditty:

"Little boxes in the sports shop
Little boxes are for cricketers
Little boxes made of plastic
Little boxes, all the same.
There's a white one and a pink one
And one made of aluminium
For the tender bits of cricketers
And it still hurts quite a lot.

"And the batsmen still get injured
And get impotent and quite undignified
'Cos a short ball in the boxes
Hurts the ballses quite a lot;
There's a green one and a pink one
And a blue one and a yellow one
With a sprinkling of aluminium
And it still hurts quite a lot."

Accredited to English west country singer Fred Wedlock.
Source: Allen, David Rayvern; A Song For Cricket,published by Pelham Books, London, c1981.

Subject: RE: Help: Little Boxes (Malvina Reynolds) ticky-tacky?
From: GUEST,999
Date: 09 Aug 11 - 12:01 AM

Dear Clemdane, give it a read.

"MALVINA REYNOLDS 1900--1978

Born Malvina Milder of Jewish socialist immigrant parents in San Francisco, Malvina was refused her diploma by Lowell High School because her parents were opposed to US participation in World War I. She entered UC Berkeley anyway, and received her BA and MA in English. She married William Reynolds, a carpenter and organizer, in 1934 and had one child, Nancy, in 1935. She completed her dissertation and was awarded her Doctorate in 1939. It was the middle of the Depression, she was Jewish, socialist, and a woman. She could not find a job teaching at the college level. She became a social worker and a columnist for the People's World and, when World War II started, an assembly-line worker at a bomb factory. When her father died, she and her husband took over her parents' naval tailor shop in Long Beach, California. There in the late forties she met Earl Robinson, Pete Seeger and other folk singers and songwriters and began writing songs.

She returned to Berkeley, and to the University, where she took music theory classes in the early fifties. She gained recognition as a songwriter when Harry Belafonte sang her "Turn Around." Her songs were recorded by Joan Baez, Judy Collins, The Seekers, Pete Seeger, and the Limeliters, among others. She wrote songs for Women for Peace, the Nestle Boycott, the sit-ins in San Francisco on auto row and at the Sheraton-Palace, the fight against putting a freeway through Golden Gate Park and other causes. She toured Scandinavia, England and Japan. A film biography, Love It Like a Fool, was made a few years before she died in 1978.

For further information call Schroder Music at [phone]."

Get a life. You are one seriously nasty individual. And before you say "fuck you", allow me to say what a pleasure it's been to know you.

Subject: RE: Help: Little Boxes (Malvina Reynolds) ticky-tacky?
From: Jim McLean
Date: 09 Aug 11 - 04:44 AM

The melody appears to have been lifted form "There's a pawn shop on the corner in Pitsburg, Pensylvania .."
There's a pawn shop
Is this acceptable? or was there any credit given to the song sung by Guy Mitchell?

Subject: RE: Help: Little Boxes (Malvina Reynolds) ticky-tacky?
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 09 Aug 11 - 08:42 AM

Most of these points were made on a thread I OPd, 3rd in the list above, "Do You Like Little Boxes?", which ran for 192 posts and ended almost exactly one year ago.

~M~

Subject: RE: Help: Little Boxes (Malvina Reynolds) ticky-tacky?
From: Long Firm Freddie
Date: 10 Aug 11 - 03:10 AM

Thanks for giving the info re A Song for Cricket, Cricketer Chris - I've ordered myself a copy!

The parody was written by Les Barker and appears in his book Songs for Swingin' Tails available through his website:Les

Cheers
LFF

Subject: RE: Help: Little Boxes (Malvina Reynolds) ticky-tacky?
From: MBSGeorge
Date: 14 Mar 12 - 06:52 AM

More Fred Wedlock words


Little boxes, little boxes, little boxes made for cricketers
And you shove one down your underpants to protect you in the game
There's a pink one and a blue one and one made of aluminium
But if you stop a Googlie it'll hurt you just the same.

Even England's finest batsmen can get a nasty thump on the middle stump
Then they all take herbal remedies and they all take quite a lot
There's a black one and a gold one and a red one from the Lebanon
And they're caught bowled and spaced out cause they've all gone to pot.

But Ian Botham he defies them he's big and butch and he can clobber them
He could eat his bat drink Paraquat and crawl on all fives
But his box still takes some hammer and you may think that's peculiar
Til you notice that the dents have all come from inside.

Subject: RE: Help: Little Boxes (Malvina Reynolds) ticky-tacky?
From: GUEST,FloraG
Date: 14 Mar 12 - 10:23 AM

heard a parody about concertinas/ melodeons/accordians

Little boxes, little boxes little boxes made of ticky tacky
Little boxes, little boxes and they all sound just the same.

And they all go to Sidmouth, Whitby and broadstairs
And they all learn a little french tune
And they all sound just the same.etc.

There were several more verses of same.
FloraG

Subject: RE: Help: Little Boxes (Malvina Reynolds) ticky-tacky?
From: GUEST,leeneia
Date: 14 Mar 12 - 12:26 PM

That's just another expression of the Great-You-Shut-Up, Flora. It's the cultural trend that says the average person has no right to sing or make music.

You can tell the person who wrote it (if you can use 'wrote' for something so slavishly imitative) that no matter how he sneers, we enjoy our instruments and intend to keep playing them.
==================
Clemdane, if you are still around, I agree with you.

Subject: RE: Help: Little Boxes (Malvina Reynolds) ticky-tacky?
From: Jeri
Date: 14 Mar 12 - 12:33 PM

There goes the humor...

Subject: RE: Help: Little Boxes (Malvina Reynolds) ticky-tacky?
From: George Papavgeris
Date: 14 Mar 12 - 01:00 PM

I take exception to your tone, Jeri

Subject: RE: Help: Little Boxes (Malvina Reynolds) ticky-tacky?
From: GUEST,Klump
Date: 14 Mar 12 - 01:23 PM

hmmmmm... "Little Boxes" ?

Sounds like the title of a song Gary Glitter might have wrote.

Subject: RE: Help: Little Boxes (Malvina Reynolds) ticky-tacky?
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 14 Mar 12 - 01:38 PM

leeneia ~ as Bruce demonstrated [9 aug 11 1201am] by authoritative citations and quotations, Clemdane was entirely mistaken about Malvina's antecedents and situation; so why do you express agreement with him/her?

~M~

Subject: RE: Help: Little Boxes (Malvina Reynolds) ticky-tacky?
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 14 Mar 12 - 02:06 PM

This, btw, was not meant as a defence of Little Boxes, a song I detest ~~ see my own "Do You Like Little Boxes?" thread, cited above. But fair is fair, & surely Bruce demolished Clemdane's particular animadversions against her?

~M~

Subject: RE: Help: Little Boxes (Malvina Reynolds) ticky-tacky?
From: Jeri
Date: 14 Mar 12 - 04:08 PM

George, I'm sorry if my tone came across any way but just exasperated at Leeneia's objections to the parody. She was saying it was meant to get others to stop making music, and saying it was sneering. It might have been, but how can anyone be sure of that without reading a load into those five lines.

"You can tell the person who wrote it (if you can use 'wrote' for something so slavishly imitative) that no matter how he sneers, we enjoy our instruments and intend to keep playing them."
1) "slavishly imitative" -- It's odd how often that happens with parodies.
2) I can keep playing instruments without insulting someone with whom I may disagree.
3) It was a bit of an overreaction to a couple of verses of snarky silliness.

Subject: RE: Help: Little Boxes (Malvina Reynolds) ticky-tacky?
From: GUEST
Date: 14 Mar 12 - 06:21 PM

My turn to apologise Jeri, I was actually agreeing with you and expressing it through sarcasm. - too obtuse of me. To reiterate: yep, humo(u)r did seem to disappear for a while there

Subject: RE: Help: Little Boxes (Malvina Reynolds) ticky-tacky?
From: Jeri
Date: 14 Mar 12 - 07:01 PM

George (lost your cookie?), one of us was obtuse, and it wasn't you. When one gets irritated, one tends to be irritable, and not even try to see anything more generous. It's catching, too. And I apologize to you.

Subject: RE: Help: Little Boxes (Malvina Reynolds) ticky-tacky?
From: GUEST,Had enough
Date: 19 Aug 13 - 12:18 AM

I grew up in Westlake. The houses were very well built and not pre-fab. There were many different styles of homes. To this day anyone who lived there has wonderful childhood stories.
I want to know what fabulous custom home did she live in when she wrote the - oh so brilliant snobbish song?

Subject: RE: Help: Little Boxes (Malvina Reynolds) ticky-tacky?
From: Uncle Tone
Date: 19 Aug 13 - 03:14 AM

From 15 posts earlier:

Subject: RE: Help: Little Boxes (Malvina Reynolds) ticky-tacky?
From: GUEST,999 - PM
Date: 09 Aug 11 - 12:01 AM

"MALVINA REYNOLDS 1900--1978

Born Malvina Milder of Jewish socialist immigrant parents in San Francisco, Malvina was refused her diploma by Lowell High School because her parents were opposed to US participation in World War I. She entered UC Berkeley anyway, and received her BA and MA in English. She married William Reynolds, a carpenter and organizer, in 1934 and had one child, Nancy, in 1935. She completed her dissertation and was awarded her Doctorate in 1939. It was the middle of the Depression, she was Jewish, socialist, and a woman. She could not find a job teaching at the college level. She became a social worker and a columnist for the People's World and, when World War II started, an assembly-line worker at a bomb factory. When her father died, she and her husband took over her parents' naval tailor shop in Long Beach, California. There in the late forties she met Earl Robinson, Pete Seeger and other folk singers and songwriters and began writing songs.

She returned to Berkeley, and to the University, where she took music theory classes in the early fifties. She gained recognition as a songwriter when Harry Belafonte sang her "Turn Around." Her songs were recorded by Joan Baez, Judy Collins, The Seekers, Pete Seeger, and the Limeliters, among others. She wrote songs for Women for Peace, the Nestle Boycott, the sit-ins in San Francisco on auto row and at the Sheraton-Palace, the fight against putting a freeway through Golden Gate Park and other causes. She toured Scandinavia, England and Japan. A film biography, Love It Like a Fool, was made a few years before she died in 1978.

For further information call Schroder Music at [phone]."

I do wish folks would read a thread before commenting. The accusation of snobbery has been answered above too.

Tone

Subject: RE: Help: Little Boxes (Malvina Reynolds) ticky-tacky?
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 19 Aug 13 - 04:58 AM

Agree, Tone, as have said before, that the accusations against MR of privileged upbringing &c have had their hashes comprehensively settled, by that passage formerly adduced by Bruce which you now repeat.

But it doesn't quite answer GuestHad·enough's point as to where she might have graduated to homewise by the time she wrote the song, does it? And the arguments against 'snobbery', which you claim as 'answers', appear to me assertive rather than conclusive. Can you cite one that really does refute the accusation, rather than merely express disagreement?

I can't see how the song itself can be described as anything other than 'snobbish'. One thing that has always astounded me is how the great egalitarian martyr &-all-that P Seeger could have brought himself to perform such an ill-natured attack on such respectable and indispensable members of society as doctors & lawyers. Where would we be without them, for crying out loud! What's 'ticky-tacky' about them?

~M~

Subject: RE: Help: Little Boxes (Malvina Reynolds) ticky-tacky?
From: GUEST,Grishka
Date: 19 Aug 13 - 05:19 AM

The problem about that dated song is that it mixes three distinct aspects that should be treated separately:

1. Conformist mindset
2. Lack of taste
3. Economy ("ticky-tacky").

The same confusion can be observed in essays and songs about food, still in vogue now. Inevitably, the authors are accused of snobbery, whatever their private financial situation. (According to Wiki, satirist Tom Lehrer described "Little Boxes" as "the most sanctimonious song ever written").

Critical lyricists are best advised to focus on one issue at a time, to mention the possible alternatives in a given (financial) situation, and point out the reasons for their criticism.

Like many lyricists of that decade (and of other decades), MR was neither snobbish nor sanctimonious, but lacked intellectual rigour in this song. Present-day songwriters no longer have the excuse of being pioneers.

Subject: ADD:Las Casitas del Barrio Alto(V.Jara)littleboxes
From: Phil Edwards
Date: 19 Aug 13 - 08:55 AM

Victor Jara translated it & turned it into a song attacking the Chilean upper middle class, who were guilty of a bit more than lack of taste. Malvina Reynolds apparently appreciated the rewrite and sang a re-translated version of Jara's song, although I don't know any more about it.

Here's Victor Jara's version, for them as has the castellano. ("Recipol" is a building material based on expanded polystyrene; "polycron" is viscose.)

LAS CASITAS DEL BARRIO ALTO

Las casitas del barrio alto
con rejas y antejardín,
una preciosa entrada de autos
esperando un Peugeot.

Hay rosadas, verdecitas,
blanquitas y celestitas,
las casitas del barrio alto
todas hechas con recipol.

Y las gentes de las casitas
se sonríen y se visitan.
Van juntitos al supermarket
y todos tienen un televisor.

Hay dentistas, comerciantes,
latifundistas y traficantes,
abogados y rentistas
y todos visten polycron.

Juegan bridge, toman martini-dry
y los niños son rubiecitos
y con otros rubiecitos
van juntitos al colegio high.

Y el hijito de su papi
luego va a la universidad
comenzando su problemática
y la intríngulis social.

Fuma pitillos en Austin mini,
juega con bombas y con política,
asesina generales,
y es un gángster de la sedición.

Y las gentes de las casitas
se sonríen y se visitan.
Van juntitos al supermarket
y todos tienen un televisor.

Hay rosadas, verdecitas,
blanquitas y celestitas,
las casitas del barrio alto
todas hechas con recipol.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mOytN0Z3jHw

Subject: RE: Help: Little Boxes (Malvina Reynolds) ticky-tacky?
From: Uncle Tone
Date: 19 Aug 13 - 09:17 AM

To MtheGM.

I don't correspond with chip-on-the-shouldfer Trolls such as yourself.

Tone

Subject: RE: Help: Little Boxes (Malvina Reynolds) ticky-tacky?
From: Uncle Tone
Date: 19 Aug 13 - 09:29 AM

Do most folks miss the point of this song?

It isn't about housing. It is about the establishment forcing everybody into cycles of similarity, slightly differently cosmetically coloured.

It is a cry to break away from the 'norm' and do your own thing! Stop serving the establishment, that only wants you so you can pay them taxes and keep the rich rich, anyway.

Instead live adventurously! Do your own thing and sod the politics!

Rebel!

It is a great subtle protest-song written with much humour by someone who has climbed above prejudice through her academic achievements and her brilliant talent as a song-writer.

For those armchair critics here who want to decry her, her name will be known long after you have disappeared, and who knows you now anyway?

Tone

Subject: RE: Help: Little Boxes (Malvina Reynolds) ticky-tacky?
From: sciencegeek
Date: 19 Aug 13 - 09:30 AM

the argument that tract housing was the only affordable housing is BS.

At the same time that "developers" like Levitt were mass producing shoddy homes, you could buy a kit house from SEARS or a half dozen other outlets. Houses that were affordable and used good material.

Driving past, in the school buse, some of the tract houses being built I was horrified to see how shoody they were. I was around eleven at the time and still knew enough to think they were crap. And then later the aluminum wiring caused enough house fires to ban the use of it in the building codes.

The first time I heard the song, my reaction was "Finally, someone else is calling them what they really are."

As for "the American Dream", ask a Native American for their thoughts on it. One man's dream can result in another's nightmare.

Subject: RE: Help: Little Boxes (Malvina Reynolds) ticky-tacky?
From: sciencegeek
Date: 19 Aug 13 - 09:38 AM

oh, yeah... canalwheeler is right on...

the song really has two levels... and I remember one home that the owner dared paint some offbeat, vibrant color that "just wasn't done" and had the neighbors trying to change the building code to forbid such horrible behavior in the future.

And then there was the guy who banished his own kids to play in the street or with the neighbors, because his lawn was too precious to use as a yard. Nice to know where the priorities lie.

Subject: RE: Help: Little Boxes (Malvina Reynolds) ticky-tacky?
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 19 Aug 13 - 10:07 AM

Let it be generally known that I have complained formally to the mods re "canalwheeler"'s offensive post addressed to me above, 4 back. As pretty well everyone reading this will know, I am not 'a troll', but a regular and non-anonymous contributor to these threads, and object strongly to being addressed as such by a little jumped-up like him.

~Michael Grosvenor Myer~

Subject: RE: Help: Little Boxes (Malvina Reynolds) ticky-tacky?
From: GUEST,Grishka
Date: 19 Aug 13 - 10:28 AM

Tone, I think most of us understand MR's intention of the song similarly as you do, and so did her contemporaries. Attacking conformist attitudes was and is a worthy goal, as agreed by most. Nevertheless, the craftsmanship of the lyrics is found questionable, even by Tom Lehrer whose name might well outlive MR's, and who cannot possibly be accused for promoting conformism. (Pete Seegers was not as critical and honoured the good intention and other positive aspects, which is his perfect right as well.)

In a nutshell, the feeling is that the song unduly confuses people who have no better idea or wish - the conformists - with those who see no better option, who may feel insulted.

MtheGM, there is nothing wrong about doctors and lawyers, but everything is wrong about parents pressing their children to those careers for sake of wealth and prestige, and about having that conformist idea of prestige at all. I think we can read this message from MR's lyrics alright, considering it in its historical context, but I agree with you that she should have made it clearer whom exactly she criticizes for what.

Subject: RE: Help: Little Boxes (Malvina Reynolds) ticky-tacky?
From: Uncle Tone
Date: 19 Aug 13 - 10:40 AM

Subject: RE: Help: Little Boxes (Malvina Reynolds) ticky-tacky?
From: MtheGM - PM
Date: 19 Aug 13 - 10:07 AM

Let it be generally known that I have complained formally to the mods re "canalwheeler"'s offensive post addressed to me above, 4 back. As pretty well everyone reading this will know, I am not 'a troll', but a regular and non-anonymous contributor to these threads, and object strongly to being addressed as such by a little jumped-up like him.

~Michael Grosvenor Myer~

It's time somebody stated what you really are.

Tone

Subject: RE: Help: Little Boxes (Malvina Reynolds) ticky-tacky?
From: Uncle Tone
Date: 19 Aug 13 - 10:45 AM

If stating the truth gets me barred from MC it is no great loss to me. But I have seen your YouTube videos. In truth you are a talentless bitter old man.

Tone

Subject: RE: Help: Little Boxes (Malvina Reynolds) ticky-tacky?
From: Uncle Tone
Date: 19 Aug 13 - 11:14 AM

... and furthermore, I have looked back on many of your posts here, and I cannot find one that contributes to a discussion sensibly. Most are negative. Go away!

Tone

Subject: RE: Help: Little Boxes (Malvina Reynolds) ticky-tacky?
From: Bill D
Date: 19 Aug 13 - 11:53 AM

"..I cannot find one that contributes to a discussion sensibly. "

You haven't looked very well.... Michael has contributed a tremendous amount. It is not required to agree with everything he says, but he is erudite, aware and generally a welcome addition to these discussions.

As to his 'talent'... HE has shared some music, and *I* have enjoyed it.

Where is your contribution?

Subject: RE: Help: Little Boxes (Malvina Reynolds) ticky-tacky?
From: Q (Frank Staplin)
Date: 19 Aug 13 - 12:18 PM

Levittown and the suburbs in California, the "little boxes," were the result of the need for affordable housing after WW2.

The cities with their noise, crowds, inertia on land use rules and expensive housing made no provision for the large lower part of the middle class- storekeepers to professors.

These tracts were the only solution for those who wanted something better than a small apartment; room for their children and pets, a garage for the car, compatible neighbors.

It is unfortunate that they had to expand into the countryside, displacing the natural environment, but no alternative was available.

Subject: RE: Help: Little Boxes (Malvina Reynolds) ticky-tacky?
From: Uncle Tone
Date: 19 Aug 13 - 12:31 PM

Quote:

You haven't looked very well.... Michael has contributed a tremendous amount. It is not required to agree with everything he says, but he is erudite, aware and generally a welcome addition to these discussions.

As to his 'talent'... HE has shared some music, and *I* have enjoyed it.

Where is your contribution?

Unquote

He is a patronising prat.

My contribution?

I Ran three folk clubs in St Albans from 1973-1991.

I had my own folk show on Chiltern Radio covering five counties from 1986-1991. I was chairman of the first St Albans Folk Festival.

And three of my songs have ben sung back at me in folk clubs.

More recently I organised a folk concert in aid of Yorkshire Air Ambulance.

My CD, including a tribute to Cyril Tawney, is available online.

Currently I have compiled the 2013-4 Folk Events list found here:

2013-4 Folk Festival List

What's yours?

Tone

Subject: RE: Help: Little Boxes (Malvina Reynolds) ticky-tacky?
From: Uncle Tone
Date: 19 Aug 13 - 12:46 PM

...Oh I nearly forgot. I started Cottonmill Clog Morris and Ramrugge Morris with Colin Bargery (both NW) in Hertfordshire and I was founder chairman of the Unicorn Federation of Folk Clubs in Herts, Bucks, Beds, Northants, Cambs, and North Middlesex until Martin Banks took over.

You did ask.

Tone

Subject: RE: Help: Little Boxes (Malvina Reynolds) ticky-tacky?
From: Bill D
Date: 19 Aug 13 - 12:56 PM

"He is a patronising prat."

I'm sure he will immediately be taken to task by your tactful analysis.... *giggle*

Me? I am just a lowly member of a folk sociey (here in the ignorant colonies) for the last 35 years (served on the board for several years.) I have attended & helped organize 2-3 local festivals every year for all that time, and sung & played at many of them.

More to the point, I have posted at Mudcat since Nov. of 1996, and watched silly insulting twits come & go. I have little patience for gratuitous nastiness... as you might guess.

I have made my point... I will not engage in more useless debate with you, as you seem to be far too taken with your own smugness.....besides, Michael is quite capable of speaking his own piece, should HE care to.

Subject: RE: Help: Little Boxes (Malvina Reynolds) ticky-tacky?
From: sciencegeek
Date: 19 Aug 13 - 01:11 PM

"These tracts were the only solution for those who wanted something better than a small apartment; room for their children and pets, a garage for the car, compatible neighbors.

It is unfortunate that they had to expand into the countryside, displacing the natural environment, but no alternative was available."

No... they were not the only alternatives... but they were the ones that made the biggest profit and benefitted short term gains. Big difference. And the battle continues as more and more marginal land is all that is left. And we use "new housing" as a parameter of fiscal health.

And the folks who moved out from the city still expected the same types of services they got back in the city. And also had to commute back to the city were the jobs were... minus the tax base that shifted to the suburbs.      

As an environmental analyst, my job deals with the legacy left by the ticky tacky housing mentality with its get rich quick now and ignore the future consequences.   

One final observation as to the lack of foresight, not to mention common sense, found at the time. The 1960s experienced a long term drought in New York State... which caused a number of ponds to shrink as the water table dropped. The clueless wonders in the local towns only saw "new land & tax $$$"... so they promptly approved buidling lots on land that used to pond margins. Well, it shouldn't take a genius to guess what happened when the drought ended and water returned.

Subject: RE: Help: Little Boxes (Malvina Reynolds) ticky-tacky?
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 19 Aug 13 - 01:17 PM

Many thanks for your support, Bill. Congratulations on making that evasive person come so far out from behind his defensive anonymity. He actually appears to be a man of some considerable [& admirable] achievement (tho, as you observe, not entirely free of smugness about it!) ~~ as well I find after a bit of research on previous threads, as being 6'4" in height. So I wonder what can possibly be his motivations for being so peculiarly spiteful & vindictive. Ulcers, perhaps?

I wonder too what can possibly have originally caused so much animus against me on his part. Hasn't even had long to acquire it either; unlike you, who have been here since the date you mention 17 years ago, and me, for exactly four years, he only joined last December. But I don't propose to lose any sleep puzzling over it. Nor to open this thread again, or read any further posts he might put up elsewhere. He clearly has nothing to say that can be of any possible interest to me.

Meanwhile, my formal complaint to the Cat authorities as to his gratuitous offensiveness remains. Haven't heard back from them yet, but live in hopes to do so in due course.

~Michael~

Subject: RE: Help: Little Boxes (Malvina Reynolds) ticky-tacky?
From: Uncle Tone
Date: 19 Aug 13 - 01:25 PM

@ Bill D "I will not engage in more useless debate with you, as you seem to be far too taken with your own smugness"

No. Unfair. You challenged. You asked. I responded, honestly.

What I would like to know is what is MtheGM's authority, and what he has actually contributed that makes him such a knowledgeable critic (in his own mind) of other peoples' opinions.

Tone

Subject: RE: Help: Little Boxes (Malvina Reynolds) ticky-tacky?
From: Q (Frank Staplin)
Date: 19 Aug 13 - 02:00 PM

"Not the only alternatives"

What else was there that was available?

This can be blue-skied to death.

I was a vet of WW2. I found an affordable, comfortable house in a new suburb, put up by a reputable builder. Prairie dogs were displaced and land was re-contoured for housing, but for me and many thousand vets newly educated (GI Bills) and with a job, or with a loan for a start-up business, and a "start-up family," I had no alternative except to live poor in a cheap flat.

Subject: RE: Help: Little Boxes (Malvina Reynolds) ticky-tacky?
From: Joe Offer
Date: 19 Aug 13 - 02:05 PM

OK, folks. This thread is about a song, and about the circumstances behind the song. In general, song threads have been sacrosanct here at Mudcat, and have been quite free of personal invective. Let's keep it that way.

My stepson just moved to an apartment on Lake Merced, near the campus of San Francisco State University. He's within walking distance of the Westlake development in Daly City, so we've been spending time in Daly City in the process of moving him in. Daly City doesn't look like the "little boxes" Malvina is singing about. I thought that Pacifica was the subject of her song. If you drive California Highway 1 north from Santa Cruz, you go through some of the most beautiful terrain in the U.S. There are two lighthouses, lovely little towns, and treacherous places where the highway hugs the edge of the cliffs over the ocean. Then you round the bend into Pacifica, and the beautiful terrain is covered with houses that all look just the same. These aren't working-class houses. They're not quite McMansions, but they're the homes of middle management. There are other areas around San Francisco that were rugged, beautiful hillsides that were remarkably beautiful in the winter and spring. Those hillsides are covered with expensive houses now, all with big SUVs in the driveways.

There were the neighborhoods Malvina was singing about, the ones with packaged pretentiousness and artificial opulence. She wasn't singing about little, no-money-down houses for soldiers returning from WWII to get jobs and start families. Those soldiers didn't play on golf courses and drink dry martinis - and they didn't become doctors and lawyers and business executives. Malvina is singing about the McMansions that sprawl over the beautiful hillsides of the San Francisco Bay Area. The opening credits of the Weeds television program portray this McMansion ethic very well.

Here's an example: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AvGd8vwWLpE&list=PLFBEA5C8D8536B1F0

-Joe-

This is a music thread. The argument is now officially ended. As I often told my children, "I don't care who started the argument, and I don't care who's right or wrong - I'm going to stop the fight right now!" I'll delete any personal invectives that are posted from now on.

(i.e., anything that is not about the song, gets deleted.)

Subject: RE: Help: Little Boxes (Malvina Reynolds) ticky-tacky?
From: Q (Frank Staplin)
Date: 19 Aug 13 - 02:44 PM

Joe, where would you find affordable housing for a burgeoning population and returning vets- many of them with GI Bill educations and mortgaged to work in the professions and business, from plumbing concerns to nuclear research. Most of us went to the suburbs, and put 10 percent down.

Levittown was a breakthrough.

On analysis, her little ditty is silly.

Subject: RE: Help: Little Boxes (Malvina Reynolds) ticky-tacky?
From: Joe Offer
Date: 19 Aug 13 - 03:06 PM

Q, "Little Boxes" wasn't about Levittown. It was about the silly, pretentious, extravagant housing that costs a million dollars a copy now - housing that completely covers the environmentally delicate hillsides of the San Francisco Bay area. These houses regularly slide down hillsides or fall into sinkholes, or burn in wildfires, or collapse in earthquakes.

-Joe-

Subject: RE: Help: Little Boxes (Malvina Reynolds) ticky-tacky?
From: Uncle Tone
Date: 19 Aug 13 - 03:29 PM

Right.To get back to the MtheGM's statement about the song

Quote:

I can't see how the song itself can be described as anything other than 'snobbish'. One thing that has always astounded me is how the great egalitarian martyr &-all-that P Seeger could have brought himself to perform such an ill-natured attack on such respectable and indispensable members of society as doctors & lawyers. Where would we be without them, for crying out loud! What's 'ticky-tacky' about them?

Unquote

If he thinks this is an attack against doctors and lawyers, or even housing, he misses the whole point of the song and grossly maligns MR and Pete Seeger. In fact to make such criticism as an english person against what is so obviously an indigenous American song is really out of order.

The song is about breaking away from what is expected of you. Instead, doing what you want to do. Being free. It's very much a song of the american 60s.

To bring the sentiment back to the UK it has the same message as Mick Softley's Gold Watch Blues (and is just as dated now).

To claim that MR's song is 'snobbish' Is either mischievous or markedly uninformed.

Tone

Subject: RE: Help: Little Boxes (Malvina Reynolds) ticky-tacky?
From: GUEST,Stim
Date: 19 Aug 13 - 03:38 PM

"Little Boxes" was social satire--not to be taken anymore literally than Monty Python or Luis Buñuel or "A Modest Proposal". As to being dated, Grishka, you're wrong--as evidenced by the fact that it is the theme song of a very popular television program.

Underneath the somewhat annoying melody and childishly repetitive lyrics is a profound message, which is that when you try to create a society that gives the greatest good to the greatest number, everyone is going to wind up getting pretty much the same thing.

One day, not so long ago, I took a walk down my street and stopped to chat with my neighbor whose house had the garage on the right instead of the left, with blue minivan instead of a tan one, parked next to a blue sedan, not a grey one right in front. He was wearing tan cargo shorts from target and a black polo shirt. I had the black shorts with a white polo shirt. We chatted about our kids school, and summer camp...Any of this sound familiar?

Subject: RE: Help: Little Boxes (Malvina Reynolds) ticky-tacky?
From: GUEST,Grishka
Date: 19 Aug 13 - 03:41 PM

Joe, in the video you linked to, the houses do not look as if they were made of cheap or inferior material at all, and individually designed by good architects. "All the same" only applies to the overall spirit.

The song is obviously about a different type of settlement, and probably about a time when real estate was much cheaper than now, as opposed to good building material. Golf clubs and dry martinis were not too expensive either. Thus the song does not seem to mock at the truly affluent, but those who are making their way up, by conformism, networking, make-believe of wealth and competence, and choosing professions with highest chances of real wealth and prestige. (Particularly the clichä lawyer's brain is filled with formalistic stuff at the expense of personality.)

Some groups may have felt wrongly subsumed: Those who lived in the same settlements but with different mindsets, and university people like Tom Lehrer who chose their science for its own sake and with individualistic plans.

Is my impression wrong (not knowing the west coast myself)? If so, what else made Lehrer and others despise the song?

Subject: RE: Help: Little Boxes (Malvina Reynolds) ticky-tacky?
From: Joe Offer
Date: 19 Aug 13 - 03:44 PM

The song is about California doctors and lawyers and business executives, living in their modest million-dollar houses. They have no life. They work long hours, commute long hours, and then go home and sleep. They don't know their neighbors. Their chief social contacts are their "personal trainers," with whom they spend several hours a week "working out."

I had to do government security clearances on these people, and had to go through the motions of going to the neighbors and knocking on doors to find people who knew them. More often than not, none of the neighbors knew each other, even when they had lived there for years.

Now, obviously the song is a caricature, as is the opening sequence from Weeds. Yes, there are many neighborhoods in California when neighbors know each other and interact and work to better their communities - there are even neighborhoods where people gather to sing folk songs. But there are California neighborhoods, particularly neighborhoods of high-income people, where the inhabitants fit Malvina's caricature very closely.

I think that the song "Little Boxes" actually helped to change California urban planning for the better, and much of the sameness of California housing tracts has disappeared. But there still is a need for more variety. Thousand-house tracts are still built in California with a selection of only five floor plans. The first house I rented in California was a three-bedroom house in Fresno, with the kitchen in the middle front, between the garage and the living room, a family room behind the garage, and three bedrooms and two baths behind the living room and kitchen/dining area. The first house I bought in California had the same floor plan, but it was a bit smaller. My second house was two-story home in Sacramento and quite different, but there were houses across the street that had the same floor plan as the two houses we had 200 miles away in Fresno. And after we got divorced, my ex bought a house in Sacramento with the exact same floor plan as our two Fresno houses - my son lives there now, and it's like "deja vu all over again."

In certain places in the US, urban planners have made a move to do away with "snout houses" - houses where the garage door is in front of the rest of the house, creating a neighborhood where all you see is garage doors.

So, I think that "Little Boxes" is a valid and valuable commentary on American urban planning. Certainly, it exaggerates to a point, but can't exaggeration be a valid tool for songwriters and storytellers?

-Joe-

Subject: RE: Help: Little Boxes (Malvina Reynolds) ticky-tacky?
From: Jeri
Date: 19 Aug 13 - 04:17 PM

We've had this discussion before. Personally, I think it's stupid. You like the song, you don't like the song, or you don't care. You won't change anything, though.

Reynolds apperently wrote the song about Daly City, which means McMansions.
The Wikipedia article talks about the thread being about suburbia, middle class housing, and includes a picture of Levittown. This, AFAIK, was because that's how a Wikipedia contributor understood it.

It may not be what Reynolds intended, but it doesn't matter. People have to try pretty hard to be offended by the song. The people living in the little boxes made of ticky-tacky knew they were living in little boxes made of ticky-tacky, and folks used to joke about it when I was a kid. My mother used to sing the song

The only really dumb thing, as in stupid, as in it makes no fucking sense whatsoever is thinking that people who lived in those relatively inexpensive houses could afford to send their sons and daughters to law school or med school. Disconnect. This should tip people off she wasn't writing about people who would have been happy with a home, period.

It might be a good idea to change or add to the Wiki.

Subject: RE: Help: Little Boxes (Malvina Reynolds) ticky-tacky?
From: Q (Frank Staplin)
Date: 19 Aug 13 - 04:46 PM

Ticki-tacky doesn't exactly describe the million dollar houses I know.
Anyway, your price scale is wrong; most of those houses were built for under $50,000 (although with loss of dollar value, and increase in lot (land) value) that would equal perhaps $1 million today.

Example, my house cost $30,000 and would go on the market now for $900,000.

My question hasn't been answered- what other options did these GI Bill and other returning servicemen have? Plus burgeoning population as mentioned. California had an additional problem- influx of people continued.

Subject: RE: Help: Little Boxes (Malvina Reynolds) ticky-tacky?
From: Greg F.
Date: 19 Aug 13 - 04:53 PM

Levittown was a breakthrough.

Q, you ever been to either of the Levittowns or lived there? I've done have. Levittown is and was a nightmare.

Subject: RE: Help: Little Boxes (Malvina Reynolds) ticky-tacky?
From: Jeri
Date: 19 Aug 13 - 05:00 PM

How did Levittown get involved in this?