"I'm a huntin' that man who first thought up Daylight Savings Time"

March 15, 2010 9:11 PM

Still reeling from losing that hour of sleep Saturday night? Check out this catchy old country tune from old-time banjo-playing sensation Louis Marshall "Grandpa" Jones in which Grandpa rants about Daylight Savings Time.

I found this track while looking for stuff to sample and couldn't resist posting it here.

It's the first track on the playlist, if you can't find it.

posted by hiteleven (29 comments total)

For more Grandpa fun check out "I'm no communist" (track 9 here), in which Grandpa essentially promotes McCarthyism and all in all sounds like a modern day Tea Partier (seriously, this could be their theme song).
posted by hiteleven at 9:17 PM on March 15, 2010 [1 favorite]

I'm gonna use that song for the title sequence of my documentary; Time and the NWO. It's gonna blow the lid off the NWO's DLST plot.
posted by nola at 9:20 PM on March 15, 2010

Grandpa is the one who found the murdered corpses of String Bean and his wife.

We're deep in Nashville Babylon territory here.
posted by Astro Zombie at 9:22 PM on March 15, 2010 [3 favorites]

It warms this pedant's black heart that Grandpa never once sings "daylight savings time" in this song.
posted by gubo at 9:25 PM on March 15, 2010 [1 favorite]

It warms this pedant's black heart that Grandpa never once sings "daylight savings time" in this song.

I think the 'gs' in "Savings" are implied.
posted by hiteleven at 9:30 PM on March 15, 2010

I was awake during the timechange. I was so disappointed when I woke up this Sunday and immediately realized that I should've called up some friends on the West Coast to say: "I'm calling you from the future to tell you not to worry, we have saved daylight!"
posted by Kattullus at 9:33 PM on March 15, 2010 [2 favorites]

i thought BST started at the end of the month? ha, suckers, you all must have turned up late/early for work (can't work out which it would be)
posted by marienbad at 9:42 PM on March 15, 2010

Daylight saving time

Why do people always put that extra S there? Gain an hour, gain an S?
posted by twoleftfeet at 9:43 PM on March 15, 2010 [2 favorites]

Does anyone else detest this time change? I hate going to bed and waking up what feels like an hour too early. No fun.
posted by sallybrown at 9:44 PM on March 15, 2010 [1 favorite]

Heh heh! I like ol' Grandpa.

You know, there's no daylight savings time in Japan. We don't go fer them newfangled idears over here, neither!
posted by flapjax at midnite at 9:51 PM on March 15, 2010

Man I love love love when the clock goes forward. I left work today and there was still light in the sky for the first time in months.

I find it baffling that the other way is somehow considered "normal." My work day ends at 6 at the earliest, usually more like 7. And the sun goes down at... five?? What the fucking fuck is that? And I need the sun at 7am why? I would be seriously interested to see a graph of the suicide spike when it's suddenly dark an hour earlier for no goddamn reason.

If anything, as long as we're making up arbitrary adjustments, let's jump ahead three hours! Why not? Sun from 9am to 9pm - who's with me?
posted by drjimmy11 at 9:51 PM on March 15, 2010 [3 favorites]

Does anyone else detest this time change? I hate going to bed and waking up what feels like an hour too early. No fun.

Listen to the song. Grandpa feels your pain. I think he literally wants to murder the "guy" who "invented" it.
posted by hiteleven at 10:02 PM on March 15, 2010 [1 favorite]

Listen to the song. Grandpa feels your pain.

I think Grandpa would tell me to just get up 60 minutes earlier and deal with it. He seems more pissed about having to wind his clock 'til it ain't worth a dime.
posted by sallybrown at 10:08 PM on March 15, 2010

Heh (Born October 20, 1913) "By 1935 his pursuit of a musical career took him to WBZ (AM) radio in Boston, Massachusetts where he met musician/songwriter Bradley Kincaid, who gave him the nickname "Grandpa" because of his off-stage grumpiness at early-morning radio shows. Jones liked the name and decided to create a stage persona based around it."


Anyone that hates Daylight Saving Time must be one of those evil morning persons or a farmer and can suck a sundial. When my boss says I have to be at work at 9:00 AM the sun shining at five blessed thirty in the morning as it will be soon is of no use to me. Though maybe I'm just happy for DST because I traditionally didn't have to come inside until the streetlights came on. (Back around the time when I was watching Grandpa Jones on Hee-Haw.)

OP drjimmy11 - Me!
posted by vapidave at 10:13 PM on March 15, 2010

I find it baffling that the other way is somehow considered "normal."

Here's a map of who observes DST and who doesn't (yay Arizona and Saskatchewan!). So "normal," as ever, is in the eye of the beholder.
posted by blucevalo at 10:25 PM on March 15, 2010

He should move to Arizona.
posted by nestor_makhno at 10:53 PM on March 15, 2010

hiteleven: I think he literally wants to murder the "guy" who "invented" it.

Grandpa was late, as the guy who invented daylight saving time was already dead at that point, not by an irate farmer but rather by influenza.
posted by Kattullus at 11:02 PM on March 15, 2010 [1 favorite]

Eh, what you folks talking about?
posted by Surfurrus at 11:13 PM on March 15, 2010

You know, there's no daylight savings time in Japan. We don't go fer them newfangled idears over here, neither!

Man do we neeeeeeeeed daylight savings time up here. 4 in the morning, streets are empty, shops are closed, and the sun is up? Japan (especially Hokkaido) is a total time zone outlier.

For comparison:
Here (Without DST)
Other places (With DST)

So, when you're sitting out and enjoying the sunset late after dinner, think of us over here scrambling in the dark to buy blackout curtains.
posted by damo at 11:31 PM on March 15, 2010

*The general "you", not you you.
posted by damo at 11:46 PM on March 15, 2010

Last time I had to deal with DST, I had to nap in the toilet at work for a week before I got used to it. I was getting up at 5am to get to work on time, which I could deal with, but having to get up at 4am just wrecked me.

The worst thing about it was that no one seemed to understand that moving the hands on the clock doesn't actually move time. Noon is still noon, even if the clock says 1 instead of 12 like it's supposed to.
posted by Jimmy Havok at 1:06 AM on March 16, 2010

Grandpa feels your pain

... and it brings gloom, despair, and agony on him. Deep dark depression, excessive misery, in fact.
posted by BitterOldPunk at 1:25 AM on March 16, 2010 [3 favorites]

I didn't know this entire album was available for free on archive.org, thank you for the link and the post!

My old favorite and a regular addition to my bluegrass mixes is "Down the Old Plank Road", which is track #5 in the first link.

"My wife died on a Friday night, Saturday she was buried, Sunday was my courtin' day, and Monday I got married". That's classic stuff right there.
posted by rollbiz at 5:35 AM on March 16, 2010

I still don't understand why we have daylight savings time.
posted by jefficator at 7:20 AM on March 16, 2010

I still don't understand why we have daylight savings time.

Because of the candy lobby.
posted by Xurando at 7:26 AM on March 16, 2010

I didn't know this entire album was available for free on archive.org, thank you for the link and the post!

Yes, I've been discovering lately that the Internet Archive is a treasure trove.

Maybe it's worth posting more regularly on the blue with links to some of their lesser-known collections. Their film noir section is fantastic, for example.
posted by hiteleven at 8:14 AM on March 16, 2010

Man do we neeeeeeeeed daylight savings time up here. 4 in the morning, streets are empty, shops are closed, and the sun is up? Japan (especially Hokkaido) is a total time zone outlier.

See, I loved the way things worked in Japan. I have a difficult time kicking back and relaxing while the sun is shining (it's like my brain is telling me to go out and hunt some sabertooth tigers or something), and I detest waking up in the dark. The early sunrise / early sunset combo was great.

Now I'm just fucking confused half the year.
posted by jal0021 at 9:26 AM on March 16, 2010

I think he literally wants to murder the "guy" who "invented" it.

Grandpa and I have a lot in common then, but since the inventor is gone, that ship has sailed, so I'll have to settle for being uncharacteristically fighty with everyone who comes near me for the next week.

I'm thinking that I'll just keep a hand grenade at my desk and when ever someone walks over to talk to me, I'll just start slowly pulling out the pin till they leave.

DLST and I are not getting along well this year.
posted by quin at 9:37 AM on March 16, 2010

Certain people in Saskatchewan love to gripe about the perceived "missing" hour of daylight they're not getting. They fail to admit, even when told, that Saskatchewan is really on year-round daylight time.
posted by evilcolonel at 3:44 PM on March 16, 2010