We were kids...and songs would come on...and I would sing really loud...always the wrong lyrics. My little sister grew up thinking MY lyrics were the right ones. via
posted by Knappster
on Dec 22, 2011 -
28 comments
"On November 22, 1997, there was a party at 635 Logan Street, Steubenville, Ohio. Hubbard attended this party. At the party were several members of the gang known as the Crips. It is contested whether Hubbard is a member of the Crips. During that evening, Wise God Allah, a.k.a. Grier Montgomery, was walking down the street outside of the party. Wise God Allah was known to be a member of the rival gang the Bloods. Hubbard and up to nine other men began shooting at Wise God Allah. One of the shots hit Wise God Allah. The gunshot wound was fatal."*
"
On one record I did called 'Wise' that didn't make the album the Supreme Clientele—I couldn't use it, they took it off
**—I cried writing it. I wrote it on the beach. And I cried. And it started raining when I was crying. It was in Miami. I cried writing it, and then when I went to go record it, it had some tears coming to my eyes too, recording it, because I had to zone out, I couldn't really do it in front of everybody. I don't like to record in front of a lot of people especially when I'm writing emotional stuff." - Ghostface Killah [
audio interview]
[more inside]
posted by jng
on Apr 30, 2011 -
12 comments
You Can't Catch Me, Music and Lyrics by Chuck Berry.
The Stones covered it. John Lennon was
sued (twice!) for
covering it and
appropriating the lyrics. If Iggy Pop and the Stooges were never sued for doing the same thing as "Come Together" in
1970, perhaps it's because nobody could understand what exactly he was saying,
not even the bands that took their names from the adapted lyrics. Perhaps JJ Cale was thinking of the chorus when he wrote
Call Me The Breeze in 1971. Finally, though Jonothan Richman's "Roadrunner" clearly took inspiration from the
Velvet Underground's Sister Ray and Bo Diddley's "
Road Runner"(
among other things), but,
as a Berry fan, you can hear Richman echoing the lyrics in the Spirit of 1956 going Faster Miles an Hour, with the radio on, tuned to Rock And Roll.
[more inside]
posted by Potomac Avenue
on Jun 19, 2010 -
43 comments
Have you ever wondered what the national anthem of Bolivia, Nepal or The Republic of Seychelles sounded like? Well wonder no more because
NationalAnthems.info has got you covered! It claims to have the national anthem for every country in the world in MIDI format, along with downloadable lyrics and sheet music so you can sing and play along. But if the MIDI format isn't doing it for you, there's also other sites that you can visit that have downloadable MP3s of pretty much every national anthem this planet and its inhabitants have to offer,
such as this one or
this one, which is notable in that the anthems featured there were performed by the US Navy Band. And finally, for your further reading and listening pleasure,
check out this forum which contains background information on and even more links to downloadable national anthems.
posted by Effigy2000
on Sep 22, 2008 -
14 comments
When I was a kid, my dad, who grew up in London, during the Blitz, used to play this old record: a song called "The Laughing Policeman." It always put a smile on my face. According to
Wikipedia, it was written in 1922 by Charles Jolly, who wrote "numerous other laughing songs (The Laughing Major, Curate, Steeplechaser, Typist, Lover, etc)." If you want to hear the happiest policeman ever,
here's the mp3. The song has inspired
cartoonists,
mystery novelists (great series, by the way!),
filmmakers, a
more-recent recording (
mp3), and, inevitably, some
scary people on youtube. Speaking of youtube,
this is how I remember the song.
posted by grumblebee
on Feb 11, 2007 -
41 comments
What inoffensive songs do people find scary? A list asked for by a curious
Jarvis Cocker, former frontman of the band Pulp.
My favorite entry:
"Laughing Gnome - Bowie. Scared the crap out of me as a kid. I remember getting my parents to check under the bed. My father, a bit of an evil electronics bastard put a speaker under my bed one night and played the song just as I was drifting off. He then ran in when I started screaming and pulled out a doll from under the bead and chopped its head off with a machete. God I need therapy."
posted by w0mbat
on Oct 3, 2006 -
152 comments
Made most popular to many Americans as the closing song for the Grand Ole Opry programs, Will The Circle Be Unbroken was written in 1907 by Ada Habershon, an intensely religious young woman and acquaintance of
Dwight Moody and
Ira David Sankey. The music was "composed" by
Charles Gabriel, a popular songwriter and composer of the era who is often solely credited with the song, but while he may have put the notes down on paper, the tune itself already existed as the African-American spiritual Glory Glory / Since I Laid My Burden Down. [lots more inside]
posted by luriete
on May 26, 2006 -
18 comments
The Streets of Laredo: The Cowboy's Lament was originally written as the Irish drover balled
Bard of Armaugh (or
Armagh), which later mutated into
A Handful of Laurel, about a young man dying of syphilis in a London hospital, musing back on his days in the alehouses and whorehouses. Immigrants settling in the Appalachians brought their own version,
The Unfortunate Rake, sung as early as 1790, about a young soldier dying of mercury poisoning, a result of treatment for venereal disease, who requests a military funeral - a slight but important evolution from the previous version. The current lyrics are most popularly attributed to cowboy
Frances Henry "Frank" Maynard, who copyrighted them in 1879. While various
versions of the song were popular in the US before Maynard took pen to paper and needle to wax cylinder (under such titles as
Locke Hospital,
St. James Infirmary Blues,
Tom Sherman's Bar and
Way Down in Lodorra), his version is the one with which we are most familiar today.
beat the drum slowly, play the fife lowly / sound the death march as you carry me along / cover my body in sweet-smelling posies / for I'm the young (rake, soldier, man, girl, lass, etc)
cut down in (his/her)
prime (or
and I know I've done wrong)
The song has been recorded by pretty much every country, western and folk-identified musical artist since recording music became practical, although the most popular versions must be those by
Arlo Guthrie (who once said it was "the saddest song I know," and who sings it on his album
Son of the Wind) and
Johnny Cash (who added
a few verses to his 1965 version, improving the song a bit and making it more emotionally complex).
Roger McGuinn's creative commons-licensed version is one of my personal favorites, as is Bobby Sutliff's
version.
posted by luriete
on Aug 3, 2005 -
27 comments
Deep inside the poetic stylings of John Bon Jovi. To begin, I'd like to look at the opening verses of "Bed of Roses". You may think you understand the meaning behind this poem - that John Bon Jovi likes a lady, and is upset about it. This is just a sign of the brilliant, interweaving complexity of Bon Jovi. You can love the poem at that level, and many have, but let's go... inside.[
Coral Link - In case the other doesn't work]
posted by KevinSkomsvold
on Feb 23, 2005 -
23 comments
Twelve STIs of Christmas I can't decide if the lyrics are better than the animated men or not, but the twelve STIs of christmas is possibly the best public health propoganda I've ever seen.
[Flash][SFW. Probably][And technically double post, but it's a great one. And it's christmas.]
posted by twine42
on Dec 20, 2004 -
12 comments
Song meanings is a site where you can read the lyrics to a song and then post your thoughts on what the song means.
posted by bargle
on Nov 18, 2004 -
57 comments
Ceci Nes't Pas Une Satanic Message • "Years ago someone told me that if you played Led Zeppelin's Stairway to Heaven song backwards that you could make out 'satanic messages'. It is not my opinion that Led Zeppelin and the other artists here were given some kind of evil power to make these backwards sounds have a satanic message. And, no, I did not create this to show the evils of Rock and Roll. Instead I made this flash piece for two reasons: 1. I was new to Flash and wanted to be better at it and 2. The reverse files sound cool. "
posted by dhoyt
on Oct 8, 2004 -
15 comments
