Reader Tips

Reader Tips 50 Comments

Most people know one or two songs that they can’t bear to listen to for even a second, songs that make them reach convulsively for the radio knob even if it means risking going into the ditch. Some songs show up on many people’s lists: Horse With No Name, for example, seems to rub an awful lot of people the wrong way, as does Dan Hill’s Sometimes When We Touch and Captain and Tenille’s Muskrat Love. Paul Anka’s Having My Baby seems to offend a lot of people too, perhaps because it’s not something you typically bellow about into your wife’s ear. Personally, I find it hard to top Rupert Holmes’ Him: after TMI-ing the sort of 70’s era hedonism that makes you want to don a full-body prophylactic, it ups the ante with one of the most execrable choruses of all time, with its insistent demand “me, me, ME!…”
Sometimes, though, a song is unbearable not because of the song itself but because of the abusive treatment it receives at the hands of those who, knowing that it’s a good song, try to elevate their musical reputations on its back. It’s the sheer beauty of Danny Boy, for example, which melds a beautiful, centuries-old Irish melody with timeless lyrics, that drives every mawkish performer extant to set upon it like a pickpocket on a gold watch. It’s virtually impossible to find a straightforward, respectful version – try to find even one on YouTube – because even the greatest vocalists insist on lingering annoyingly, well past the time signature date, on particular words, as if they’re trying to outdo other performers’ maudlin displays rather than just delivering the song as it’s written.
Jacque Brel’s Le Moribond, tonight’s musical selection, is another example of a song that has been appropriated to ill-effect. The fact that most people are familiar with its melody via Terry Jacks’ mawkish Seasons In The Sun – surely one of the most widely-detested songs extant – is a musical injustice of the highest order. Not only did Jacks’ clumsy, Hallmark Card-esque redaction of the original lyrics effectively invert the narrative sentiment of the original, which was world-weary in a blithe, charming, characteristically Gallic way, but his metronomic, almost lobotomizing delivery of the melody managed to hammer Brel’s highly-adept, skipping-stone musical phrasing into a odorless, tasteless paste.
Fortunately, relief is just a mouse-click away: here’s Marc-Andre Fleury lookalike Jacques Brel performing his 1961 song Le Moribond.
You are invited to link to your own cover versions of Danny Boy, and, of course, to your Reader Tips, in the comments.

50 Replies to “Reader Tips”

  1. At American Spectator, Jeffrey Lord provides a few choice examples as to why Newsweek (which is not apparently on the chopping block) is the Canary In The Liberal Coal Mine:

    • September 12, 2009 — Longtime editor Evan Thomas, (perhaps its worth noting here that Mr. Thomas is the grandson of famed 20th century socialist Norman Thomas) has the cover story during the height of the furious debate over ObamaCare. Title? “The Case For Killing Granny.” In which Thomas begins by describing the insistence of doctors trying to keep his dying mother alive against her wishes. Then Thomas segues from self-determination into arguing for the need of government or someone to pull the plug on seniors.

    • November 14, 2009 — Thomas again, this time with a cover story featuring a photo borrowed from Runners World that depicts former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin in short running shorts. “How Do You Solve a Problem Like Sarah? She’s Bad News for The GOP — And Everybody Else, Too.”

    • February 7, 2009 – “We’re All Socialists Now” crowed the cover that showed a red hand shaking a blue hand. The point: America will become France. Fighting against big government will be a relic of the 20th century. And there was this zinger: “Remember Joe the Plumber? Sadly, so do we.” Was that line crafted over drinks at the Yale Club?

    Later, Lord notes “In this decade it was the National Enquirer, not Newsweek, that revealed liberal hero and presidential candidate former senator John Edwards was having an affair with Rielle Hunter. Where was Newsweek’s head? Into earnestly publishing Edward’s musings (2006) on how America needed ‘real moral leadership.’ Really. No kidding.”

  2. Of course, the comments about Terry Jack’s “Seasons in the Sun”, would be an opinion only, though I have heard it expressed before, it is still a matter of conjecture. I don’t have it, and wouldn’t particularly want it, but it apparently sold quite well. so I can only assume some people quite enjoy it.

  3. Not sure what that American Spectator comment is all about but the Brel video is terrific.

  4. People are being sent to hospitals here in Canada and being sent back, basically, to die, without so much as an effort made to help them. In fact a professor at UBC has claimed it an abuse to give patients over 75 or 80, multiple prescriptions. Why so, if it keeps them living? I mean, it’s not like they have to take them!

  5. my dear man…
    danny boy is NOT an Irish tune….even though i heard o’rourke drunkenly sing it on a tram in Dublin many years ago….btw he reduced the passengers to tears…but still….
    and as for being centuries old ?

  7. Brel, Brel – always magnificent. How about ‘Le plat pays qui est le mien’. And ‘Marieke’. And of course ‘Amsterdam’..dans le port d’Amsterdam y a des marins qui boivent’…

  8. John B, the melody (Londonderry Aire, aka Air from County Derry) is definitely Irish, and was first noted in the late 1700’s.
    Noted expert W.J. Wikipedia Sr:
    “The Londonderry Air is an Irish anthem. It is also popular among the Irish diaspora and very well known throughout the world. The tune is played as the Northern Ireland anthem at the Commonwealth Games….The title of the air comes from the name of the county in Ireland.”
    The lyrics to Danny Boy were written later by an Englishman, but in an Irish accent – you can tell by listening to the accent of those who sing it.
    Fun fact: “Londonderry Air” is commonly misspelled as “London Derrierre.” On purpose.
    Here’s a Reader Tip, from the “I Guess It Wasn’t His Time” files:
    “A young man went down to the beach when the tide was out, with a long pole, sharpened at one end, and a hook in the other; he had also a rope with a noose in it, a phial of poison, a pistol, and a box of matches. He drove the pole into the sand, and climbed up it until the tide had risen high enough to drown him, when he swallowed the poison, set his trousers on fire, put the noose round his neck, and then fired his pistol. The bullet, instead of entering his forehead, grazed the top of his head and went through the rope; the rope, being weakened, snapped, and dropped the unfortunate man into the sea, which, of course, put the fire out, and swallowing some sea water made him vomit the poison, and in two or three minutes he was washed ashore alive, and only suffering slightly from the effects of his immersion.”
    (From 1881)

  9. Saskatoon to Edmonton and back. No radio. Kid and Fischer-Price cassette. Couldn’t find the song my daughter liked or I have banished from my mind. I did find the only one I liked however but alas she figured out the rewind button so I only heard parts of it.
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RsBf0WwG9cg

  10. I have to turn off “Bye Bye Miss American Pie” – I hate that f…..g song.

  11. EBD is quite correct about the origins of Danny Boy being Londonderry Aire. There have been some good and bad versions of the song but in my opinion the live footage of Jackie Wilson doing it is by far the best. Barry McGuigans father sang a pretty good version at his sons championship fight in Belfast as well.
    A fly in the ointment so to speak is the Irish will never say “Londonderry” only “Derry”. For political reasons. Hence the phonetic word play of Derry Aire (Derrierre).

  12. Obama the perfected progressive…
    Excerpt from Victor Davis Hanson’s The Technocrats’ New Clothes at PJM:
    “Indeed, a trait of this administration is to speak far more harshly of fellow Americans than it does of our enemies: Arizonans vote to enforce federal immigration laws, so the administration offers them up to the Chinese as an example of American civil-liberties violations. In our morally equivalent world, a government that would enforce laws against those who entered the country illegally is not all that different from a government that not long ago killed more than 40 million of its own.”
    Read the whole thing.

  16. The song that burn my britches is “Felice Navidad”. Aaaaaarrrrrrrgh!
    I’ll gladly listen to any of the other songs you’ve listed, EBD, but not Felice Navidad.

  17. Hey everybody, check out the offensive, gratuitous editorial cartoon, at the top of this Jane Taber piece about a putative “faith war,” which shows a cross – a crossbeam – stuck through Stephen Harper’s finger, with blood dripping out.
    It’s captioned “Splinter In His Finger.”
    Do you think the G&M would publish a similar cartoon, using a similar symbol of faith, if the subject matter was a Sikh or a Muslim or a Hindu instead of a Christian?

  18. I cannot stand that song by Terry Jacks, but that wasn’t always so.
    This is humbling for me – I bought that record by Jacks – that was the only song I listened to on the whole album – the rest sucked in my view – don’t want to give away my age, but a tween was I, so I guess my lapse in judgment can be forgiven. Mind you, a few years later, I found myself wondering why I ever listened to that depressing song in the first place, and I was peeved that one of the first albums I purchased turned out to be a one hit wonder. I do remember it gave me a good excuse to cry and feel all dramatic and “adult” about life as tweens are apt to do. My older siblings hated it from the get go.
    Now I wonder if there was a positive correlation in suicide rates with the release of that song.

  19. Cat’s in the Cradle…most depressing, annoying song ever. I have to turn it off every time I hear it, which unfortunately seems to always be when I’m driving while in the car with my father. Talk about a downer!
    But just the same, thanks for that song – I enjoyed it!

  23. Another Sean: Keith Jarrett’s piano version of Danny Boy is stunning – beautiful and lyrical. Thanks a million. Probably the best one I’ve heard.
    For some reason the best versions, hands-down, are instrumental, like this one from the move Brassed Off. All the vocal interpretations I’ve heard don’t come close to bringing out the beauty of the song, which seems to bring out the worst in singers. I’ve yet to hear a respectful, stately – as opposed to mawkish, over-interpreted, old-timey/maudlin or overwrought – vocal version of Danny Boy.
    Ah well, you’ve taken us halfway there: the other version you linked to absolutely, definitively removed the last molecule of, erm, mawk from the song, which is a glass-half-full kind of thing. That’s hilarious.

  25. Baker Street by Gerry Rafferty.
    It’s ’70s cheese, but it’s so much more: There’s the icky, insinuating melody; those creepy, despair-inducing, “just-kill-yourself-already” lyrics; that horrible, catchy, self-enchanted, faux-passionate gloopy saxophone bit.
    The fact that once it sets up shop in your head, you basically need an exorcist to get rid of it.
    I really, really don’t like it.

  27. Black Mamba: I agree, for all the reasons you eloquently note. The melody not only fails to resolve, it does so circularly and insistently, and the lyrics are a perfected compilation of post-60’s – i.e. 70’s – inanity. So much more, as you put it.
    “Faux-passionate gloopy” – verily.
    Reader Tip: Here’s an excerpt from an interesting NP piece by Gerry Nicholls on the ongoing canard-of-the-moment, recently spurred-on by Marci McDonald in her book The Armageddon Factor, that Stephen Harper is “plotting to hand control of Canada over to a Cabal of evangelical Christians”:
    “The (trendy, urban, secular left) earnestly believe Harper has a ‘hidden agenda’ that includes, among other things, imposing a Christian-style theocracy on Canada. To their minds, McDonald’s book simply confirms what they knew all along.
    “It’s great propaganda, except for one tiny little detail: McDonald’s thesis is pure and utter nonsense. Take it from me: I know the man.”
    The rest here.

  30. Liberal Ziffy shows the way.
    Ziffy asks: “do you understand what I’m saying?”, Stupid?
    …-
    “Ignatieff: Some Accountablity is a Waste of Money”
    “”There’s accountability that is in itself a waste of public money, do you understand what I’m saying?”
    …-
    “Liberal leader Michael Ignatieff says “I don’t think they (the public) want us to be going through our receipts for this meal or that meal necessarily…”. Is that what you want?
    1. Yes. I’d like the Auditor General to go through all receipts – office, travel and other expensed items
    92.8%
    2. No. I think this could turn into a witch hunt – an attempt to embarrass some MPs. The internal audit and rules are all we need
    6.47%
    3. Other
    0.71%”
    http://www.cfra.com/?cat=3&nid=73257

  32. I would gladly listen to any one of the songs previously listed if the choice was between one of them or rap music.

  33. Should Time Travel ever be invented, I say we go back and nuke the ’70s, space time continuum be damned.
    batb – re. the Carpenters song: “Why do birds suddenly appear (every time you are near?)”
    Yes, what the bloody h@ll is up with that!?

  35. Ahhh. A topic I can get into. In my younger days, I used to entertain (guitar or piano and vocal) at a local restaurant. Two songs that were endlessly requested (and which I loathed and eventually refused to sing even though I earned tips for them) were “Put another Log on the Fire” and “Torn Between Two Lovers”. A funny song is really only funny the first 3 times you hear it and a ballad becomes an emotional emetic very quickly too. And there was that Freddie Fender thing…thank goodness. I’ve forgotten it. Please no-one remind me.
    Songs that endured: The Water is Wide, and just about anything by Bob Dylan. I knew I didn’t have the range for Oh Danny Boy, though I would have loved to have sung it. However there’s nothing worse than someone (male or female) bellowing the higher bits because they can’t reach the notes otherwise.
    Jacques Brel–magnificent composer. In Le Moribond, the emerging story of the wife adds an amusing aspect to the story–and yet how poignant the line about how hard it is to die in the spring.
    Finally: I loathe Whitney’s version of “I Will Always Love You”, yet I love Dolly’s version. Oh and if you love a straight ballad, beautifully done: The First Time by Roberta Flack: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Knh9pV4EB3k
    I could go on and on.

  36. My favourite change the station tune is “Spinning Wheel” by that Toronto band whom I won’t name.
    “The lyrics to “Danny Boy” were written by the English lawyer and lyricist Frederick Weatherly in 1910. Although the lyrics were originally written for a different tune, Weatherly modified them to fit “Londonderry Air” in 1913 when his sister-in-law in America sent him a copy.”
    Most singers drag the song out trying to wrench every bit of false emotion they can from each word and it just makes it a maudlin gagfest. Boulton’s one of the worst, but my wife goes all mushy at the sound of his voice so I have to endure or leave the room.
    Excellent article on Newsweek,which I won’t miss. It’s quite common that the Editor of the mag doesn’t see it as a left-wing perspective,most liberal/progressives I talk to see conservatives as Right-wing, but see what we perceive as LW,balanced and fair,whether it’s Newsweek,or CBC.

  37. O’s ‘catastrophic failure’.
    O’s Katrina quagmire/disaster: Katrina +.
    …-
    “Scientists accuse Obama over oil spill
    Expert claims NOAA is guilty of a ‘catastrophic failure’
    Tensions between the Obama administration and the scientific community over the gulf oil spill are escalating, with prominent oceanographers accusing the government of failing to conduct an adequate scientific analysis of the damage and of allowing BP to obscure the spill’s true scope.
    The scientists assert that the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and other agencies have been slow to investigate the magnitude of the spill and the damage it is causing in the deep ocean.
    They are especially concerned about getting a better handle on problems that may be occurring from large plumes of oil droplets that appear to be spreading beneath the ocean surface.
    Story continues below ↓”
    http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/37248587/ns/us_news-the_new_york_times

  39. Most MSM stories on the oil spill catastrophe will be from “Venice La.” where the media crews are based.
    Well, that’s exactly where me an my Viejo launched our boat this week-end to load our boat with the above. (fotos of Humberto Fontova y papa)
    And oh!……A little detail the MSM hasn’t mentioned. DOUBLE the amount leaked from the Exxon Valdez spills into the Gulf of Mexico EVERY YEAR–and perfectly NATURALLY from the Gulf floor.
    and more from “Science Daily” .. oh yeah, and “unreal”
    http://babalublog.com/2010/05/catastrophic-oil-spill-destroys-fishing-off-louisiana/

  41. “superstar will you come back to me ” by luther vandross.
    more Baby’s than a mexican materity ward. must have held the record till Justin Beiber came along.
    babybabybaby ohbaby , oh puke.

  42. EBD, we’re on exactly the same page about both “Horse” and “Seasons” – I strongly suspect both America and Jacks were aliens from the Planet Of Dreck.

  43. I watched Hellboy II last week and I haven’t been able to get “I Can’t Smile Without You” out of my head since then. I wake up and the song is playing in my head.
    Please, make it stop. Make it stop. Somebody shoot me in the fracking head!

  45. Al/Moh Who?
    …-
    “Thousands of Mohammed images uploaded on Facebook
    Telegraph.co.uk – Rob Crilly – ‎21 minutes ago‎
    Thousands of provocative images of the Prophet Mohammed have been uploaded to the social networking site Facebook, sparking a fresh wave of outrage in Pakistan.”
    “One showed a photograph of a pig with a speech bubble saying: “Peace be upon me and my armies.” Another showed Mohammed with a long beard, holding a bomb in one hand and a decapitated head in the other, wearing a T-shirt bearing the legend: “I love Jihad.” Organisers said the page was set up to promote freedom of speech but a government spokesman condemned the images.”
    “http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/facebook/7746258/Thousands-of-Mohammed-images-uploaded-on-Facebook.html

  47. zombie wades into it… at pajamasmedia.
    “This is not an argument over the right to be “provocative” or “offensive”; rather, it is something much more significant — an argument over who gets to determine what counts as provocative or offensive in the first place. The Western world dragged itself out of the church-dominated Dark Ages and into the Enlightenment in part over this precise issue: the freedom to engage in speech and actions which formerly had been classified as the crime known as “blasphemy.” It seems such a trivial and quaint issue in retrospect, and hardly worthy of note from our hyper-secularized 21st-century perspective, but tell that to the millions of people who for centuries lived under the yoke of governments which used accusations of blasphemy and other religious misbehaviors as a primary tool of tyranny and oppression.”
    http://pajamasmedia.com/zombie/2010/05/20/the-new-free-speech-movement/

  48. It’s not there anymore, but the National Weather Service in North Platte, Nebraska http://www.crh.noaa.gov/lbf/ mentioned that this is the coolest early May on record in North Platte and Valentine, with only 2 days at or above 70 F (~21 C) in North Platte, and none in Valentine.

  50. Randall – That is a lovely clean rendition, though I must admit that there are not too many versions of the song that wouldn’t cause a lump in my throat, especially if in my cups.

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