Author: Kate

Reader Tips

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.

The First American Prime Minister Orders Hors D’oeuvres

Michael Ignatieff says…

Canadians want accountability from their MPs, but he’s not sure they want to see every restaurant receipt politicians submit.

OK Canadians, What Is It You Want?
Yes – I want to see all my MP’s restaurant receipts
No – I don’t want to see all my MP’s restaurant receipts
I want my MP’s to pay for their own damned restaurant meals.
  
pollcode.com free polls

Related from the CTF: Reveal MP expenses.

Is There Nothing That Obama Can’t Do?

Now is the time at SDA when we juxtapose!
Globe&Mail, May 14th“Mr. Obama delivered his stinging rebuke of industry and regulators in remarks at the White House Rose Garden, flanked by cabinet secretaries involved in the massive response and cleanup effort. They were his sharpest remarks yet since the April 20 explosion of the Deepwater Horizon rig that killed 11 people and triggered the spill gushing from a crumpled pipe at a BP well about 40 miles south of Louisiana.”
Rasmussen Reports, May 18th“The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey of Likely Voters shows 64% believe offshore oil drilling should be allowed, up from 58% earlier this month.”

Law & Order

… promoted its storylines as “ripped from the headlines,” but the show’s hate-on towards social conservatives was actually sourced from liberal op-ed pages, where paranoid (and inaccurate) predictions about “Tea Party violence” and ever-looming “Christian theocracies” have enjoyed an equally long run.

True, but the Fred Thompson episodes made up for it. And the death penalty!
It’s Criminal Intent that was ruined for me. I can’t get through an episode without seeing Vincent D’Onofrio curled up in a fetal position, crying out for John Kerry.

Y2Kyoto: Not Godly Enough!

Now is the time at SDA when we juxtapose!
Iranian cleric Hojatoleslam Kazem Sedighi“Many women who do not dress modestly … lead young men astray, corrupt their chastity and spread adultery in society, which (consequently) increases earthquakes,”
Media cleric Ted Turner“I’m just wondering if God is telling us he doesn’t want us to drill offshore. And right before that we had that coal mine disaster in West Virginia where we lost 29 miners.”

“Sometimes his remarks have been plainly untrue…”

NYT Breaking News Alert;

Richard Blumenthal, a Democrat who is running for the United States Senate from Connecticut, never served in Vietnam, despite statements to the contrary. The Times has found that he obtained at least five military deferments from 1965 to 1970 and took repeated steps that enabled him to avoid going to war.

Yes, the same New York Times that so studiously avoided the “swift boat” controversy that dogged John Kerry. What gives? Suppose this might be a “teaching moment”?

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