(no subject)
in honor of the current controversy over some unAmerican devils daring to translate our beloved national anthem into Spanish, I would like to propose - wholly in the spirit of compromise - that we dump the current words, penned by some lawyer hack back in 1814 and best described by Kurt Vonnegut as "gibberish sprinkled with question marks," and restore to their deserved place of glory the absolutely amazing original lyrics.
I mean, can you imagine Celine Dion singing THIS at the Super Bowl?
The news through OLYMPUS immediately flew;
When OLD THUNDER pretended to give himself Airs_
If these Mortals are suffer'd their Scheme to pursue,
The Devil a Goddess will stay above Stairs.
"Hark! already they cry,
"In Transports of Joy
"Away to the Sons of ANACREON we'll fly,
"And there, with good Fellows, we'll learn to intwine
"The Myrtle of VENUS with BACCHUS'S Vine.
now, isn't that better than some drivel about "the rocket's red glare"?
but no, here's our humorless commander in chief: "The national anthem ought to be sung in English. And I think people who want to be citizens of this country ought to learn it in English. They ought to learn to sing the national anthem in English."
got that? got that? got that? if you didn't (if you didn't, which is to say if you didn't), i guess he should probably repeat it again, repeat it again, or maybe repeat it again.
but enough about the national pastime (immigrant-hating, that is). here's my take on every patriotic pro-America song I could think of:
"The Star Spangled Banner" = despite what I said above I do actually kinda like TSSB, though hearing a million awful stadium-rock versions at baseball games and such has nearly ruined it for me.
"America (My Country 'Tis of Thee)" = I remember singing this when I was like 8 and being completely baffled by the line about "land where my fathers died," since i only had one father and he wasn't dead. did you know it has the same tune as the British national anthem? ("God save our gracious queen...")
"America the Beautiful" = kinda dull-ish. the message basically comes down to "America is pretty! Therefore, America is good!" I mean, if our pretty landscapes are the main reason we're good, why did we clutter them up with a bunch of ugly cities?
"God Bless America" = worst song ever! one of the worst things about the three or four months after 9/11 was that you couldn't go anywhere without hearing this crap.
"Battle Hymn of the Republic" = good but i wish they'd kept the original lyrics, about the abolitionist John Brown, whose martyrdom helped spark the Civil War:
John Brown's body lies a-moulderin' in the grave,
John Brown's body lies a-moulderin' in the grave,
John Brown's body lies a-moulderin' in the grave,
But his soul goes marching on.
He captured Harper's Ferry with his nineteen men so true;
He frightened old Virginia 'til she trembled through and through.
They hanged him for a traitor, themselves the traitor's crew,
His soul goes marching on.
The stars above in Heaven are a-lookin' kindly down,
The stars above in Heaven are a-lookin' kindly down,
The stars above in Heaven are a-lookin' kindly down,
On the grave of old John Brown.
CHORUS:
Glory! Glory! Hallelujah!
Glory! Glory! Hallelujah!
Glory! Glory! Hallelujah!
His soul goes marching on.
totally inspiring! doesn't that make you want to go torch a few plantations? sadly, the Union's great marching song was eventually watered down with some typically hymn-y religious lyrics, though the resulting implied identification of John Brown with Christ ("As He died to make men holy, let us die to make men free!") was probably not intended.
"The Stars and Stripes Forever" = I don't even know if this has lyrics, but there's always been something kind of hilarious about it to me, probably because I'll always associate it with the scene in "Duck Soup" where Harpo Marx spends five minutes trying to smash a radio that's playing it.
"Back in the USA" = not really an anthem but I include it so I can tell this story: one late night a few years ago I was rambling on (in old-school me's typically obnoxious wannabe-rockcritic manner) to one of my friends about how brilliant and ironic it was that Chuck Berry would write a song about how great it was to be a teenager and go to hamburger stops and drive-in movies and all that, when, at the time he was a teenager, he couldn't have gone to half of those places because he was black. and yet there's not a drop of irony in the song itself. she looked at me curiously and said: "Chuck Berry was black?"
"Dixie" = it breaks my heart to say it but this is easily the best anthem the United States ever had. I used to have an mp3 of a wonderfully jaunty version by Ernest Tubb (I think), which was inspiring enough to make me understand something that i never really wanted to understand: listening to it, whatever you believed, you were almost overcome by the image of brave, defiant young soldiers fighting for their homeland.
it wasn't the whole story, of course, and that's why the greatest version of "Dixie" is Elvis's in "American Trilogy." after a solemn, dignified rendition of the Confederate anthem ("In Dixie land I was born/Early, Lord, one frosty morn'" - surely no one else ever made that "frosty morn" sound quite so chilly, so bereft of hope), you've almost been sucked right into the past; the mood is that of the lost cause: the air is thick with regret. then, on the very brink of kitsch, Elvis suddenly breaks out into an old slave song: "Now hush little baby, don't you cry/You know your daddy's bound to die..." for a second it's as if all the emotions and contradictions of the ancient war have suddenly come flooding into the room, and it's almost unbearable: the singer's own fate, you feel, is not far off. then Elvis roars back into the chorus of "Battle Hymn," and the song wraps up with a big political-rally finish.
"This Land is Your Land" = a very good song, and perhaps the only one on this list whose sentiment I can completely stand behind. but it'll never be the national anthem because it was written by a damned commie.
"Yankee Doodle" = I nearly forgot about this one! it doesn't get played much anymore, probably because it doesn't appear to have any message besides "Americans are goofy and full of themselves." but these days that message seems a lot more relevant than that of "The Star Spangled Banner."
I mean, can you imagine Celine Dion singing THIS at the Super Bowl?
The news through OLYMPUS immediately flew;
When OLD THUNDER pretended to give himself Airs_
If these Mortals are suffer'd their Scheme to pursue,
The Devil a Goddess will stay above Stairs.
"Hark! already they cry,
"In Transports of Joy
"Away to the Sons of ANACREON we'll fly,
"And there, with good Fellows, we'll learn to intwine
"The Myrtle of VENUS with BACCHUS'S Vine.
now, isn't that better than some drivel about "the rocket's red glare"?
but no, here's our humorless commander in chief: "The national anthem ought to be sung in English. And I think people who want to be citizens of this country ought to learn it in English. They ought to learn to sing the national anthem in English."
got that? got that? got that? if you didn't (if you didn't, which is to say if you didn't), i guess he should probably repeat it again, repeat it again, or maybe repeat it again.
but enough about the national pastime (immigrant-hating, that is). here's my take on every patriotic pro-America song I could think of:
"The Star Spangled Banner" = despite what I said above I do actually kinda like TSSB, though hearing a million awful stadium-rock versions at baseball games and such has nearly ruined it for me.
"America (My Country 'Tis of Thee)" = I remember singing this when I was like 8 and being completely baffled by the line about "land where my fathers died," since i only had one father and he wasn't dead. did you know it has the same tune as the British national anthem? ("God save our gracious queen...")
"America the Beautiful" = kinda dull-ish. the message basically comes down to "America is pretty! Therefore, America is good!" I mean, if our pretty landscapes are the main reason we're good, why did we clutter them up with a bunch of ugly cities?
"God Bless America" = worst song ever! one of the worst things about the three or four months after 9/11 was that you couldn't go anywhere without hearing this crap.
"Battle Hymn of the Republic" = good but i wish they'd kept the original lyrics, about the abolitionist John Brown, whose martyrdom helped spark the Civil War:
John Brown's body lies a-moulderin' in the grave,
John Brown's body lies a-moulderin' in the grave,
John Brown's body lies a-moulderin' in the grave,
But his soul goes marching on.
He captured Harper's Ferry with his nineteen men so true;
He frightened old Virginia 'til she trembled through and through.
They hanged him for a traitor, themselves the traitor's crew,
His soul goes marching on.
The stars above in Heaven are a-lookin' kindly down,
The stars above in Heaven are a-lookin' kindly down,
The stars above in Heaven are a-lookin' kindly down,
On the grave of old John Brown.
CHORUS:
Glory! Glory! Hallelujah!
Glory! Glory! Hallelujah!
Glory! Glory! Hallelujah!
His soul goes marching on.
totally inspiring! doesn't that make you want to go torch a few plantations? sadly, the Union's great marching song was eventually watered down with some typically hymn-y religious lyrics, though the resulting implied identification of John Brown with Christ ("As He died to make men holy, let us die to make men free!") was probably not intended.
"The Stars and Stripes Forever" = I don't even know if this has lyrics, but there's always been something kind of hilarious about it to me, probably because I'll always associate it with the scene in "Duck Soup" where Harpo Marx spends five minutes trying to smash a radio that's playing it.
"Back in the USA" = not really an anthem but I include it so I can tell this story: one late night a few years ago I was rambling on (in old-school me's typically obnoxious wannabe-rockcritic manner) to one of my friends about how brilliant and ironic it was that Chuck Berry would write a song about how great it was to be a teenager and go to hamburger stops and drive-in movies and all that, when, at the time he was a teenager, he couldn't have gone to half of those places because he was black. and yet there's not a drop of irony in the song itself. she looked at me curiously and said: "Chuck Berry was black?"
"Dixie" = it breaks my heart to say it but this is easily the best anthem the United States ever had. I used to have an mp3 of a wonderfully jaunty version by Ernest Tubb (I think), which was inspiring enough to make me understand something that i never really wanted to understand: listening to it, whatever you believed, you were almost overcome by the image of brave, defiant young soldiers fighting for their homeland.
it wasn't the whole story, of course, and that's why the greatest version of "Dixie" is Elvis's in "American Trilogy." after a solemn, dignified rendition of the Confederate anthem ("In Dixie land I was born/Early, Lord, one frosty morn'" - surely no one else ever made that "frosty morn" sound quite so chilly, so bereft of hope), you've almost been sucked right into the past; the mood is that of the lost cause: the air is thick with regret. then, on the very brink of kitsch, Elvis suddenly breaks out into an old slave song: "Now hush little baby, don't you cry/You know your daddy's bound to die..." for a second it's as if all the emotions and contradictions of the ancient war have suddenly come flooding into the room, and it's almost unbearable: the singer's own fate, you feel, is not far off. then Elvis roars back into the chorus of "Battle Hymn," and the song wraps up with a big political-rally finish.
"This Land is Your Land" = a very good song, and perhaps the only one on this list whose sentiment I can completely stand behind. but it'll never be the national anthem because it was written by a damned commie.
"Yankee Doodle" = I nearly forgot about this one! it doesn't get played much anymore, probably because it doesn't appear to have any message besides "Americans are goofy and full of themselves." but these days that message seems a lot more relevant than that of "The Star Spangled Banner."