(no subject)

[flemmings]

(What in god's name has google done to itself? Or what has IE done to google? The entry titles are suddenly enormous. They look like Netscape's or Firefox's in the old days.)

Sitting in the knee doctor's office today desultorily flipping through a travel magazine, I find an article about the songs that *are* the country they come from. Quite a number for the USA, since the U.S. is more than one country obviously; one I'd never heard of for Canada; a single song for the whole of Africa (The Lion Sleeps Tonight, which is cool but really has nothing to say to Algeria or Egypt or the Sudan or...) and nothing for Japan. I disagreed with most of them too.

See, what they wanted was *city* songs, but they had to go say 'country.'

Favourite place songs:
Canada:
Four Strong Winds. Yes you have to belong to a certain generation to know it. I do.
Mon Pays, because it's a classic, silly.

Ontario: Helpless. Autumnal, melancholy, and... helpless. Really that song belongs to anywhere hereabouts, just that cities have their own songs. Paradoxically Toronto doesn't have a song for me at all, but then I stopped listening to music in 1985.

Japan: Furusato You don't need to know that I get all choked up and wet-eyed whenever I hear this. It's like getting all choked up and wet-eyed over America the Beautiful- nothing an adult will admit to in public. Ditto Kimi ga yo, the only national anthem able to make me cry.

Tokyo:
Tokyo Sabaku. Because it's the quintessential Tokyo song.
Road/ Nandemo nai yoru no koto. Because it's *my* quintessential Tokyo song. Nothing out of the ordinary but nothing out of the ordinary is happiness

USA: America Simon & Garfunkel. Because obviously.

New York City:
On Broadway. My favourite NY song
Twelve-thirty. Because I've no use for the canyon, actually, but the church steeple strikes me as cool. Equally California Dreamin' which to my mind isn't about California at all.
The Boxer and Hazy Shade of Winter. Because Simon and Garfunkel sing the New York I saw even when they're singing about something else.
Skeletons, even if I don't like Rickie Lee Jones.
Uptown. The Crystals. Ahh, good times that are no more and possibly never were.

Los Angeles: Carmelita by Warren Zevon. Because I think LA is a nightmare. I could include Hollywood Hawaiian Hotel here but in my universe it belongs to Tokyo.

England:
Ferry Cross the Mersey. You needn't tell me it's place specific, and a place I've never been to. For my generation Liverpool *was* England.
Mrs. Brown You've Got a Lovely Daughter. Aghh. Don't ask me to explain. This is the other bit of England I saw and read growing up, a cozy domestic neighbourhood place. People who live in suburban bungalows or city apartments don't write songs like that. It goes with Giles cartoons in my head. And yes it's probably Coronation St as well but I've never seen a single ep of that, you know?
Dare I add...
Greensleeves? 'And the royalties... go to Royalty.'

London:
A Transport of Delight. I often have occasion to sing about 'them jackal taxi drivers' while on my bike.

Paris:
The trouble with classic Paris songs is that they're all Piaf and I don't really like Piaf. But obviously The Poor People of Paris is the automatic Parisian association anywhere.

(I have other songs associated with places I've never been and no songs associated with other places I have. Bruce Springsteen is heartland America in my head but there are no Amsterdam songs at all. These will have to do for the nonce.)

Comments

[mvrdrk.livejournal.com]

The song I think of when I think of Toronto, which is to say Canada up until recently, is American Woman. LOL!

[flemmings.livejournal.com]

(miffed) The Guess Who come from *Winnipeg*.

[mvrdrk.livejournal.com]

LOL! They are? I didn't know they did that song. But then I'm oblivious to artists and their relationship to songs.

I also don't know where in Canada is Winnipeg. Not even to guess right, center, left.

It was the attitude in the song, that I though was quite justifiably felt by the Canadians.

I have some unnamed German song by some unnamed German boy choir/movie star that I associate with Taipei ...

[flemmings.livejournal.com]

You were pretty close to Winnipeg just the other day, or still are. OK- map says Winnipeg is just north of North Dakota. But Manitoba shares a border with Minnesota.

David Clayton Thomas, the 'And When I Die' and 'Spinning Wheel' guy, is TO, I think; and the latter feels like a certain side of Toronto. In fact Hazy Shade of Winter feels like a TO song to me because, well, it *looks* like TO; but equally and by association it's also a Tokyo song.

(Yes, yes, we like to say how much we despise American culture, and then do our best to emulate it.)

[mvrdrk.livejournal.com]

Yep, then I'm pretty close, relatively speaking. Go home Saturday night. Slowly, gut-feel Canada is starting to include Vancouver now that I'm on the left coast, but mostly Canada is still Toronto to me.

I've been here for close to 17 hours, though the last two have been partly playing ... time to go crash.

Merseyside...

[i-am-zan.livejournal.com]

...
Yes for a lot of folk Merseyside was England then. It still is for some today...and no I've never watched 'Corrie' at all either.

Here on LRD, people asocciate England with football. They don't know specific areas but you tell them that Huddersfied is a little town 20 mins on the train from Leeds and 40 minutes on the same train the other way from Manchester and they go...aahh! Ok.

So yes here 'Ferry' is still a definitive song for some for England.

I don't have such a list...I have mood music, then again who doesn't. I don't think the music I know is extensive enough to make one.

Although, the opening for 'Madeline' does remind me of Paris. Too much children's TV methinks.

Re: Merseyside...

[flemmings.livejournal.com]

Jeez, and I've heard of Huddersfield too, though I'm not a football fanatic and grouse mightily every second year when Toronto goes crazy with it. Strange the odds 'n ends of Brit culture that those of us who live in the ex-Empah can dredge up at need.

Huddersfiedl? Really?

[i-am-zan.livejournal.com]

Wow, that's quite amazing. I usually give up when people ask me where it is. I say it's in (West) Yorkshire and thenhave to explain about England and their counties, which I say is sorta like different states (as in America) and then it just goes all horribly wrong...

How 'bout 'Scarborough Fair'; for a Folk/English/(North)Yorkshire song?

And 'Danny Boy' for the Irish, although it has that feeling of being a dirge.

Is that generation affiliated too...ack it makes me feel old!

Although I do not know what's playing on the radio now...I can sing Barney songs, The Wiggles, Madeline, and Blues Clues very well! ^__~ Every word in some cases!

Re: Huddersfiedl? Really?

[flemmings.livejournal.com]

*Heard* of it. I hadn't a clue where it is. Like a lot of English geography, actually. Geographically likening counties to states is reasonable, though a born-and-bred LRDer might not have the concept. (Thought Malaysia had states itself though. Don't we look at what the neighbours do?)

I know the Slim Pig song because I can't forget it and the rest I've blotted from memory. I stick with babies because they don't watch TV. Much.

is ashamed...

[i-am-zan.livejournal.com]

...it's ok. It isn't like my own knowledge of North America (as a whole) is brilliant. I roughly know where NY and LA are. I know Seattle (for some reason I really want to visit there more than anywhere in the US) and ashamedly *face in hands* I don't know Canada at all.

I will have to remedy that. I only know the touristy things like Mounties, and Maple syrup, which isn't very much I am sorry to say.

Yeah, M'sia has states but Dang if I know how many. I know that East M'sia has two, Sabah and Sarawak. Again my geographicalknowledge is limited, and they're next door. *sigh*

Re: is ashamed...

[flemmings.livejournal.com]

Like, if people get confused when you say Huddersfield is in this county of England, then saying a county is like a Malaysian state should help- it's just a geographical division.

Otherwise- well, I suck at geography so not knowing what's where and how isn't a huge sin in my books. (Unless it's Americans doing it, because we like to slap Americans down whenever we can. 'No it does *not* snow in July.') Do you know how many years I thought Singapore was a city in China? And I still have to double-check occasionally that I'm not reading 'Singapore' and thinking 'Shanghai' as I'm wont to do. I'm still shocked that S'pore temperatures aren't equivalent to Bombay's. You mean it isn't regularly 45 in summer?

*grins*..

[i-am-zan.livejournal.com]

We. Are. So baad!

"Unless it's Americans doing it, because we like to slap Americans down whenever we can. 'No it does *not* snow in July.'"

Yes it still amazes me that only a small percentage of the population do not own passports. And the fact that you cannot get 'international' news there at all. Unless you have cable which has access to a channel like the Beeb.

I suppose I forget that due to our size and location it is easier to get about than it would be if you were in a Big Country like the States, and that going across a staeline is very like goiong into another country.

by the way..it's bit of a digression but...have you ever read "Under the Red Robe"...its just hubby dearest has dug up some books he forgot he had "Beau Geste" and "Prisoner of Zenda" amongst them and I picked it up and got caught up in a few pages of it...Which I shouldn;t...Not till after..anyway...just wondering...sorry *slinks away in more shame*

Blast from the past

[flemmings.livejournal.com]

Actually yes- it amazes me too that so few Americans have passports, but I'd bet once you get out of the immigrant-heavy cities here not that many people have paspsorts either.

Under the Red Robe. Oh my flipping god. Under the Red Robe. *Yes* I've read it, all of 40 years ago, *and* I even remember the plot, only somehow the title had faded from my mind. God does that take me back to my childhood.

So does Prisoner of Zenda. My mother gave it to me as a birthday present when I was- oh, what? ten, eleven? It wasn't a fave of mine but I can remember the illustrations and the colour of the dustjacket. I think that somewhere in the intervening years I either read or skimmed through Beau Geste as well, cause I remember bits and I know I never saw the film. I have Beau Sabreur sitting on the shelf waiting for me to be in the mood.

Err well. Keep them as a reward for getting through the exam then. They're a lot of fun.

[tammylee.livejournal.com]

Four Strong Winds. Yes you have to belong to a certain generation to know it. I do.
OR you would have had to spend some formative years attending Folk Music festivals... where it was always the closing chorus sung by everyone on the hill at midnight.
(And now whenever I hear that song I feel very sleepy. Yay for conditioning!)

[flemmings.livejournal.com]

(Does some basic subtraction) Yeah, that would do it. And living on the prairies, because folk music festivals anywhere east of me will almost certainly concentrate on other stuff in other languages.

[tekalynn.livejournal.com]

I haven't been able to listen to Hazy Shade of Winter since I was a teenager, because for complicated and obscure reasons I associate it with the bombing of Hiroshima. It makes me ill just thinking about it, although I know it's a lovely song in and of itself.