"VANCOUVER'S ISLE": the Irish Rovers sing a rainy day uke-song

 PARODY-LYRICS with UKULELE CHORDS

ORIGINAL SONG: "Black Velvet Band" traditional Irish pub song, as arranged by the Irish Rovers 1967. Of note, the Irish Rovers' 50th and putatively final tour took place 2 years ago, ending with concerts in Vancouver and Nanaimo BC on St. Patrick's Day.

PARODY COMPOSED: Giorgio Coniglio, January, 2018. To view the lyrics without the chord-charts, proceed to our blog "Edifying Nonsense" HERE.
SONGLINK: Check out an earlier posting on this site entitled "Singable Limerick-Medley#3: A Visit to Chemainus, B.C."

Rainbow over Ladysmith Harbour
  brief break from several days of intense rain.

The IRISH ROVERS ended their 50th world
ANNIVERSARY TOUR with a concert in Nanaimo B.C.

VANCOUVER'S ISLE

(to the tune of "Black Velvet Band")

*  A.C. = Air Canada. Westjet is a competitor on flights across the country. Porter provides more local service from Toronto Island Airport to destinations in Eastern Canada and the East Coast of the U.S. 

Chemainus: shuh-MAY-nuhs

Nanaimo: nuh-NIE-moh

Canadian Canoeing Nostalgia: "LOST COUNTRY"

Post #190                                                                                               

PARODY-LYRICS 

Young canoeist in the bow,
Sunset on Bass Lake, Ontario

ORIGINAL SONG: "Lost River" by Michael Martin Murphey, most famously performed in conjunction with the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band here.

Key lyrics from the original, retained in the parody version, include lines in the chorus about a "Quebec girl" and "fleur de lis". Murphey is in fact married to a Québécoise, and, as the song's protagonist presumably wishes to take her on a trip of rediscovery to the nostalgia-generating "lost river" of his youth. For those interested, the original song is shown in ukulele-friendly form at the bottom of the post.

SONG-LYRIC UNDERPINNINGS: Post #10, December 2013, on this blog, entitled "Canoeing Lesson (Canoe, Canoe, Canoe, Canoe, Canoe)",  based on the original song  "I Do, etc." by ABBA, 1975. This earlier concoction also builds on the relevance of Berton's concept.
WORDPLAY LINK:  Post #136 from September 2018 on our wordplay blog "EDIFYING NONSENSE" has 7 limerick verses devoted to various aspects of canoeing.

PARODY COMPOSED:  Giorgio Coniglio, December, 2018, based on the precedents of song-lyrics and limerick verses, with a few new twists.

"A Canadian is someone who knows how to make love in a canoe", Pierre Berton, eminent Canadian journalist, editor, historian and author.

LOST COUNTRY
(to the tune of "Lost River" by M. M. Murphey) 

M.M.Murphey
songwriter and performer

Urban summers seem so hot

That you'll need to find a spot

To escape (no use stewin'),

Where it's cool for canoein'.

Paddle straight and go faster

When the J-stroke you'll master.

Once you learn what you're doin'

Seek your spirit's renewin'.

A Canadian's someone who

Can make love in a canoe.

He knows lots of good strokes

And can thwart ogling folks.

Starting foreplay, he'll untether,

He'll move sideways with the feather;

He'll avert curious eyes

With a series of pries.

CHORUS: Oh, lost country, now I'm paddlin' back

To those thousands of lakes,

That beau paysage I've lacked*. 

Oh Quebec girl come with me, 

Oh, ma belle, ma fleur de lis,

Northern vision in our mind,

That Pierre Berton defined.

Now at heart our Rose did hate
Tryin' to make the boat go straight.
Paddlin' lessons were a battle
'Til some tricks she learned (don't tattle!)
In the stern she could discern
That instructors might well yearn
To teach Trudeau's stroke, fiddle-faddle
While she straddled their paddle.

Repeat CHORUS

* for those who might have missed the pun, the French word for 'lake' is lac.

UKULELE-FRIENDLY FORMAT (and guitar, banjo, mandolin etc!)

(Click on any chord-chart slide to move to 'song-presentation mode'; then navigate through thumbnails at bottom of page.)

Playing notes: You can convert this into a simple 4 chord song by simply eliminating the 9th and 6th chords in the following charts. If you can play them, however, it does add an appealing folk-music quality to the otherwise C-and-W sound.


Specifics for C-tuned ukulele:

F9 = 0010; Bb  = 3211;  C9 = 0201;  Bb6 = 0211 

* Pierre Trudeau, father of Justin and himself Prime Minister (1968-1984) of Canada, was for a time prior to undertaking his marriage and family-life reputed to be a lady's man. His exploits as an adventurer included canoeing trips to Canada's Arctic and elsewhere. His pointed remarks at opponents included the rather well-known use of the expression 'fuddle-duddle', presumably a debatably innocuous variant of the more established 'fiddle-faddle'. The suggestion in the verse is allegorical, as there are no canoeing strokes named for the Prime Minister. 

HOTLINKS TO GIORGIO'S CANADIAN-THEMED PARODY-SONGS

An Alien Heading South

Big Rob Rehab Clinic

Canadian Reunion

Canoeing Lesson

I've Got Anagrams, Eh?

Flight of the Loonie

FOP-Shop Wine

Mergerwocky

Off-Patent Drug #19

Prattle of New Orleans

Something to Groan About

Suburbs' Guy

The Maple Leaf Ad Infinitum 

This Land Has Anagrams

TTC Voices

Vancouver's Isle

..AND A FEW LIMERICK-BASED SONGS

Shania Twain's "Verse": An anthem for limericists. 

Canada Day 2015 (singable limericks)

Limericks About Chemainus, B.C.

ORIGINAL SONG:

(ballad by Michael Martin Murphey) - click on any verse box to enlarge.

  

Mexican Uke-Song: 'Clothing Moths', in the Style of Allan Sherman

Allan Sherman
1924-1973

Singable Satire
ORIGINAL SONG: "Mexican Hat Dance" (spoof) Allan Sherman, 1963. The original music, based on traditional Mexican dance-forms from the central and southern part of the country, is also known as "Jarabe Tapatío"; the music, unaccompanied by lyrics, is a typical repertoire item for mariachi.  

LIMERICK VERSE:  Two original poems composed by Giorgio Coniglio, 2017-2018, provided the fodder for these song lyrics. The verses have now been finalized and published at the OEDILF website (the Omnificent English Dictionary in Limerick Form). They can be found more readily on the post "Limericks about Clothing Moths" on our sister blog "Edifying Nonsense".

A mariachi band
Kensington Market, Toronto
August 2018.

PARODY COMPOSED: Giorgio Coniglio, August 2018. 

SONGLINK: The melody and lyrical adaptation for Mexican Hat Dance were used previously by G.C. as the base song for "Dante's 'Inferno' Canto#5a: MINOS'S TAIL TWIST".

UKULELE-FRIENDLY FORMAT (and guitar, too!)

(Click on any chord-chart slide to move to 'song-presentation mode'; then navigate through thumbnails at the bottom of the page.)

ORIGINAL SONG-LYRICS

WORDPLAY LINK: 

For wordplay (palindromes, anagrams, eggcorns, creative cartography, etc.) and silly poetry (polished limericks), see our sister blog "EDIFYING NONSENSE" here.

"CONSTANTINOPOLIS": Uke-Song About the Seer of Byzantion

SONG with UKULELE CHORDS

ORIGINAL SONG: "Moscow Nights"(Подмосковные вечера,  Podmoskovnie vechera), Chad Mitchell Trio, 1963. You can listen to the Trio's well-known  version on YouTube here, or a version with English translation here.
The original was created as "Leningrad Nights" by composer Solovyov-Sedoi and poet Matusovsky in 1955, but changed at the request of the Ministry of Culture for use in a documentary about a national athletic competition. The tune was subsequently popularized in the West, in the middle of the Cold War era, by Van Cliburn in 1958, and recorded with commercial success by Kenny Ball and the Jazzmen, and the Chad Mitchell Trio in the early 60s. 

PARODY COMPOSED: Giorgio Coniglio, August 2018.  To view the lyrics without the chord-charts, proceed to our blog "Edifying Nonsense" HERE. You will also find further discussion of the history of Constantinople and other matters.

SONGLINKS: This post deals with Graeco-Roman history during the Byzantine period. Another song dealing with Greek history, culture and travels is found in an earlier blogpost as  "Singable Limerick Medley #15: Travels in Greece". This entire effort was inspired by "Istanbul (Not Constantinople)", a swing-era hit with a very catchy tune whose lyrics are a bit truncated re history.

CONSTANTINOPOLIS

(to the tune of "Moscow Nights")

UKULELE-FRIENDLY FORMAT (also banjo, mandolin, guitar etc.!)

(Click on any chord-chart slide to move to 'song-presentation mode'; then navigate through thumbnails at bottom of page.)

Specifics for C-tuned ukulele:
Am7 = 0000;  Dm7 = 2213;  E7 = 1202;  B7 = 1211 

. 
  

*  the prediction was made by the Seer early in the fourth century A.D.
Byzántion (Greek), later known as Byzantium (Latin) was at that time a moderate-sized Greek colony-city on the Bosporus. It was chosen by the Roman Emperor Constantine to become the eastern capital of his empire.
As capital of the Roman Empire (also called Romania), the grand city was known as Constantinopolis, or Konstantinoupolis, for most of its history, i.e. until 1453 A.D. (later as Istanbul by the Turks). The term 'Byzantine Empire' has only been in use by Western historians since that time.

ORIGINAL SONG-LYRICS
(click on any song-chart to enlarge and proceed to thumbnail mode)