SILLY SONGS and SATIRE: August 2023

Tuesday, 29 August 2023

Uke-Ballad: "THE FUNNIVERSARY SONG", an apocryphal tale of dance and romance

SINGABLE LIMERICK-LIKE LYRICS

MUSICAL UNDERPINNINGS: Any old limerick verses can be sung to "The Limerick Song", as per YouTube here. However we have undertaken the onerous task of bringing you other melodies for singing limericks, as per the post "Novel Melodies for Singing Limericks".

So, for this baby, we will exploit the melody of the verses for "The Anniversary Song". Al Jolson and Saul Chaplin originally had adapted the music (the score had been published in the U.S. in 1896) and wrote lyrics in 1946 to the 1880 composition "Waves of the Danube" by prolific Romanian composer Ion Ivanovici; his music had won a prize at the 1889 World Exhibition in Paris. The Jolson adaptation has been recorded by Dina Shore, Rosemary Clooney, Guy Lombardo, the Glenn Miller Orchestra, Franks Sinatra, Pat Boone, Bing Crosby etc.

PARODY COMPOSED: Giorgio Coniglio, August 2018.

To return to the corresponding post on "Daily Illustrated Nonsense" (and to see the lyrics without the chord-chart indications) click HERE.

EXPLANATION: Well over three decades ago, the author was married in an at-home ceremony. A two-car attached garage in his bride's home, which had been enclosed by the previous owner served as the basis of the ballroom/garage gag and as a credible chapel/party-room. As it happened, all the guests used the first indicated (a la française) pronunciation. On our return to the same sun-belt neighbourhood three decades later, we found a home with a different type of garage upgrade.

THE FUNNIVERSARY SONG

(to a tune inspired by the verses of of Al Jolson's "The Anniversary Song", a.k.a. "Waves of the Danube")

NOTES:
North American: guh-RAWZH
British: GA-ridj

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.)

C-tuned ukulele specifics:
Cm = 0333; Fm = 1013; Bb9 = 1213; Eb = 0331; Bb7 = 1211

Garage converted to Solarium, Mt Pleasant, S.C.

ORIGINAL SONG-LYRICS
Click on any chord chart to enlarge and enter thumbnail mode (the slides for both the parody and the original versions can then be enlarged and viewed in any order).

WHAT NOW?
Choice #1: To leave a comment, click on the comment-'widget' at the bottom of this page (or, if that fails, find an alternate e-mail on "pages").
Choice #2: To find another song-parody, use the listings on the web-version by reverse date in the clickable 'Blog-Archive' at the top of the right-hand column.
Choice #3: To return to our broad-spectrum blog "Daily Illustrated Nonsense", click HERE.
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If you aren't on the 'web-version', you can get there by clicking that choice ('view web-version') at the very bottom of this blog-page!

Saturday, 19 August 2023

o) Divine Comedy, Inferno: Canto#4, "LIMBO ROCKS, OR NOT"

UKE-SONG: PASTICHE with PARODY SONG-LYRICS

ORIGINAL POEM: Inferno" by Dante Alighieri, the first book in the triad "The Divine Comedy", written in the early 14th century.

MUSICAL UNDERPINNINGS: "Limbo Rock", as recorded 1962 by Chubby Checker, used here primarily for music and meter.

PARODY COMPOSED: Giorgio Coniglio, June, 2015.

To return to the current post on "Daily Illustrated Nonsense" (and to see the lyrics without the chord-chart indications) click HERE.

EXPLANATION: The lyrics for this Canto are condensed and re-arranged considerably, but the words are primarily Dante’s, preserving to the extent possible the original 14th century Tuscan language. My English translation follows the Italian, with liberal adaptations for modern readers.

Inferno Canto#4:
LIMBO ROCKS, OR NOT

(to the tune of "Limbo Rock")

"Il Limbo"
G.Stradano, 1587

UKULELE-FRIENDLY FORMAT:
(Click on any chord-chart slide to advance to 'presentation/singalong' mode.)

The chord pattern is the same for all verses, and is quite easy. The trick is to clinch the Caribbean rhythm with heavy beats on 2 and 4. and the English lyrics ending just before the 4th downbeat for every line. The Italian lyrics seem to work best dragged out a bit so that there is usually singing on the 4th downbeat. Another nice trick is to to employ the 5,4,3,3, position for the C chord, and then use downward NewYorkstrum for the 4 and 4.5 counts in mos lines (the F9 and G7 chords can even be adapted to do this for the last few line of each verse).
Fadd9 = 0,0,1,0.

Wednesday, 9 August 2023

Limerick-Uke-Saga: "HERBICIDES", creative anachronism"

UKE-SONG, derived from lyrics of a multi-verse limerick.

MUSICAL UNDERPINNINGS: For this post, we will use the melody for the iconic song "Summertime" from the hit Gershwin musical "Porgy and Bess".

ORIGINAL POETRY LYRICS: Original verses were composed by registered pseudonym Giorgio Coniglio, October 2023. After undergoing their rigorous collaborative editing process, these have been published as a "brief saga", a poetic entity of three or more stanzas, on the poetry website OEDILF (Omnificent English Dictionary In Limerick Form); they have then been displayed as poetry lyrics on our blog "Daily Illustrated Nonsense". Click HERE to review Giorgio's blogged poem.

SETTING WORDS TO MUSIC: Readers might be interested to know that of more than 1000 short poems that we have published, only 50 or so would qualify as "brief sagas". Although almost any limerick verse (e.g. the "Nantucket limericks") can be set to music, we were particularly interested in exploring this transitioning for these multiverse poems that warrant the time to pick up your ukulele.

The tunes we have exploited in this effort include, not surprisingly "The Limerick Song". But on occasion we have also used (minor modifications may be required) "Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow?", "The Anniversary Song", "Summertime" (as here) and a few others.

ORIGINAL SONG-LYRICS
Click on any chord chart to enlarge and enter thumbnail mode (the slides for both the parody and the original versions can then be enlarged and viewed in any order).
Readers are aked to honour the original artists' creativity and to use the slides of the original song-lyrics only to ensure familiarity with the suggested style for the spoof version.