The Mapleton PRESS Thursday, September 20, 2007
by Ted Mallory
ted.mallory@gmail.com http://tedscolumn.blogspot.com
During the summer at the PRESS office we were excited about the new NBC show "Singing Bee." We'd play it in the office, challenging each other to finish a stanza of old songs given only a few lyrics to begin with. It must be a popular game because FOX imitated their rival network's format with their own show, "Don't forget the lyrics."
My friends and I used to play the same game back in school, but it seems like the lyrics we most often got wrong were never as profane as the ones we had been mistakenly singing in place of them.
Maybe the goofiest one is what we did to Manfred Mann's 1976 cover of the Bruce Springsteen song "Blinded by the Light." "Revved up like a deuce, another runner in the night" usually became "ripped-up like a douche." Why it never occurred to us that you're much more likely to sing about a 1932 Ford Coupe beloved of hotrodders than to ever sing about personal hygiene items.
Most people have trouble remembering the lyrics to "Louie Louie," but how could anyone learn the words to that song? When the Kingsmen recorded it in 1963 they sounded like a group of drunken fraternity boys.
But the people most likely to butcher an old standard, have to be little people. My five year old daughter, for example, loves to sing, but having the limited life experiences that she does, she's much more likely to get songs wrong than right. Here is a sampling of her expert song-styelings...
"God bless America
God bless for you and me
God bless our 'merica
God bless it and you too
For purple mountain's recipe!
God bless you, God bless me, we're a happy family..."
I don't know if I feel worse for Irving Berlin and Kate Smith, or Barney the Dinosaur. You also have to understand, that this song doesn't end here, Ellen (our daughter) went on singing for what had to be at least five more minutes. The average pop hit on the radio only lasts 2-3 minutes.
She eventually brought closure to her patriotic aria-
"God bless us every one!" Tiny Tim would have been proud.
The other morning, (this is September, mind you) we were treated to one of every kid's holiday favorites-
"Santa Claus is coming to town
you'd better not cry, you'd better not shout
you'd better not cry and shout
he knows when you are bad or good so be good for Heaven's sake
Santa Claus is comming to your town
so you better not frown
so you better not shout or frown
he's commin' around..."
And again, imagine this lasting about seven minutes. Getting lyrics wrong is bad enough, but doing it to a song that not just everyone, but every kid in the universe knows by heart is almost unforgivable. This grievous sin was compounded by the fact that Ellen's two year old sister Annamarie started singing along, repeating each lyric in about a five second delay, and often messing up Ellen's messed-up lyric. She also started asking me when Santa was coming to our house and if we could go see Santa. This from the kid who has been frightened out of her mind by the red elf every time she's met him her entire life.
The other night, she struck up a tune during supper. I'm never opposed to dinner entertainment, after all my parents were visiting us from Arizona. Ellen graced us with another patriotic song-
"Yankee Doodle went to town
Yankee doodle dandy
Stuck a bandanda in his hat and called it macaronis
Yankee doodle bandandy
Yankee doodle went to town
Yankee Doodle fancy
Yankee doodle band-aid
I am that Yankee Doodle dandy"
Now, ask her to sing the theme song to the Hanna Montana SHow on Disney Channel and she'll get every single line exactly right!
Ted Mallory lives in Charter Oak and teaches at Boyer Valley Schools in Dunlap. 'Ted's Column' has appeared weekly in the Charter Oak-Ute NEWSpaper since 2002. You can see all of Ted's cartoons at http://tmal.multiply.com
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