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veteran
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veteran
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For BelM's benefit, I have to give you an anecdote.
The powers that be at the Baltimore baseball park, officially known as Oriole Park at Camden Yards, parcel out the honor of singing the national anthem before games to various groups, one of which is our church choir. On one memorable occasion, for one reason or another they were asked to sing the Canadian anthem as well, so they followed up The Star Spangled Banner with O Canada sung in French. Guess the Orioles were playing the Expos.
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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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Hey, how nice are they!!! I would have cried.
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Carpal Tunnel
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Here's a bit of trivia for yez all. When first written by George M Cohan the title of the patriotic song about the American flag was "You're A Grand Old Rag" but general sentiment made him change to "You're A Grand Old Flag." [re] Later : Looking to confirm I was not repeating a myth, I came across this link which confirms the above. (about half way down the page.) http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Delphi/9910/cohan_bio.html
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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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byb, your story and bel's response put me in mind of a trip to a baseball game early last summer, when our White Sox were hosting the Mariners
The Mariners' leadoff hitter, Ichiro Suzuki, is the first japanese major-league postition-player (and a star; he won the MVP at season end, I believe). Suzuki was a rookie here, but had been an established star in Japan and a mediagenic darling; something like a Michael Jordan figure.
He drew an amazing crowd. The section I sat in was almost solidly packed with Japanese fans (many of whom spoke little English). So were the section to my left, and the section to my right. A tremendous camaraderie developed among we fans -- and by the sixth inning, even the beer-vendors and hot-dog vendors had picked up enough to call out their wares in Japanese! Nihongo hotu-dogu!!!!
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Carpal Tunnel
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and Woody Guthry, first wrote This land is your land, this land is my land, with different lyrics, as a satire. He was unhappy about all the radio air time "America the Beautiful" was getting.
having been driven out of Okalahoma by the dust storms, and toss about, he was at times an angry man. but as he looked at his harsh, critical words, he realize, he was mad at the capitalist, and corporations, and he rewrote it. and tried to make a better song than A t B. (a detail i remember from his biography.. the last years of his life, Woody lived in NY, (Queens, actually) and died in here)-- the thing about him, is, almost every state can claim his as their own!)
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Carpal Tunnel
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They actually "buried" him in the open, and every winter the Beach Boys sing about him:
My Woody's outside, covered with snow
New York's a lonely town.....
TEd
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In Zild I think we're deeply suspicious of overt displays of patriotism. When I was at school every school had a flagpole which was only used to fly the NZ rag at half-mast when someone who was considered to be something of a local hero karked it. It was innocent of any ornamentation at any other time. I remember the desultory slap of the ropes used to hoist the flags against the pole itself more than anything else.
We wonder when we see national flags flying. What's the problem? Who's died? Is there a war on that no one told us about? My funnybone was in overtime the whole time I was in America
I used to walk to work through Parliament every day when I worked in Wellington. Every couple of weeks, the parliamentary flagpole minder would be out there hard at work putting up flags for various countries, depending on which dignitaries were showing up for a cheap lunch that day. The Zildish flag would always fly from the top of Parliament, but you forgave them that one; too many MPs need a visual reminder of where they live.
Our national anthem gets aired very rarely. It has none of the musical complexities of "The Star-Spangled Banner", it has little of the punch of "Advance, Australia, Backwards", it has none of the innate majesty of "God Save The King/Queen (pick one)", it has little of the inanity of most other national anthems (e.g. did Canada NOT exist before Wolfe went and had his ticket punched on the Heights of Abraham, for Gawd's sake?). I remember the words of ours perfectly:
"Trod-on nations, smell my feet.
Chew my toenails, aren't they sweet?"
Seriously, though, we suffer the same basic superiority complex as Australia (although, obviously, with more justification): Who the hell would want to live anywhere else? [he said, writing from the wilds of deepest, darkest England]. We don't need the patriotic fervour which the US whips itself up into. We don't need to constantly remind ourselves of who we are and what we stand for (although usually that's because we don't know). Whatever Helen says, I suppose.
It's all bollocks, anyway!
The idiot also known as Capfka ...
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Carpal Tunnel
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Maple Leaf Rag was Joplin's first commercial success and kicked off the ragtime era. The notion that the Ragtime era (or any other era (for that matter)) was kicked off by a specific composition (albeit as important as The Maple Leaf Rag or Scott Joplins career in this case) is generalized historical ridiculousness... especially within the theoretical confines of what a *rag is. I suppose you can find one that kicked off the Jazz era?!? Or more specifically, you can tell us when *it stopped.  Speaking of flags and ridiculousness; the battered and torn flag from the top WTC should be either ceremoniously burned, as is the *correct way do dispose of it, or possibly hung in the Smithsonian as a symbol of history. The US parade-ing it in front of the whole world whenever the chance arises is far from patriotic... at least within consistent definitions. Martyrdom is a direct descendant of pride. Anonymous, 2002
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old hand
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old hand
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I suppose you can find one that kicked off the Jazz era?!? Or more specifically, you can tell us when *it stopped.
What? Jazz stopped? Damn, why didn't someone tell me sooner?
Actually, I think the last bastion of traditional jazz was Louis Armstrong's Hello, Dolly, which was the last jazz song to top the pop music charts, even beating the Beatles.
'Course, you still had Miles Davis's Kind of Blue, which sold more than any other jazz album. Maybe the "end" was when he sold out to pop culture. When music came out on the other side of the 70s, smooth jazz was the dominant form, and most people don't like Kenny G, the main flag bearer for the genre. See, I'm not totally off-topic
Wynton Marsalis is fairly well known, and jazz bands are common in high schools, so it's not totally dead.
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Carpal Tunnel
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What do you mean Jazz stopped?!. Tell that to the thousands and thousands of people that come to the Montréal Jazz Festival every spring. It is a huge event. Here's a link if you are interested. http://montrealjazzfest.com
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