Songs

A Song That Sums It All Up

68 Comments

Baboons provided an eye-opening discussion yesterday on the topic of whether or not they would want to be immortal. If you haven’t read the comments, take a look.

My assessment – mixed feelings though a clear majority of the group voted “No”!

There were some wafflers, mostly conflicted over the trade-offs and what else might come along as part of the immortality bargain. After all, living forever is a whole lot more attractive if it comes with a guarantee that your eternity will be spent healthy and pain-free.

And then Steve posted this comment …

… which made me think of a song by Harry Nilsson that has been a favorite since I first heard it when I was 18 years old. Nilsson recorded the song with a boisterous chorus of senior citizens singing along with a piano, an accordion and a tuba.

I often wondered as I listened to the song how those old people really felt about the lyrics – after all, “I’d Rather Be Dead (Than Wet My Bed)” is a rather cheeky sentiment to put in the mouths of octogenarians. Then I found this clip from a Nilsson documentary on You Tube and learned the amazing secret of making the session enjoyable for everyone – a new suit for Harry, and lots of sherry for everyone else!

Name a song you would have to be drunk to sing in public.

68 thoughts on “A Song That Sums It All Up”

  1. When this song was very popular, it used to drive me crazy. I liked the haunting sound, but the “plot” never made any sense to me. Once at work it was on the radio in the mailroom and I changed the station and it was on the other station as well. I lamented this fact and everybody thought it was funny. The next week I found a namebadge that said “Sherrilee, Hazard, NE” on my desk. I would never willingly sing this one.

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  2. This could be interesting, a whole day of awful songs. Thanks, Dale! I hope none of them are earworms.

    No amount of booze could induce me to sing The Balad of the Green Berets” in public, or in private for that matter. I find the sentiment of the song obnoxious, and the melody doesn’t do a thing for me either.

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  3. Rise and Shine Baboons!

    I just finished reading yesterday’s entries. i have nothing to say about drunken singing at this early hour, but I must speak out one traffic round-abouts. I LOVE THEM.

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  4. Good morning. I know there must be a lot of songs that I really don’t like and would have to be drunk to sing. The first ones that come to mind are the bubble gum pop songs from 40 years ago. Here are some of the lyrics of Chewy Chewy which is one of those songs.

    Aaaaaa, Chewy, Chewy, Chewy, Chewy
    Chewy, Chewy, Chewy, babe
    Always got a mouthful
    Of such sweet things to say

    Chewy, Chewy, Chewy, Chewy
    Chewy, Chewy, Chewy, babe
    Chewy’s full of sugar
    And I love her that way

    Ooh, I love to kiss her
    Love to hold her
    Love to miss her
    Love to scold her
    Love to love her
    Like I do
    Oh, little Chewy
    Don’t know what you’re doing to me
    But you’re doing to me
    What I want you to
    Aaaaah, Chewy

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  5. Most anything ever sung by Aretha Franklin, simply because I don’t have the chops. Love love love her music, but a recovering Lutheran from Minnesota who can barely carry a tune (and can get a bit shy whilst singing solo) singing a tune from the Queen of Soul is just a recipe for disaster, no matter how much gin is involved.

    Bad songs? Those I would sing lustily, sober or no. Maybe that’s too many years of singing weird stuff during my youth…

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  6. Gee, that’s easy, Dale. I would have to be seriously drunk to sing any song in public. I have (according to reports from others) a lovely singing voice and a wildly errant sense of pitch. When I sing a note, the noise coming from my mouth is either above or below its proper pitch. Only occasionally (and accidentally) do I sing a note on pitch.

    Once, after a Judy Collins concert for a group of young folks who were attending a UN conference in New York, I got up in front of the whole crowd and (with the help of a pretty Dutch girl) led the crowd in the singing of several popular folk songs. I was totally free of inhibition and, memory reminds me, totally full of beer.

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    1. You and me both, Steve. I’ve been given to understand I sing flat; I can even annoy myself, since I can tell I’m off-key but have no idea how to get on. The only time I ever got a compliment on my singing, I was recovering from a serious respiratory infection. No one in my immediate family is musical, either, so I just blame bad genes.

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      2. I can’t even the rhythm right as well being off key. For some reason I like to be on the off beat which not whereI should be.

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      3. I always believed that everyone could sing until I had to endure a four hour car ride with my friend, Char, singing off key in the back seat. That trip convinced me there is such a thing as tone deaf!

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        2. I am married to proof that it is possible to be tone deaf and rhythm impaired…he’s a lovely man, just not destined for a career in music. I do think it is lack of exposure at an early age to music and participating in it (either singing or playing), at least in part – but he also has sinus and ear issues that contribute, so he would have had a lot to overcome if he had wanted to be in the symphony or opera.

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  7. I sing not in public nor in the shower nor anywhere that even I would hear it. ‘Tis a simple duty I owe to my fellow creatures. Expressions of grateful appreciation will now be accepted.

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    1. Clyde, probably I should do as you do. Is your skill at singing is really that bad? I think I see the rest of my family grimacing when I join them in singing happy birthday.

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      1. It is that bad plus my throat has a problem, common in FM, that makes it painful to sing, shout, or talk too much. My daughter has excellent musical ability in certain ways, from the Russian ancestry no doubt, and has close to perfect pitch. She long ago asked me to not sing around her for the pain of having to listen to such off-key singing.

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    1. Boiled in Lead! I haven’t seen them perform in about 10 years, but then with my hearing problems concerts aren’t much fun anymore. Nice to know they’re writing new songs.

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      1. Boiled in Lead is one of my top favorites. I think they are still together but don’t play in public very often. I was glad to get to hear them at Rock Bend this year.

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  9. Already happened: the Sloop John B and Nobody Knows You When You’re Down and Out. A fellow guitar player, when I lived near Half Moon Bay, CA, convinced me that I could sing a couple of songs with him on Open Mike night at the Mirimar Beach Inn. I probably wasn’t totally drunk, but it wouldn’t surprise me if I’d had a couple of glasses of red wine. The Mirimar was perhaps the coolest little hippie bar on the Coast at the time, and had a very forgiving crowd (also a pretty tanked up crowd). But this memory falls into the “what was I thinking?” category.

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  12. I am sitting her painting (we had a good night last night) and thinking about bad songs, when, as I added a highlight to a pastel of Temperance River hiking trail, there flashed into my mind the image of Bob Ross, sort of the equivalent of this topic in painting. I do have some “happy trees living over here.”

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      1. I watched him many Saturday late mornings with my kids; he was fun to watch and listen. In one painting early on he tried to add a human figure to his landscape–a disaster.

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  13. Well, that’s just begging for this:

    (May or may not have a commercial first. And if it’s the baseball commercial actually that ones kinda funny.)

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    1. I remember seeing Bob Ross and being sort of fascinated with his tips on painting although I didn’t do any painting like that.

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    2. I love this video and the other two PBS made (Mister Roger’s and Julia Child). They’re so good. Normally I can’t stand Auto Tune, but they put it to good use for these 🙂 Thanks for reminding me about these videos!

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  14. OT – Just had the weirdest experience with WordPress. All 35 entries were there but scrambled so that the posted videos weren’t beneath the name of the baboon who had posted it. For instance, Steve’s Boiled in Lead video was under thatguyinthehat, and even more bizarre, his I Want to Take you to A Gay Bar was under Clyde’s name (that just about blew my mind!). After refreshing the page everything is back to normal, but it had me all shook up there for a minute.

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      1. And then I had those few days when the videos were just a black box with a red arrow, and wouldn’t play. I’ve also had all the comments just disappear, had to go out and come back in…

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  15. I was going to say there is no song that I wouldn’t be able to sing at any time whether sober or in my cups. (all those negatives = I would sing anything anytime)
    However, Clyde/Steve mentioned MacArthur Park and although I COULD sing it, I wouldn’t want to do it because I do hate it mightily

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  16. Any song originally sung by Bobby Goldsboro. When Hans moved in with me, he came home one day with a Bobby Goldsboro LP. He was taken aback when I told him he couldn’t play that record on my turntable. “Why not?” he demanded; “Because I don’t want my turntable contaminated,” I responded. I married him six months later nevertheless, but it was touch and go there for a while.

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  18. You Light up my life Denny Boone and
    God bless the USA lee greenwood came to mind immediately
    but it has been one of those days

    Didn’t know this Nilsson tune but it reminds me a lot of dead skunk in the middle of the road by loudan

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  19. I used to sing often in public and about half the time I was mildly impaired. Not so much that I couldn’t play my instruments but enough that I wasn’t so self-conscious. We used to do a lot of 9 p.m. to 1 a.m. gigs at the Wine Cafe in Mankato. I enjoyed it but it was really exhausting and it used to be quite difficult due to cigarette smoke.

    Anyway, my friend Gordon was our guitar player and the driver of most of our energy. He likes 60s and 70s pop and rock music, especially British, and he reminded me a little of a human jukebox, constantly cranking out an old nugget. Then a few years ago he began to insist that we do this one.

    The first time we played it was late at night in the Wine Cafe. I’d had some wine before we did it and it was getting late so the crowd was thin (plus, we were really boring). I was embarrassed but not devastated. But Gordon has his ways and he sprang this song on us at Rock Bend. I could feel my face flaming but you must sing what your band is singing.

    Is there something about this song that I don’t understand? I mean, WHY?

    The other one would have to be:

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  20. I don’t know if there’s a song I won’t sing in public. I don’t drink, so I couldn’t get drunk to sing anything anyway 😉 I love singing and I don’t normally get embarrassed. Sometimes I get teary-eyed for absolutely no reason (the songs aren’t sad, my eyes just tear up) and that embarrasses me, but otherwise…nope, can’t think of one. If I don’t know the words, which is most of the time, I just hum along.

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      1. It happens sometimes when I read. I’ve never shucked an oyster, so I couldn’t say if they tear up then 😉 But it mostly happens when I sing. It’s very odd.

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  21. Anybody know the limerick song? Drunkenness is almost alway involved. Campfires a bottle of tequila and a verse foreach person around the ring is involved too

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  22. the was a fellow named dale
    never had sex while writing the trail
    all those cute little things
    he liked to tie up with strings
    but so far he’s stayed out of jail

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