The Blogging Song
Of what shall we blog today my friend?
Of what shall we blog today?
We’ll blog of kings and the homeless too
Of oceans deep and skies so blue
Of dogs and frogs and flying things
The changing moods that winter
brings
The way you feel when a cuckoo sings
Of that we shall blog today.
Of what shall we blog today my friend?
Of what shall we blog today?
We’ll blog of stuff seen on TV
Of threats to human liberty
Of dishes we’ve prepared to eat
The boots and shoes upon our
feet
The president’s ordained defeat
Of that we shall blog today.
Of what shall we blog today my friend?
Of what shall we blog today?
We’ll blog of plants and blooming
flowers
Of minutes that turn into hours
Of memory and days gone by
The hopeful sound of a baby’s
cry
"The End" that comes on the day we die
Of that we shall blog today.
_______________________________________________________________________
Esteemed visitors to "Yorkshire Pudding" are cordially invited to create their own alternative verses.
"I like blogging and I like to blog" . To the tune of Not The Nine oclock News "I like Trucking"..
ReplyDeleteI just checked out the video for that. It seems quite sexist!
DeleteIt was made in 1981. I will check it out.
ReplyDeleteIt wasn't very hedgehog friendly.
ReplyDeleteI cried when that little hedgehog got splatted.
DeletePamela Anderson/Stephenson did look amazing. Is that sexist?
DeleteI will have to contact the PC Bureau for a judgement on that.
DeleteBut what are you going to blog about tomorrow?
ReplyDeleteSorrow? Things I borrow? Marilyn Monroe? Bordeaux? See - they rhyme.
DeleteTo blog or not to blog, now that IS the question.
ReplyDeleteHamlet thought just the same or as the late Spencer Davis might have sung..."Keep on Blogging"
DeleteI went on a virtual walk with my son yesterday by phone. He set off to the local park in Bath and I told him stories along the way of the history. But it is not blog 'interesting'. But blogs are like diaries, like the 'Housewife 49' series, they represent the daily events in our life.
ReplyDeleteI guess that your son was using one of those new-fangled smartphones and showing you images of Bath as he strolled along. He could have easily walked into a tree! Ouch!
DeleteWho said anything about friendship, Sir Yorky? We are just your readers. Your job is to entertain us during lockdown. After it's over, we'll all get our Life back.
ReplyDeletePeter, Paul and Mary were managed by Albert Grossman. (See how nasty he was. An excerpt from the documentary film Don't Look Down, YouTube, when Dylan and his team were staying in a hotel in George Square, Glasgow.)
Mary was vacationing in Florida. Grossman told her to stay out of the sun, because her image had to be Pale and Interesting. I'd call him a fox but foxes are born that way.
I found a memoir in Oxfam Books by the great English Folk singer Shirley Collins, *America Over the Water*: published in the States in 2005. Shirley was an original before the image-makers took over.
She writes about the great black and poor white Folk and Blues artists in Mississippi (good photos), men and women marginalised by American mass culture; and Parchman Farm (about which Mose Allison sang) the 20,000 acre prison farm in Old Missi, where many talented musicians were to be found.
I am sure that many talented folk singers, musicians and writers were marginalised because of the colour of their skin. It was somehow easier to become known if you were Woody Guthrie or Tom Paxton and not the descendants of African slaves. And what of the songs of Native Americans? Where did they go?
DeleteThere's always Buffy Sainte Marie -- she's Native American, and hit it pretty big in the '60s! I have her autobiography, which I haven't read yet. I'm sure it will be full of juicy tidbits about the likes of Albert Grossman.
DeleteI love PP&M. Fantastic singers.
I saw Buffy Sainte Marie in concert in 1971 and had three of her albums. She was a force of Nature but her songs did not really come from Native American tradition.
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DeleteYes, where did the songs of Native Americans go? Dylan went to see Woodie Guthrie near the end of his life, and Woodie was in a forgotten place.
ReplyDeleteIn singing blues the Stones revived the fortunes of the great black artists, who started to get a few gigs again.
The film *Paris Texas* written by Sam Sheperd and directed by Wim Wenders has a good blues track or two, I have the CD.
Nobody knows the name of the black man in the South who was playing bottleneck on his guitar, sitting alone in a railway station. Was it Blind Lemon who heard it, a sound the likes of which he'd never heard before?
And this was about 1908, before the First World War.
I have never seen "Paris Texas". Your comment reminds me that I should make an effort to find it and watch it. As young folk say, "Thanks for the heads up John!"
DeleteHenry James wrote, *It is a complex fate to be an American.*
DeleteSam Shepherd, who the Pulitzer Prize and an Oscar, had a complex fate. The screen actor who wouldn't play Holywood's game. The playwright who wouldn't renounce his love of the Far West, even though the West is a ghost.
America may have won the Cold War, but it lost the peace, and China is the future. Maybe Shepherd's screenplay *Paris Texas* is as much about all that as it is about two brothers, Dean Stockwell and Harry Dean Stanton, and Stanton's ex-wife, Natassja Kinski.
It has a bottleneck blues score, ending with *Cold is the Ground.*
Patti Smith has a Goodbye Forever piece in The New Yorker online:
*My Buddy: Patti Smith Remembers Sam Sheperd.*
I keep writing Shepherd instead of Sheperd, an H too many.
DeleteSomerset Maugham asked why we write *A* happy holiday but *An* historic novel. He had to remove all the redundant Hs when he rewrote his novel *Mrs Craddock*
David Crystal will know: I am reading his book *How Language Works*, Penguin.
I cannot think of an alternative verse, yp. This is why I don't blog!
ReplyDeleteWe all blog in our own way. I am sure that you would make a great blog Christina.
DeleteWell done YP. I have always loved Peter, Paul and Mary. The first album I ever got was one of theirs and I still have it.
ReplyDeleteTheir harmonies were magical and most of their songs had meaning. I am sure you already knew that they sang at the 1963 Freedom March on Washington.
DeleteSorry to tell you, but I think I prefer the first version. You didn't sing this one either. If you sang it I may like it better.
ReplyDeleteI don't understand Red. What do you mean by "the first version"?
DeleteWhat an unusual take of a song. I like that bit about "minutes that turn into hours" cos it has more meaning here where we are on partial lock down. My hours are turning into days and months!
ReplyDeleteI just checked the current COVID figures for Malaysia. You have not been hit hard but I guess that caution is very wise.
DeleteI dunno. Today I'm more into figuring out alternative verses for "If I had a hammer..."
ReplyDeleteI'm tired to death of American politics.
I love that song Debby. It's spirit remains pertinent today.
DeleteIf I had a song
I'd sing it in the morning
I'd sing it in the evening
All over this land
I'd sing out danger
I'd sing out a warning
I'd sing out love between
My brothers and my sisters
All over this land, oh-oh-oh
Blogging is the modern equivalent to the diarist like samuel pepys. In years to come it will be a snapshot of life in the 1990s and Noughties. I wonder what future generations will make of us.
ReplyDelete