In 500 years time, when university students study the decline and fall of western civilisation, this will be a prime exhibit...
There is nothing more to be said.
Early one morning Hamish woke up and looked out his window. He saw rainbows, moonbows, virga, waterspouts, tornadoes, St Elmo's fire, a partial lunar eclipse, thunderheads, meteors, sundogs, arcs, haloes, lightning, firebolts, a parade of clouds in the shape of serpents, tigers and galleons, arorae, coronae, fata morganae, glories, an array of planets and asteroids, a swarm of comets shaped like swords and dragons, the heiligenschein, the Brocken Spectre, a rain of stars, a rain of fire and the Zodiacal Light.
"Bah!" said Hamish, and went back to bed.
You know, there's an idea that's been floating around in my head for some years, and now that I have the means to write blog entries quickly and efficiently, I figured I might as well write it up (oh joy!).
So. There are a number of popular, well known songs that have fairly interesting histories. I've been thinking that someone with some decent writing skills (ie: not me) could do a lot worse than to write a "popular history" style book telling these stories. Divide it up into one song a chapter, give it a snazzy title, get it on Oprah and you'd be on the New York Times best seller list in no time!
Suggested inclusions...
The Lion Sleeps Tonight - Originally written and performed as 'Mbube' by Solomon Linda and the Evening Birds in South Africa in 1939 this song went through a tortuous number of twists and turns before morphing into one of the most recorded songs in history. And (until comparatively recently) Solomon Linda's family didn't see a cent for it. There was actually a lengthy article about its history in Rolling Stone magazine some years back - a good jumping off point for this theoretical book.
House of the Rising Sun - Originally recorded as "The Rising Sun Blues" by ethnographers working in the Appalachian mountains in the 30's (trying to preserve America's folk music heritage before it was homogenized by the arrival of radio). It too went through a number of adaptions before turning into the version we know today.
Amazing Grace - The official story is that a slave trader named John Newton had a religious revelation on the deck of his slave ship one night, wrote the words, and immediately quit the slave trade - becoming a passionate abolitionist. It didn't actually play out like this in reality - he remained in the slave trade for another six years at least and didn't speak out against it for another 30 years - but it still makes for a fascinating story.
So there we go, add in five or six more songs with interesting histories and you've got yourself a best seller! Just be sure to send me appropriate royalties :)
1: Larry Gelbart - creator of TV series M*A*S*H - based many of the show's characters on inhabitants of Allerton Illinois, the town where he grew up. Frank Burns was based on a neighbour who yelled at him for stealing apples, and B.J.Hunnicutt on an escaped circus hound that lived at a nearby junkyard.
2: The Gnu is not (as often assumed) an antelope. It is a species of warthog that evolved to fill the ecological niche left vacant by the schiessbok antelope when it became extinct around 12,000 years ago.
3: Most post offices are legally entitled to accept fingers in lieu of 10c stamps. Given steep rises in postage costs it is vitally important to make sure that one has correct change before attempting to send packages through the mail.
