Mondegreens

September 30, 2024September 30, 2024 / Susan O. / 1 Comment

Say What?

We’ve all been there, singing along with Elton John on the radio:

“Hold me closer, Tony Danza. Count the head lice on the highwaaaayyyy….”

Right?

But the song is Tiny Dancer, and they count the head lights on the highway.

Mishearing lyrics is as common as listening to music – and popular music is full of garbled lyrics open to guesswork. Does anyone really know (or understand) Springsteen’s (or Manfred Mann’s cover) Blinded by the Light? For years I swore Dolly Parton said Jolene had Ivorish skin and eyes of Bilbo green. Made no sense, but try as I might, that’s what I heard. Other people swear The Beatles are singing about the girl with colitis going by, Creedence Clearwater Revival wails about being “Stuck with an old diaper pin,” or “There’s a bathroom on the right.”

Mishearing lyrics like that is called a Mondegreen, a term coined by Sylvia Wright in 1954, when she insisted the lyrics to “The Bonnie Earl o’ Moray” were not “laid him on the green” but “Lady Mondegreen.” If you continue to insist your misheard lyrics are correct, even when given the correct ones, it’s called a mumpsimus (in case you needed a new word today). Of course, sometimes the misheard lyrics are just more fun to sing (such as headlice on the highway), and you sing it that way anyway.

Mondegreens aren’t limited to modern music. One of the more common ones is hearing “Gladly the cross-eyed bear” for the line “Gladly the cross I’d bear” in the hymn Keep Thou My Way. Mondegreens are made by our own brains by substituting things that make more sense to us, whether by word or experience. If you don’t know the actual word, your brain substitutes one it already knows that is similar. If you’ve got no experience with something, you might automatically substitute something you do know: the folksong Golden Vanity talks about the lowland, lowland sea, but if you’re from Appalachia, and have no idea what a lowland sea is, the words became lonesome sea. Thankfully more of us are familiar with head lights than head lice.

Some mondegreens were so popular and universal that the bands themselves started singing them that way. ELO’s Don’t Bring Me Down is almost universally sung as “Don’t bring me down. Bruce!” but the word was originally groose, which was a nonsense placeholder word during the writing that was liked so much, it was left in the final song. Eventually they, too, sang it as bruce. Jimi Hendrix and John Fogerty also embraced and sang their own mondegreens.

Mondegreens bleed over into books – Vivian Walsh’s book, Olive, the Other Reindeer plays on misheard lyrics of Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer, and A Monk Swimming by Malachy McCourt is taken from the misheard prayer line, amongst women. The Lonely Planet travel guides are taken from the misheard lyric lovely planet from Joe Cocker’s rendition of “Space Captain.” Ed McBain has a mystery novel, Gladly the Cross-Eyed Bear.

Here are some of the more common mondegreens in modern music. Check out the songs, and listen for yourself. Can you hear both versions? What are some lyrics you mishear all the time?

Purple Haze, Jimmy Hendrix: I want to kiss this guy, is really, I want to kiss the sky.

Lodi, Creedence Clearwater Revival: Stuck with an old diaper pin for Stuck in Lodi again.

Bad Moon Rising, Creedence Clearwater Revival: There’s a bathroom on the right/ There’s a bad moon on the rise.

Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds, The Beatles: A girl with colitis goes by/ A girl with kaleidoscope eyes.

Stairway to Heaven, Led Zeppelin: And there’s a wino down the road/ And as we wind on down the road.

Blinded by the Light, Bruce Springsteen: Wrapped up like a douche with a Corona in the night/ Wrapped up like a deuce, another runner in the night.

Higher Love, Steve Winwood: Bake me a pie of love/ Bring me a higher love.

Dancing Queen, ABBA: See that girl, watch her scream, kicking the dancing queen.
/See that girl, watch that scene, digging the dancing queen.

Joy to the World, Three Dog Night: Joy to the visions that the people see/ Joy to the fishes in the deep blue sea.

The Sidewinder Sleeps Tonite, R.E.M.: Calling Jamaica/ Call me when you try to wake her (Wait – it’s NOT Jamaica?)

Smells Like Teen Spirit, Nirvana: Here we are now, in containers/ Here we are now, entertain us

Blank Space, Taylor Swift: Got a lot of Starbucks lovers/Got a long list of ex-lovers

THIS is a deuce coupe, running in the night

Save Your Memories

July 1, 2024July 1, 2024 / Susan O. / Leave a comment

In December of 1983, we didn’t have internet. We barely had personal computers – a 256k machine cost $500, and you had to program it yourself. You couldn’t just save to disk, you had to format the darned thing before you could even use it. Video tape machines cost $600, and DVDs were still a dream. We were on the cusp of the CD player, but the real world still ran on cassette tapes.

I was no different, with a cassette tape built into my stereo, eagerly recording songs and programs off the radio as they played live. Yes, we still listened to live radio programs back then, whether Casey Kasem’s American Top 40 Countdown, or Radio Mystery Theater, or, on Sunday nights, Dr. Demento, the leading program for off the wall parody and novelty music.

What’s novelty music? Novelty music is a humorous song that doesn’t fit in any other category but entertainment. You know it well. Alvin and the Chipmunks is novelty music. Barnes and Barnes’ Fish Heads. The Purple People Eater. The Monster Mash. Itsy Bitsy Teeny Weeny Yellow Polka Dot Bikini. Steve Martin’s King Tut. Anything by Tom Lehrer or Weird Al Yankovic. While it’s a serious industry with all the requirements of mainstream music, and such songs can hit high on the pop charts (The Monster Mash hit #1), novelty music isn’t considered “serious” music.

On that Sunday, it was the Christmas edition of Dr. Demento, and I threw a cassette in the player and hit record, because, back then, Grandma Got Run Over by A Reindeer was just a basement tape on Dr. Demento, it hadn’t gotten a contract yet. Weird Al wasn’t mainstream, and hadn’t gotten permission from the Kinks yet to record his Lola parody Yoda. On that tape, I happened, by luck, to record a song that in the history of radio may only have been played one time. It was a “bonus” track to fill space, and it was the only time it ever appeared on Dr. Demento. It hasn’t even been uploaded to his website. And it is one of my absolute favorites of underground tapes. In the era of the cold war, that song scared the living daylights out of me.

Cylent Night, by the Scrooge Brothers, tells a short story of the start of World War 3 to the tune of Silent Night, while air raid sirens start in the background and grow slowly louder. Off went the bomb at a quarter to three/ It’s the end of you and the end of me…. Have that hit you out of nowhere when you’re listening to the radio at 10 at night in your basement. In 40 years, I’ve never forgotten a line. And I just happen to have that song on tape.

But cassette tapes are fragile things. They demagnetize. They fade. They tangle. My very rare basement tape has been bouncing around drawers and basements for 40 years. So what did I do? With the equipment at the Cheshire Public Library AV Studio, I very easily threw that cassette into the player and transferred that song to digital Media. Now I can store it digitally, share it with other Dementoids and Dementites who have never heard it (if you didn’t hear it live, you truly never heard it), even send it back to Dr. Demento.

We all have those things kicking around our homes. Media changes so rapidly, from reel to reel tapes to 8 Track to cassette to CD to memory stick. We all have Grandma’s vacation slides of the Old Country, with relatives no one ever met. Dad’s wedding videos. That old LP you have that’s never been released on CD (or singles, like Rolf Harris’s Two Buffalos, which Bob Steele used to play on WTIC-AM). Your personal video of MTV’s top 100 countdown of 1985, when music videos were short stories of their own. You can transfer all of them to digital media, right here.

Beware, though – transfers occur in real-time. If you’re planning on transferring that 12-hour MTV countdown, it’s going to take 12 hours to put it onto digital. You might want to do it over a few weeks. But that LP? 40 minutes, you’ll be done.

Call (203) 272-2245 ext. 61245 to schedule an appointment at the AV Studio!

Movie Magic

March 7, 2023March 8, 2023 / Susan O. / Leave a comment

When we talk about the powerhouses of music, we think of The Beatles or Michael Jackson or Reba MacIntyre or Beyonce, among others. People who have multiple-decade careers, whose very touch seems to turn to gold, who sell records just walking down the street. Everyone knows their name.

So if I said, Guess which musician has won four Oscars, four Golden Globes, seven BAFTAs (the British equivalent of the Oscar), 25 Grammys, was Knighted by Queen Elizabeth even though he was born in Queens, and has had 52 Oscar nominations – second only to Walt Disney, who would you pick? Someone with a net worth of between $300 million and $50 billion, depending on how many assets you count?

Would you believe it’s composer John Williams?

Williams, who is 91 and still going strong, has a Master’s touch when it comes to composing music, and he’s written more film and television music than you realize. An alumni of the prestigious Juilliard School, Williams’ career has spanned more than six decades, and he’s written the scores for everything from the pilot of Gilligan’s Island and Lost in Space to Schindler’s List (his fifth Oscar for score). Although he didn’t write the music or win the Oscars, Williams played piano for the score for Bernstein’s West Side Story. His scoring of Jerry Bock’s music for the film adaption of Fiddler on the Roof won him his first Oscar. That iconic Jaws DA-dunt, DA-dunt that scared everyone from the water, won him his second. Spielberg then recommended him to his buddy George Lucas, who needed a composer for the movie he was working on. Star Wars became Williams’s third Oscar, a soundtrack among the most widely recognized music in history, and remains the highest grossing non-popular music of all time (interactive fun fact: you can dance the Macarena perfectly to Darth Vader’s theme music. Go ahead. Try it.). Williams went back to Spielberg for his fourth Oscar – the soundtrack to E.T. Harry Potter? Yep, Williams wrote that. Superman? Home Alone? Jurassic Park? The Post? Sometimes, it seems as if a movie is destined for greatness if Williams writes the score.

March is Oscar month, and this year John Williams is the oldest Oscar nominee for the score to Spielberg’s The Fabelmans. So cheer for Williams on March 12, and in the meantime, check out one of his dozens of utterly amazing scores on the following films:

The BFG / Star Wars / Raiders of the Lost Ark / Schindler’s List / ET / Jaws / Harry Potter and the Sorceror’s Stone /

Superman / Jurassic Park / Saving Private Ryan / Towering Inferno / Close Encounters / Hook / JFK /

Memoirs of a Geisha / Minority Report

Learn a Little, Live a Little

February 7, 2023May 29, 2024 / Susan O. / Leave a comment

Do love learning? Do you dream of taking college classes, but the cost and the time is too much? Are you taking a high school or college class and struggling to understand the material? Did you cut your cable, and can’t find anything decent to watch anymore?

Fear not! The Great Courses are here!

Cheshire Public Library has always had a handful of these delightful media, but through a generous donation, we’ve been able to greatly expand our holdings to more than 70 titles.

What are the Great Courses? Professional college-level lectures on audiobook or DVD on a variety of topics, given by actual college professors and experts (like Neil DeGrasse Tyson!), that will give you the equivalent of an entire college class in the comfort of your car or living room. Some come with study guides and questions to think about, but you will never have a test or a grade at the end!

The Great Courses was the brainchild of Thomas M. Rollins, the former Chief Counsel of the US Senate Committee on Labor and Human Resources (1985-89). Inspired by a 10-hour video lecture series he watched as a student at Harvard Law, he set about creating his own video series under the business label The Teaching Company. He recruited professors to record lectures on topics people were interested in learning about. Because the lectures were chosen by customers, they caught on quickly. There are currently more than 900 lectures available in a wide variety of topics. Some are short – four hours – while others (like the Civil War) can run to 14 discs.

Great Courses are expensive – that Civil War set is more than $500 to purchase yourself, but in 2016 the company began a $20/month streaming service, and then in 2021 rebranded itself under the name Wondrium. Wondrium not only offers more than 280 of the Great Courses, but also content from Magellan TV, Craftsy, and Kino Lorber, which carries art films, documentaries, world cinema, and classic films (silent films like Metropolis, Charlie Chaplin, and more).

If you don’t feel like yet another subscription to a streaming service, check out the library’s offerings downstairs in the adult department. We have more than 30 titles on DVD, and more than 35 on audiobook for learning on the go. As Fat Albert used to say, “If you’re not careful, you may learn something!”

Did you know that if you’ve already studied the material, you can often exempt a college class? It’s called the CLEP program – College Level Examination Program. Basically, if you can pass the exit exam for a class, you can get college credit for that class. Not every school offers it, not every class is covered, but if a Great Courses lecture can help, you can save several hundred dollars!

Check out these great titles and more!

Some of our Audiobook titles:

Ancient Greek Civilization

Beethoven’s Sonatas

Books that Have Made History

Broadway Musicals

The New Testament

Italian Renaissance

Native People of North America

Rise and Fall of the British Empire

Some of our DVD titles:

The American Civil War

Einstein’s Relativity

A Cheesy Holiday

January 17, 2023January 20, 2023 / Susan O. / Leave a comment

There are only 365 days in a year, but it seems as if there are a million “holidays” assigned to them, some of them bordering on ludicrous (National Ask Your Cat a Question day?).

January 20 is National Cheese Lovers Day. January 2 was also National Swiss Cheese Day, which, all things considered, must make it a truly Holey Day. (Yes, that was cheesy).

Swiss Cheese is actually a misnomer. Any cheese made in Switzerland is considered a Swiss Cheese. What Americans refer to as a “Swiss Cheese” is actually an Emmental cheese that contains “eyes” – trademark holes caused by gasses created during manufacture. The more holes, the more taste, with a curing time of 6-18 months to achieve its creamy flavor. An Emmental cheese without holes is sometimes called a “blind” cheese. Over the years, the holes in Swiss Cheese (as we know it) have gotten smaller, making manufacturers wonder if the holes aren’t caused by particulate matter getting in the cheese – tiny bits of hay or detritus that get in the milk, aiding in the production of gas. Modern sterile manufacturing eliminates those contaminants, not giving the gasses something to bond with. Emmental, Emmenthal, and Emmenthaler are all correct names for the cheese.

Many foreign foods are trademarked – Champagne is only Champagne if it comes from the Champagne region of France, otherwise it’s a sparkling wine. Roquefort Cheese can only come from Roquefort (or it’s a Blue Cheese). Bourbon can only come from Bourbon County, Tennessee, otherwise it’s just whiskey. Gruyere lost its trademark name in the US, with the courts deciding that Americans don’t know the location of the cheese, only the taste of that style, no matter the manufacturer. Thus, Swiss Cheese – er, Emmental – can be made anywhere, including Wisconsin. A good Swiss doesn’t have to come from Europe, which makes the price more palatable.

Have you ever thought of making your own cheese? Many of them are rather simple to make (cottage cheese takes just three ingredients – milk, salt, and vinegar, which replaces the old-fashioned rennet from the cow’s stomach), and all of them will be fresh without chemical preservatives. It’s easier than you think! Unlike canning, mistakes aren’t likely to kill you. Try it as a winter project – you might just discover a new (and tasty!) hobby!

And just to prove that cheese makers aren’t as uptight as you might think, check out this study, where Swiss researchers exposed ageing cheeses to different forms of music (Hip Hop, Stairway to Heaven, and Mozart’s Magic Flute opera). They used mini transmitters to conduct the energy of the music directly into the cheese, so that no energy was lost. (No, I’m not making this up) The cheese was eventually blind-taste tested twice, with similar results each time. The hip-hop exposed cheese was decided to be markedly fruitier and with a stronger taste. The question arises, then, what happens to cheese if you use Swedish Death Metal, or perhaps Raffi?

Check out these instruction books for doing your own experiments with cheese. Your choice of music is up to you!