Someone knows the words.

[mrissa]

1. If you are preparing an otherwise-lovely church service, please recall that "Amazing Grace" comes with its very own tune. It's a nice tune, one comes out fairly well if you try to make it jazzy, folk-rocky, Gospelly, whatever. If you choose to use an alternate tune, however, please consider a tune whose best-known lyrics have nothing to do with a whorehouse, as it will cause great consternation among visitors to your church who have to stifle giggles as their brain supplies the missing lyrics: "Amazing grace, how sweet the sound that saved a wretch like me. It's been the ruin of many a poor girl, and God, I know I'm one." And etc.

2. If you are attempting to sell a non-alcohol product, may I suggest a tune other than "What Shall We Do With a Drunken Sailor" for the background music to your pitch? While there are nearly infinitely many verses to this particular chanty, "Make him buy a new Toyota" is not so much a positive statement about your company for those of us who do not fall into the drunken sailor category.

(This is, of course, in addition to my note of some years back that while some would consider CCR's "Fortunate Son" an extremely patriotic song, dissent being a virtue in an open government, we do know that the words after "Some folks are born, made to wave the flag, ooh the red, white and blue" are "but when the band plays 'Hail to the Chief,' ooh, they point the cannon at you." I'm not sure whether Wrangler Jeans intended to align itself with the firing squad in question or the fired upon, but it certainly baffled me.)

I'm going to lie back down now.

Comments

[supergee.livejournal.com]

I thought you were supposed to sing "O Little Town of Bethlehem" to the tune of "House of the Rising Sun."

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

If you're going to give me assignments like this, you're going to have to tell me in advance.

[spaceoperadiva.livejournal.com]

It's so cute that "House of the Rising Sun" is in a commonly used hymnal meter.

[bradipo.livejournal.com]

I work for a company that used "You Can't Always Get What You Want" as a jingle for a big marketing push. With those others, at least you can imagine that some people don't know the next line. But when it's the title? I just can't imagine what they were thinking.

[truepenny.livejournal.com]

And now I have "House of the Rising Sun" going through my head to the tune of "Amazing Grace."

::beats head gently against desk::

[ckd]

Well, when they were nice enough to warn us that Windows 95 would "make a grown man cry"....

[dd-b.livejournal.com]

Looks like these can be generalized into a nice, useful, widely-applicable, rule: Don't assume your audience is ignorant of the source material you're working from.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

This is the nutshell version of what I was going to say about why scalzi is cooler than Michael Crichton.

[greatestofnates.livejournal.com]

Hookers need Grace too. It seems like a good choice to me.

My favorite inappropriate jingle is Royal Caribbean using Iggy Pop's "Lust for Life" to advertise family cruises.

[adrian-turtle.livejournal.com]

In general, I agree that the juxtaposition of "Amazing Grace" with "House of the Rising Sun," is unfortunate. This weekend, I can understand the desire (however clumsily expressed) to call down blessings on every house in New Orleans one can think of. The only other song I know that mentions the place is Arlo Guthrie's "City of New Orleans," which isn't 4/4.

Diane Taraz is a local songwriter, and I don't expect anyone to have heard of her, or her song "Grace." It starts off very specific, about a homeless man in Cambridge, and gradually shifts. The last chorus ("I can hear the wind outside my windowpane/And it speaks to me of winter on the way/Oh, grant asylum, to the ones life has undone/Lead them to some comforting place/And grant them some amazing kind of grace") shifts over to the hymn so it's like waking up and hearing it was there in the background and you just didn't notice. Which is rather the point. But I digress.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

I think you're probably giving more credit for topicality than was intended.

I am waiting to hear from a friend and his wife in New Orleans, though.

[timprov.livejournal.com]

The sad thing is, I'm pretty sure the choice of song had absolutely nothing to do with the hurricane.

[dreamshark.livejournal.com]

ROFL!

They're called "nectarines"

[markiv1111.livejournal.com]

Note that "Amazing Grace," "Rising Sun," "O Little Town of Bethlehem," "Folsom Prison Blues," "Auld Lang Syne," "Yellow Rose of Texas," and "Pinball Wizard" -- and probably a dozen others -- can all be sung to each others' tunes. Oh, yes: And add "It Came Upon a Midnight Clear." Steve Brust once won a karaoke contest by singing "Pinball Wizard" to "Folsom Prison Blues." When you've tired of that set, there are three others that work with each other (though not with the previous list): "Those Were the Days," "Okie from Muskogee," and "Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer." And perhaps at some point I'll get the chance to show you how "Satisfaction" can go to the Battle Hymn of the Republic -- it takes a little tweaking, but not much.

Nate

Re: They're called "nectarines"

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Why on earth are they called nectarines?

My brain is now trying to figure out what "Jumpin' Jack Flash" goes with, if anything, since I am both suggestible and free-associational. Sigh. I think I'd better go put something in the CD player, because my usual trick for getting rid of songs does not work with "Jumpin' Jack Flash."

[kythiaranos.livejournal.com]

I saw (and heard) that Toyota commercial and was convinced I had imagined the whole thing. I'm not sure if I'm relieved to discover it was real. Heh.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

I said to timprov, "Did I just doze off, or was there...?" And then it came on again.