All posts by Dona

70. Send her victorious Land where my fathers died,

Song Blog

The visit of Queen Elizabeth II to our neighboring state this week reminded me about this song story.

In 1974 I, along with about 15 other juniors from my high school, traveled to England for a 3-4 week stay. Our first week was spent in London where we were purely tourists and visited all the main tourist attractions. We also saw a couple live shows.

One of the live shows we saw was probably Sunday Night at the London Palladium. I don’t remember the show at all, but I do remember that when the show was about to begin the orchestra began playing a familiar tune. The audience stood and soon began singing.

In the few moments between the first notes of music and the first words of the song, I thought it was darned nice of the owners of this huge theater to play a patriotic song for the few Americans in the audience. Then I thought that possibly this was American night at the Palladium. Then I wondered why this song was chosen over The Star Spangled Banner.

Then I heard the words:

God save our gracious Queen,
Long live our noble Queen,
God save the Queen:
Send her victorious,
Happy and glorious,
Long to reign over us:
God save the Queen.

Then I was embarrassed because I was singing:

My country, ’tis of thee,
Sweet land of liberty,
Of thee I sing;
Land where my fathers died,
Land of the pilgrims’ pride,
From every mountainside
Let freedom ring!

I can never hear that tune without remembering that evening at the London Palladium.

Oh, and then there is the Jimi Hendrix version.

69. Focal point of a distant gaze

Music,

I admit to having strong negative opinions about certain musicians and types of music. For instance, I won’t listen to rap nor hip hop music. And I don’t like country music. That’s why I’ve never had a taste for Jimmy Buffett* and until last night I didn’t know what he looked or sounded like. Except for Margaritaville, I couldn’t have told you one song he sang. And – get this – if a Jimmy Buffett song happened to play on my lastfm or pandora radio song streams, I’d immediately ban it. Just because it was Jimmy Buffett.

But last night changed things for me a little. I watched the movie Hoot with my daughter. We’d listened to the book on tape at Christmas time, during our drive to Elgin and thought we’d enjoy the movie.

The movie was ok. It followed the book, which was ok.

There is a scene in the movie where two teenage boys are hanging out in Florida, walking on the beach and running through fields. The song that plays during this scene sounded, to Clare and me, like Tom Chapin. We were sure it was Tom Chapin. This morning I looked it up. We were wrong. It was Jimmy Buffett singing Floridays – but the version on the soundtrack is much faster, more upbeat than what I could find on YouTube.

Not only do I now know what Jimmy Buffett sounds like, but since he played the cool middle school science teacher in the movie, I know exactly what he looks like. And I’ll quit banning Buffett’s music – and maybe listen to some voluntarily. Hmm, think there is a rap or hip hop artist I should listen to?

*I assumed he played country music