Since the Puritans got a shock when they landed on Plymouth Rock

[sovay]

The best piece of random information I've heard so far this week, from a musicologist I met over dinner as he was putting together a paper on the permutation of lyrics in Cole Porter's "Anything Goes" and "You're the Top" (from Anything Goes): that he has collected 89 versions of the latter, and one of them is a bawdy parody by Irving Berlin:

You're the burning heat
Of a bridal suite in use;
You're the breasts of Venus,
You're King Kong's penis,
You're self-abuse!

Perversely, this has made me feel much better about Irving Berlin.

Comments

[skotodes.livejournal.com]

Here's an article about that version; the author believes that Irving Berlin didn't write it. There are links to some related articles at the bottom, including an article that explains the archaic references in the original song.

http://www.slate.com/id/2121688/

[sovay]

the author believes that Irving Berlin didn't write it.

. . . I really hope Irving Berlin did. I have so many fewer strange reasons to respect him than Cole Porter.

the archaic references in the original song.

That's where this student's paper started: the lyrics have been updated or otherwise altered in just about every performance since the original. And there's not even an original cast recording.

[fleurdelis28.livejournal.com]

I'd like to see a list, were such a thing possible, of your strange reasons for respecting people.

[sovay]

Random acts of weirdness have a lot to do with it: and if the above isn't weird and (at least for my expectations of Irving Berlin) random, I don't know what is.

[fleurdelis28.livejournal.com]

It should be a meme, actually -- "Leave a request and I'll tell you my strange reasons for respecting you."

[sovay]

. . . I would totally answer that meme.