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

[rymenhild.livejournal.com]

I, too, just saw my opinion of Irving Berlin rise at least a notch and a half.

[shirei-shibolim.livejournal.com]

Did not see that coming. Wow.

[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/

[clarionj.livejournal.com]

"... putting together a paper on the permutation of lyrics..."

I'd love to do that; that's the kind of things we should be spending our days doing. What fun. (Now I have to convince my family that they don't need my extra income for things like jeans and shoes and oil filters and fish food and ... ack, I can't even convince myself. But, maybe I can convince my daughter college is worth it, that it offers the opportunity to write papers like this!)

How did he go about finding some of these things? I can't imagine where the above would have appeared!

[sovay]

How did he go about finding some of these things? I can't imagine where the above would have appeared!

I think he found it in an otherwise unexciting biography of either Irving Berlin or Cole Porter: for all the obvious reasons, he explained, no one's ever recorded this version. We decided that someone really needs to. That someone, however, will not be us.

[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.

[sovay]

I only wish there were a recording . . .

[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.