A Singing Frog

Okay, one of my favorite songs is sung by a banjo-playing puppet frog and I am not ashamed!  It's been done by other better singers like Kenny Loggins, Sarah McLachlan, Willie Nelson and Weezer, but my favorite by far is by Kermit the Frog as gently voiced by Jim Henson. A banjo playing frog singing on a lily pad in the middle of a swamp just appeals to me for some reason.

Here it is:

 

If you'd like to explore some other versions, here you are.  First up - Kenny Loggins:

Here's Sarah McLachlan's version:

And Willie Nelson's (next to Kermit, I like Willie's):

Here's Judy Collins' version:

Here's a version by (believe it or not) The Carpenters:

Here's Paul Williams. He wrote the original song. He gets all chatty before he sings it, but it's worth hearing if only to listen to the guy that wrote it.

And finally this sweet little version by Weezer and Hayley Williams

It's just a sweet little love song about yearning for peace and love and connectedness.  Seems a lot of people like that idea.

Tom KIng

Unfriended

I actually got unfriended by someone the other day. It's actually not that unusual for me. I tend to be on the outspoken side of the conversational spectrum and there are some folks who cannot bear to be contradicted. It's not just politics. I've lost both hard left and hard right "friends" who apparently were only friends so long as I did not bring up any good points when I disagreed with them.

My musical tastes are distinctly unserious, though I can blubber along over a sad love song with the best of them. Of course one of my favorites, "I've Got Tears in My Ears From Lying on My Back, Crying My Heart Out Over You" probably crosses over several musical genres in a way unlikely to draw it any Grammy or CMA awards.

One of my favorite unserious, yet at the same time strangely poignant musicians, is the inimitable Garrison Keillor, star to the long-running radio show, A Prairie Home Companion. That Keillor makes a living with a live radio show is a testament to both his talent and mule-headedness in this era of on-demand videos and Mp3 players.

This Keillor song addresses the issue I brought up in the first paragraph of this weblog - unfriending. In true Garrison Keillor fashion, the song gently sticks a pin in the over-inflated self-importance of the Facebook Generation.  I liked it so much that I put it on my Mp3 player!

Here's another version (he changes them almost every performance.  This is the funniest one and the one that I have on my Mp3 player.

The last one is my favorite version.

God and Dog

Our Daisy

This song makes me cry every time. I tried to sing it for church one time and it made me tear up. The woman who wrote it, Wendy Francisco is the wife of the Don Francisco who wrote "He's Alive".  She has in this brief song, captured what all of us, who have dogs as family members, feel about our canine family members.

She even turned this song into a children's book which also makes me cry. We lost our little gift from God dog, Daisy, last year which makes it worse when I listen to this song. She was everything this song talks about. Even the way we found her was something of a miracle. It was more like she found us. She was well behaved. Instantly house-broken, she had no bad habits to speak of and she came at a time when we needed her, even though we didn't know we did.

I firmly believe dogs also serve God like furry little angels and I pray that God returns my Daisy to us in the New Earth. I can hardly imagine heaven without her tagging alongside us everywhere we go.

I figure if God can resurrect something as complicated as a human being, our kind Father in Heaven won't mind giving us back the dogs that loved us and stuck by us through good times and bad. Someone once told me dogs couldn't be saved because they don't have souls. I don't think that's an issue. Daisy was knit to our souls in her short time here. I suspect that God will allow us to bring her along on our eternal journey. Why wouldn't He? 

Here's Wendy Francisco's version of her song, "God and Dog"

I AM an Ape Man

This is such an odd little song. First time I heard it, I hearkened back to my youth when I used to climb the trees every morning and wake the neighbors doing my Tarzan yell! I was a weird little kid back then. This is also the opening theme to Robin Williams' singular film, "Club Paradise" which I really liked, the critics notwithstanding.

I've always been fascinated by Tarzan. He's a hero figure and kind of a lonely guy living there among the apes. It's hard not to become one of the apes if you ever grow up to have any power over others, especially when the apes used to push you around when you were little. The great temptation is, as another song I posted earlier put it, to be "sittin' around in some junglescape, dumb as an ape doin' nothing."  I admit it. The whole jungle thing appeals to me.

So here are The Kinks with a live version of their classic, "Ape Man".

Somewhere Over the Rainbow What a Wonderful World

I first heard this song in a gentle Adam Sandler/Jodie Foster movie, set in Hawaii, called 50 First Dates.  The artist singing this unusual mashup version of a pair of pop tunes was a gentle giant of a man Hawaiian song-writer Israel "Iz" Kamakawiwo'ole. The song is a plain unadorned medley of what I think are the masterpiece songs of two other singers - Judy Garland and Louis Armstrong. The only accompaniment is Iz strumming gently on his ukulele.


Iz kind of mangles the lyrics if you're a music purist. If you're an old folkie like me, however, Iz shows us the folk music process, drawing from the song the bits he likes in the order that, to him, best says what he wants it to say. The result is a gentle musical idyll that takes you to the beach by a campfire with stars overhead and invokes an appreciation for the wonderful world God has made and the world that is to come some day, over the rainbow.

Iz did a lot of sweet music over his short life. He, like his father, died young. I look forward to seeing Iz again in the New World, healed of his infirmities and forever young. For Israel Kamakawiwo'ole was a Christian I discovered. He embraced Christianity while very much maintaining his connection with his Hawaiian heritage.  His music is peaceful and lovely; something we need in this hard old world sometimes.

Tom

Whip Crack Away!

When I was a young man I had a terrible crush on Doris Day. This song is from my favorite Doris Day musical - Calamity Jane. Now I know that Calamity Jane looked nothing like Doris Day and her relationship with Bill Hickok was more rumor than fact. Hickok, if you'll remember, died ignominiously at the card table, shot in the back of the head while holding two pair - aces and eights. Calam probably had a crush on Hickok though. She was buried next to him at the tender age of 51. She pretty much drank herself to death.

The musical, however, cleans up the story, saves the best bits and gives us some great scenes and terrific songs. This particular one always cheers me up.

Deadwood and its inhabitants were probably a pretty nasty group of hooligans. Doris and the gang make the place look like a downright Western version of Disneyland.  And I like it and I don't care what PC police might say about it.

Tom

...

All God's Critters...

This one has to be one of the most joyous gospel songs ever. Irish groups in particular have embraced this happy song, written by New Hampshire Yankee folksinger, Bill Staines. I introduced this to my Sabbath School classes and it quickly became a favorite. We added animal sounds at the end of some lines and it turned quickly into one of those songs where the deacons came and peeked in the back door to see what sort of wild music was going on in there with the young people.

Two of my favorite Irish folksingers, Liam Clancy and Tommy Makem perform this version and you can see how much fun and joy the song gives them. It's an infectious kind of joy.  Here is: "All God's Critters Got a Place in the Choir":

My daughter and some of the kids from my old Primary and Youth Sabbath School classes recently recorded this song for me with a whole lot of laughter and fun. She sent me the recording. It's now sits proudly on my MP3 playlist of both Christian and eclectic music. This is a song any guitar-playing song service praise band leader needs to know.  Click here for the lyrics and chords.

Tom King


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Benson Arizona - Theme to Dark Star

Okay back to the odd we go. There was an odd little Sci-Fi movie made in 1974 during the pre Star Wars era by John Carpenter, who later made some really disturbing horror and sci-fi movies. This low-budget gem is a quirky mess, but the opening theme song is unique. It's a C&W space sailor's lament about a love lost to the theory of relativity.  He left home a few years back and left his girl behind. Now he's still a young man and back on Earth, she's an old lady and there's no going back. Meanwhile the crew of the spaceship Dark Star is going a little nuts blowing up planets and talking to their dead captain and a self-destructive bomb. I included a clip of the whole opening sequence. Best Sci-Fi Country Western song ever.

Weird I know.

Tom