THE COMMON ROUND

Otago Daily Times, Issue 22999, 30 September 1936, Page 2

THE COMMON ROUND

By Wayfarer

A hardened concert-goer (not to say concert-giver) provides some poignant thoughts on repertoire, of which four verses follow: Oh please do not sing me the old songs, They give me a horrible pain; For Love’s old sweet song Is a ditty gone ’wrong, And I don’t want to hear it again. Oh take away Tonic’s Prologue And off with the motley, I pray; At tiny hands frozen I turn up my nozen I do not admire One Fine Day. Passing By should pass on—and that quickly— And the Lost Chord should never be found: All dances if floral, Should be treated with chloral. And Maire my girl should be drowned. You sopranos who wobble and waver: And chesty contraltos, you too; You tenors and basses Who make such grimaces For heaven’s sake learn something new! This is all right, but then the question arises, what new songs are our simple songsters to sing? Our large and sentimental skilled staff of song-sippers, having turned their attention to the subject, bring back no encouraging reports. The new songs, they report, provide plenty of variation on the new themes, but of a distressful trend The old sweet love song, for instance, has turned in one direction to wish-fulfilment wailings—e.g.: If I had some magic power I know what I would do; I’d own the world for just one hour. And give it all to you. (A most unsatisfactory dowry, this, for any practical bride of 1936), or else the lover would beguile his lass with tantalising promises: Ev’rything we touch will turn to clover, In a magic land of what's to be; But, until your baby puts it over. Baby, have a little dream on me! (a far from satisfactory substitute for a cash-down payment on a bungalow in the suburbs). Perhaps it is such unfulfilled pledges that lead us inevitably to the current tragedy of Miss Otis, who was unable to fulfil one engagement because she had kept another: When she woke up and found that her dream of love was gone, Madam, She ran to the man who had led her so far astray, And from under her velvet gown, • She drew a gun and shot her lover down. Madam, Miss Otis regrcti she’s unable to lunch to-day. • Which we can only remark seems to be a fitting fate for the craven crooner who ladles out his affections on a tin tray garnished with nonnegotiable promises.

Or if we proscribe the floral dances and merry widow waltzes of our salad days, whither shall we turn for new inspirations? To Mr Irving Berlin, one hears a sentimentalist of the nineteentwenties suggest—Mr Irving Berlin, whose saccharine melodies were wafted nightly and rheumily from the cabaret at the Dunedin and Squth Seas Exhibition. Then let us give you Mr Berlin’s stately measure for the nineteen-thirties, which concerns the terpsichorean and anatomical art of a cabaret girl from Martinique: We’re having a Heat Wave, a tropical Heat Wave, . The temperature’s rising, it Isn t surprising, „ „ She certainly can Can-Can. She started the Heat Wave by letting her seat wave, . „ And in such a way that the customers say that She certainly can Can-Can. Now, is this the sort of song to set the hearts of music-lovers on fire, or is it? Our answer being that it is more likely to burn up our radio. Or let us look to the present for the logical successors to those jingle songs that we considered so delightfully whimsical when we sipped our port wine at the ball, while the ladies chatted with the chaperones and fanned themselves with ostrichfeather plumes. “ Ta-ra-ra-boom-de-ay ” gives place to a mellifluous catcall pronounced “ Br-oop I taught her how to play (Br-oop. , Broop). „ fro play (Br-oop, Br-oop) To play (Br-oop, Br-oop) I taught her now to play (Br-oop. Broop) , , . And now we can play a duet, while the fetching phrases of “Hitchy-coo” make way for the lachrymose sounds uttered by a spoiled child spanked: My kid’s a crooner, tho’ he’s only two. He sings ‘‘Boo-boo-boo-bop,’ He has no troubles and when he blows bubbles, It’s “800-boo-boo-boo, . . . Instead of “Da-da” he says Hot-cha-And a “ 800-boo-boo-boo, 800-boo-boo-boo.” The above examples, little reader, are all genuine and fully-authenti-cated examples of the genus song, circa 1936. And yet we have poets demanding something new. So to them, twanging our rusty but trusty pre-war lyre, and raising our tried (if untrue) voice m nostalgic protest, we cry: Oh, please do not sing me the new son gs, But give me a song that Is old; For it sounds like the croup. This Boop-a-Broop-Boop, And hot rhythm leaves me quite cold. Oh, sing to me Love, I am lonely, Or croon me the song of a flea. Or warble of Daisy, But don’t drive me crazy, With the new can-can’s cacophony. Swing music’s a crime you should swing for. Torch singers' lights need putting out. Not for me your Jazz lyrics. They give me hysterics, But an old-fashioned ditty devout. There should be a lot more verses, but we were quite unable to find a rhyme for saxophone, though recognising that as manipulated by our favourite aversion on the radio it certainly lacks-a-tone. From an out-of-town flatterer: No questions of statistics or other problems appear difficult for you to answer, and it has occurred to me that perhaps you could tell us hqw the Jewish year 5697 compares with scientists’ estimate of the actual age of the earth.—-Thanking you, H. A. S. Well, it’s like this. The Jews say that the world was created in 3760 8.C., and if that is so, this is 5697 Personally, we are not sure that we agree with them. Scientists don’t. Lord Kelvin has some very pretty hypotheses which make the earth about 20 million years old; geologists are inclined to put its age at 100 million years; Professor Schuchert, by doing things with a 0.000,000,000,125 gram of lead decided it is around 2000 million years of age next birthday. Viewing the matter with our well-known scientific detachment, we would say that any or all of them may not be strictly accurate. Personally, we have not counted it up ourselves lately, but we are inclined to think that one of our authorities has made a slip of a few hundred million years somewhere, because if the world is as old as they say, it would be old enough to have more sense.

We read of a device for motor cars which, when pressure on a knee pad is released, cuts out the ignition and acts as a brake, while the horn sounds, a bell rings, lights flash fore and aft, a fan revolves and the driver’s face is sprayed with some reviving liquid. It should considerably Semplify the traffic problem.