Well, Labor Day has passed and we can smell the crisp air of autumn just around the corner. With these hallmarks reached, it’s a matter of time for 2 of my personal, annual activities to occur: the kick-off of football season and the death threats that I usually receive while laughing at pre-game presentations of our National Anthem!
I might as well get to it—give you all an opportunity to knock my lights out or, at least, call me an “un-patriotic SOB.”
This happens to me just about every year. I’ll be sitting in a bar enjoying a brew, ready to enjoy a game, and someone gets up to give their musical (if I can call it that) version of our beloved Anthem. It usually takes me a couple of lines before I start moaning, and by the time the singer gets to the end—you know the high “C” part, “o’er the land of the free”…! That’s were I definitely lose it. That’s, also, about the time someone at the bar decides that I’ve read too much Karl Marx and decides to rearrange the enameled grinders which Mother Nature has provided me.
Truth be known, I am one helluva patriotic guy; know more about American History than most people you have as acquaintances. I even know all the Presidents and can discuss their administrations in detail. I know the difference between a Democracy and a Republic, and our soon-to-be Ex-President can’t even say that, given the number of times that I have heard him use the words interchangeably!
The fact is the Anthem is one lousy song.
A guy who was called a poet wrote it, but, actually, he was an attorney. C’mon, only Oliver Wendell Holmes could pull that off!
Most people have a reverence for our country’s first song as if it were penned by Jesus’ Disciples. But let’s keep to the facts. The tune (and that’s really what is was—19th century prose put to the tune of an old English ditty) ain’t gonna make the top 10 list on American Bandstand. Besides, you can’t dance to it! I mean, Puff Daddy couldn’t make this thing “Go.”
I'll bet anyone 500 million dollars that more people from the “Doomers” generation can remember the words to the Mickey Mouse Club Theme than to our own national song. And has anyone ever tried the second stanza?
On the shore, dimly seen thro’ the mist of the deep,
Where the foe’s haughty host in dread silence reposes,
What is that which the breeze, o’er the towering steep.
As it fitfully blows, half conceals, half discloses?
Now it catches the gleam of the morning’s first beam,
In full glory reflected, now shines on the stream
‘Tis the star-spangled banner. Oh! Long may it wave
O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave!
Let me put it this way, type that into your WORD and see what grammar check does! You just won the jackpot of weird-ass grammar.
Now keep in mind, you’re supposed to be singing this—not reciting!
And how many times have you heard someone screw up the words, and that’s to the first stanza which we are all supposed to know?
My favorite screw-up was Robert Goulet. He was a well-known singer of the 70’s. He was contracted to sing the Anthem at one of the championship fights and really messed up—I mean, not even close! Afterward, a reporter indignantly interviewed Goulet and almost shouts at him: “How can you forget the words to the National Anthem?”
Goulet quietly replied, “ I’m Canadian.”
And he was!
And if anyone wants to hit me with the tradition thing, forget it!
It wasn’t until 1931 that this tune was selected as our National Anthem. As you may have guessed, they didn’t ask me to vote.
We have many good American songs to pick from, if you want to start a movement.
“America The Beautiful” is always a front- runner. Or, what about Woody Guthrie’s, “ This Land is You Land.” Not a bad idea, and I just thought of that one.
A national song contest might be a good idea. Then the winner would really be an American Idol!
Either that, or we farm the entire production out to Coke or Mc Donald’s. They write great jingles.
Billy P.
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