“Simon Smith And His Amazing Dancing Bear” by Randy Newman is kind of throwaway. He’s not writing a full power. The Muppets covered it so its practically a kids song.
Everytime I play it, tears come out of my eyes.
WHY?
And do you have a really innocuous tune which does the same?
The damn song didn’t post properly… so here we go again
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IgjU6kPV_MA
I think your assessment is awry; I think he very much is at full power here. It’s concise, it’s quirky, it’s oddly disturbing, it’s different to all its contemporaries; everything Randy does so well! I have no idea why it produces tears for you though. For me it just induces a wry smile when I recall the first time I heard the song, and was puzzled and intrigued by the unsettling lyric – being played and sung by Alan Price – who obviously recognised its quality and power.
Clearly it is the key capable of unlocking hitherto “forgotten” childhood trauma. In my experience, it is how the amygdala manages and reinterprets for the psyche. I wonder, is there a blacksmith, or rather, was there a blacksmith near your childhood home? Simon tends to indicate the consumption of food, yes, as in pieman, but it is merely a cipher for the brain. Any food, a tasty banana or an exotic saveloy may equally qualify. Bear is easy, being a simple translocated homonym.
By now, like me, you are getting a clearer picture, I’m sure.
Does that help?
And that will be thirty guineas.
An exotic saveloy? Honey, you’re fresh!
There’s probably a line – or lines – which could be drawn on maps to show where saveloys are served in chip shops. And indeed whether bare, or battered.
The excellent Knight’s Fish and Chips in Glastonbury this year has battered pigs in blankets, either as a main or side order. Joins battered black pudding on the menu.
I’ve never heard of a battered saveloy, only a battered sausage. Saveloys are to me always redly nude, hot and shiny – retracted, as it were.
https://getyarn.io/yarn-clip/06746560-c06e-4f72-b8f0-f2c959824c39
Kind of thinking the lines would be isoloys – linking areas of equal suspiciously large sausageness.
Sausages around the world. Your romantic idealism is very touching. An endless link of porcine gutjoy uniting humanity in artery-hardening gustatory delight. One day, by the grace of god, it shall be so.
Presumably a Christian god, the others can do one.
Battered sav, coming up
These guys are hilarious, @Sniffity in a wonderfully dry, Aussie way.
I can’t help help being reminded of Barry Mackenzie-
Randy is good at this, he’s a very manipulative bastard. Memo To My Son sets me off, maybe because I’m thinking of my Dad and I remember him coming home with Sail On from some funny-ass jumble sale. What a mess music turns us into. Let’s blame the music… Yeah let’s. Much easier.
And my dad is alive and reasonably well! Randy you bastard, what are you doing?
Think you may be getting confused with “You Can Leave Your Sail On”
If you don’t behave I’ll drop the big one.
I’m heading out into the yard with my kangaroos
What Randy is NOT doing is coming to Stockholm. Poor @DuCo01 has dutifully bought tickets to see him at least, errm, 20 times, only to have his hopes cruelly dashed.
I gave up after the first ten attempts. A gig by that Godot geezer is more likely than a Randy Newman concert. (Completely unrelated, I once waited all night for Gregory Isaacs to turn up for a Stockholm concert. Rumour has it that the Cool Ruler arrived from Oslo at 9.00 am the following morning and was surprised to find the venue closed.)
I saw him in Edinburgh in 2004(I think). Some people had been waiting for 30 years for him to come to Scotland. Queen’s Hall is and old church with about 900 capacity and it sold out within hours. Usher hall was the last place in Edinburgh he played. Capacity about 2200, and also sold out almost immediately.
Saw him a few years back during the only tour of the last 20 years he doesn’t seem to have cancelled
The last song on Dark Matter, Wandering Boy. I have only heard it once. I was walking in public and had to dive down a dark alley to blub in private. Funny thing is both my sons are very much at home curse them.
I don’t really know him except for Toy Story. That has me in bits for all sorts of reasons…
I can’t be the only Afterworder who is now calculating whether Randy Newman has done 12 studio albums 😏
His ‘Songbook’ albums are fabulous. 3 of them. Just him and his piano. Get in your comfy chair with a glass of whisky. Turn off the lights and close your eyes and it sounds like he’s in the living room playing just for you.
And best of all, he can’t cancel at the last minute
If you exclude the songbooks, there are, indeed, twelve studio albums! 😀
Hear that @dave-amitri ? Get cracking!
@dave-amitri
When she loved me perchance? Certainly gets me going
I love this song and it’s probably my seven year old girl’s favourite song. She plays it on Spotify (Alan Price version) or asks me to sing it at bedtime – doing the catchy piano intro as well of course. She likes Singing in the Rain too another catchy melody to start. Obviously I have introduced these songs to her world but these two have really stuck.
Growing up, I remember Fozzie Bear and Scooter’s version from the Muppet Show album – very close in arrangement to the Alan Price version but I think I knew his version first. He was a regular on BBC throughout the 70s, popping up in many variety shows and Pebble Mill at one or the Barbara Dickson/Elaine Paige slot in the Two Ronnies. Until he had a hit with the Jarrow Song, he always seemed to do this crowd pleaser. Maybe the song is triggering some nostalgia for the early 70s … jumpers for goalposts etc.
Lyrically I regarded it as just a silly nonsense of a song when I was young but as an adult familiar with Randy Newman’s songwriting I now see it as a commentary on the fleeting nature of celebrity, showbiz, novelty etc. in the same vein as Jackie by Jacques Brel or King of Rock and Roll by Prefab Sprout. As it’s Newman there’s probably a slant that the bear represents a minority figure, possibly a spouse or partner who would not normally be accepted everywhere but who is indulged as long as they provide entertainment or novelty, possibly unaware that it will all disappear soon.
I hope this helps.
It’s also about the exploitation of an opressed bear, for the purpose of mindless entertainment. Let’s not forget about that, comrades.
And what about poor old Henry the Horse? Fight the power…
Great post and thread, and thank you @ganglesprocket from a frequent flier crier. I also cry on cue when hearing Alan Price’s version of this. As several above have said, and as I believe Jacques Derrida suggested, there’s nothing outside of context, ie all the associations we have of a time and place.
There’s more to it, though. When I originally used hear the song on Junior Choice in the very early 70s, I would tear up a bit, with a bittersweet feeling, especially at the lines ‘Who needs money, when you’re funny?’ and particularly ‘It’s amazing how fair people can be’ Price’s Geordie accent was a factor, too: I’m from the north east and I wasn’t getting a lot of good vibes from north eastern males, so here it was, indirectly.
Another song, originally heard ‘back then’ that triggers the tear ducts are “I’ll Never Find Another You’ by The Seekers. There’s a bit near the end, when Judith Durham’s voice cracks just slightly, and I’m away every time. Again, in terms of associations there’s something about The Seekers being probably the only band my parents would have listened to, all prior to my birth, so there’s some sort of unconscious harking back to better times.
Then there’s Bob Dylan. Of all the lines in all the songs, there’s one that’s always brought forth those tears, and it’s one of his most mundane: ‘When you’ve got nothing, you’ve got nothing to lose’. It’s not just the what, it’s the how he sings it, and I’ve a similar reaction to ‘Letter From America’ by The Proclaimers, especially the ‘Bathgate no more, Linwood no more..’ sequence. That ending of things, for some of us ADHD folks, feels devastating, tapping into the ‘Now and not now’ schema, ie we’re looking into a void.
Abba’s ‘Slipping Through My Fingers’ is a song I can barely write the title of without some weeping. There’s the specificity (I was the main caregiver to my daughter, and her growing up and moving on, whilst wonderful, is heart wrenching, too) and there’s that ‘something really important is over, ‘now’ has gone, oh f***’.
There’s a therapy model called the Safe Sound Protocol, devised by Stephen Porges, and it’s used for neurodivergent clients, especially people with autism. The basic aim is to soothe the nervous system, and there’s a school of thought that holds that often there’s a problem with the stapideus muscle, a tiny mechanism in the ear which, among other functions, enables filtering of sounds. With SSP – I’m micro-summarising here – clients listen to music, usually with female vocals, and this can have that soothing effect. Whilst it’s usually used for people quite a way along the spectrum, I do wonder whether there’s something in it that speaks to us all. Two singers that can make me cry within moments of starting, for instance, are Karen Carpenter and Nathalie Merchant. It’s that combination of the sad song and soothing voice (and often uptempo accompaniment) that seems to create that lachrymose sweet spot. With NM, ‘What’s The Matter Here?’ gets me every time, because of all the above, plus my own experiences of being belted to hell and back as a child, and the sense of righteous anger that ensues.
Enough already, here’s that Seekers song.
Derrida and Fozzie Bear on the same thread: this is why I came back
“Jacques Derrida and the Muppet to a disco beat…”
Much as I love PSBs I think quoting your own reviews in a lyric is a step too far.
See also Bob Dylan’s “What Is This Shit” and David Bowie’s “Go Home, You’re a Disgrace”
Working in the hope that this isn’t now a Randy Newman thread: this song can set me off before we even reach the vocal. Progressive/RIO cred (such as it is!) blown forever!
I blame the ONJ special on BBC4 last year, shortly after Olivia’s death. Thinking about it – I had had a particularly bad day with the black dog – I watched this programme; and this tune (and one or two others) kind of imprinted on me. Now I only have to hear the guitar intro and I can feel the pricking starting behind my eyes…
My first name is Simon.
For surname related reasons I hate that song.
@Sitheref2409
Put your hands on your head and pretend you can’t hear it
Simon says….
Not a fan of Randy Newman’s voice but only a supreme songwriter could write something like this
From the same stable, a highlight of the ropey Stretch album:
Should be on @arthur-cowslip ‘s 1973 thread…
I think that means you *are* a fan of Randy Newman’s, doesn’t it?
I mentioned his voice. Dusty sings better, to be fair better than just about anybody
I dunno. His doleful, flat tone suits some songs brilliantly. Sail Away, for example.
Or God’s Song… peak Newman. It’s Vonnegut meets Brecht/Weil.
Rod’s “The Killing Of Georgie (Parts 1 and 2)” does for me.
I only have to hear that intro and I can feel myself going.
If I do manage to get through the main bit I go at the reprise.
Was on Guy Garveys “From The Vault” series recently and I had to turn it off.
Daft I know but I can’t help it.
The Little Ladies have split as a result of two of them, Rula Lenska’s Q and Charlotte Cornwall’s Anna, having been increasingly sidelined in favour of new member Rox, played by Life of Brian’s Judith and future Mayor of Aberystwyth, Sue Jones Davies. They were on the verge of some sort of success, moving up from seedy pubs and clubs to the university circuit. Anna in particular is bitter and ends up singing in cheap nightclubs, while Q is more disappointed than angry and runs home to her rich, oppressive mummy. The group’s lead talent and personality, Julie Covington’s Dee, goes on to great success with Rox, but suffers heartbreak at the thought of it being without the friends who had been at her side from. the beginning, standing up to an often sexist and misogynistic male-dominated industry.
Real Life is the last song of the show.
Now, I’m not saying it makes me cry – it doesn’t, no song ever has, for I am unemotional to the point that some might even accuse me of superficiality – but if I ever wanted to force fake tears for some reason (a Hollywood acting role, a close friend’s funeral etc) this is the song I’d think of.
Lovely intro, then…
Q:
I have been a fantasy queen
Closed my eyes to real strife
I rocked my head, he queen is dead
Welcome to the real life
ANNA:
I had schemes, some dreamy rock dreams
Told myself I’d feel life
I fell so far, a fallen star
Welcome to the real life
DEE (Julie Covington, what a voice!):
I hurt all over, like I’ve been in a collision
There’s a darkness inside my eyes
I found the power, but I lost the vision
Through the tiny evasions and the little lies
ROX (Sue Jones- Davies – what a voice!):
You’re torn into bits when reality hits
It slices like a steel knife
You can no longer hide what’s concealed inside you
Welcome to the real life
DEE:
We had schemes
Some dreamy rock dreams
We hit the road to feel life
We made a good start
Then it all fell apart
I don’t like the real life
ALL FOUR:
You’re knocked off your pins when reality wins
It cuts you like a steel knife
So clasp my hand and hold it tight
And help me get through the real life
Yes clasp my hand and hold it tight
And help me get through the real life
Saxophone by its composer, Andy Mackay.
Another Randy Newman song does this for me very time – the wonderful Wandering Boy from his last album, Dark Matter – which just goes to show that his songwriting brilliance remains undimmed.
Well, everything pretty much makes me cry…especially music, and there are few songs that won’t bring a tear to my eye at some point – at live concerts the only way I can keep my composure is to fiddle about with my camera when I feel the tears coming.
But if we’re talking “ugly crying with snot explosions”, then look no further than this Anaïs Mitchell song from the excellent album “Young Man In America”; “Shepherd”:
“Ugly Crying with Snot Explosions”: TMFTL!
Snot explosions in the glass palace… Fetch a cloth Granville
Oooooooh, you and your sexy North Humberside sweet nothings
You and Timothy Chamoisleather alike!
Who or what is a North Humberside? Is it a boxing manoeuvre?
Excellent example. Gets me every time, too
David Mead has a few of these. I can’t listen to ‘The Smile of Rachael Ray’ at Christmas anymore – it gets too messy. Everyone Knows it But You gets me because my wife puts herself down too much.
And this from Dawes:
Edelweiss in the Sound of Music can catch me off guard.
it has to be this version because of the desperation in the voice and The fantastic string arrangement. The tension builds, the water levels rise, then overflow just at the point his “heart stops”.