Jimmy: 'Hey, Mike! How's your new pet fish doing?
You told me he was really something special.'
Mike: 'To tell the truth, I'm really disappointed in
him. The guy who sold him to me said I could
teach him to sing like a bird.'
Jimmy: 'What? Let me get this straight... You
bought a fish because you thought you could
teach him to sing like a bird?'
Mike: 'Well, yeah. After all, you know, he's a
parrot fish.'
Jimmy: 'Now listen, Mike, while you might be
able to teach a parrot to sing, you're never
going to get anywhere with a parrot fish.'
Mike: 'That's what you think! It just so happens
this fish CAN sing. The thing is, he's terribly
off-key and it's driving me crazy. Do you
know how hard it is to tuna fish?'
Now, I'm an old school Unix geek. Back in the day, there was a hidden comment inside the manual page documentation for a program called tunefs, which included a more concise version of the joke that went: You can tune a filesystem, but you can't tuna fish.
If you know any other good singing jokes, please send them my way. You can send bad ones too, come to think of it.
The smilings of Thy face,
How amiable they are;
--503 Lloyd
Tuesday, September 30, 2008
Monday, September 22, 2008
Special "Beer" singing on Tuesday September 30
Mark Miller and I will be hosting a special singing for our friend from Portland. There will be dinner and singing. If you are in the bay area and would like to join us, please send an email to me at halmonster(at)gmail(dot)com.
Saturday, September 6, 2008
new books
Not only was I lucky enough to have a work conference in Nashville last week adjoin the Lookout Mountain convention on one side, and the Young People's, Lacy Memorial, and Shoal Creek singings on the other, but due a singing room being required for an election on Tuesday night, Fort Payne, Alabama's regular monthly singing was moved to Friday evening, allowing me (and Jessica) to catch a fourth singing in as many days.
Among the many interesting aspects of this singing (by the way, Darlene Dalton, formerly of Las Vegas and frequent Golden Gate and All-Cal attendee, sends her love our way), I particularly want to draw attention to the fact that in this singing we sung not from the normal 1991 Denson revision, but the White book - which has, unsurprisingly, a white cover, but which gained it's name from its compiler, J. L. White. Originally published in 1911, it has several gospel tunes, but on the whole it is the most traditional of the turn of the century revisions (Cooper, White, and James); for example, well over half the tunes - many familiar to us from the 1991 Denson revision, have only three parts.
The book has recently been beautifully retypeset, and republished last year. I was given one as a gift, and will bring it to upcoming singings; I'm curious to see if/ how the harmonies compare between that book and our Densons. I'll also bring a James book (also from 1911), which as I understand is between White and Cooper with respect to gospel-ization. (Will, please correct me if I'm wrong.) And while I'm on it, I seem to have compiled a surprisingly large tunebook collection; if anyone is ever interested in borrowing a Colored Sacred Harp or Southern or Missouri Harmony, or... let me know; I'm more than happy to lend them out.
Don't worry; the Denson book isn't going out of style; in fact we just bought 3 new boxes of loaners, since we're selling so many, and in anticipation of the upcoming All-Cal.
Among the many interesting aspects of this singing (by the way, Darlene Dalton, formerly of Las Vegas and frequent Golden Gate and All-Cal attendee, sends her love our way), I particularly want to draw attention to the fact that in this singing we sung not from the normal 1991 Denson revision, but the White book - which has, unsurprisingly, a white cover, but which gained it's name from its compiler, J. L. White. Originally published in 1911, it has several gospel tunes, but on the whole it is the most traditional of the turn of the century revisions (Cooper, White, and James); for example, well over half the tunes - many familiar to us from the 1991 Denson revision, have only three parts.
The book has recently been beautifully retypeset, and republished last year. I was given one as a gift, and will bring it to upcoming singings; I'm curious to see if/ how the harmonies compare between that book and our Densons. I'll also bring a James book (also from 1911), which as I understand is between White and Cooper with respect to gospel-ization. (Will, please correct me if I'm wrong.) And while I'm on it, I seem to have compiled a surprisingly large tunebook collection; if anyone is ever interested in borrowing a Colored Sacred Harp or Southern or Missouri Harmony, or... let me know; I'm more than happy to lend them out.
Don't worry; the Denson book isn't going out of style; in fact we just bought 3 new boxes of loaners, since we're selling so many, and in anticipation of the upcoming All-Cal.
Portland Convention
Hey all, let's start a dialog for going to the Portland convention. Here are some things I know so far:
- My original post to UCB FaSoLa was wrong; the convention is not 10/25-26, but 10/18-19.
- Carolyn is looking, perhaps, to ride up with someone, then make her own way back
- There's a good chance I'll be looking for a ride back, after getting up there myself.
- Chris, Caroline, and Hal have all expressed interest in attending. (I'll guess Hal and Chris are planning to fly)
- My original post to UCB FaSoLa was wrong; the convention is not 10/25-26, but 10/18-19.
- Carolyn is looking, perhaps, to ride up with someone, then make her own way back
- There's a good chance I'll be looking for a ride back, after getting up there myself.
- Chris, Caroline, and Hal have all expressed interest in attending. (I'll guess Hal and Chris are planning to fly)
Friday, September 5, 2008
ASTHMATIC KITTY ARTISTS APPEAR ON SACRED HARP COMPILATION ...
The much awaited news is here. But stop hyperventilating - Sufjan Stevens does not appear to be involved as we were led to hope. I know. But it looks cool anyway.
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