My youngest has been practicing “Rocky Top”, and I realized it had the word “home” in it, and he was willing to practice a little with me and make a video. He was not willing to do many retakes, though, so the chord I flubbed had to stay in.
Our headmaster was a mathematician - so we studied New Maths. It was great fun. Our textbooks were the Schoools Mathematics Project (SMP) Vols 1-V. I was never a great maths scholar, but I do remember the cartoons and quotations that prefaced each chapter. My favourite came in the chapter on Choice & Probability: "Fate makes our relations. Choice makes our friends."Circa 1960, Three of us, all members of the 76th Hamilton Boy Scout troop, had a folk trio and the banjo player's dad tried to introduce us to some interesting material, one of which was Tom Lehrer.
In the mid-sixties I was attending Teachers' College and our math prof played Lehrer's New Math.
In 1981, Maggie and I merged our record collections and one of her LPs was Tom's That Was The Year That Was.
Shortly after the turn of the century, I ran across this boxed set in a record store and snapped it up. Probably the complete Tom Lehrer collection. There are three CDs, but one of 'em is in the car.
View attachment 168291
Home - Lene Lovich (1979)
[original key is G#m/E]
| C#m C#m | E E | F#m F#m | A |
| / / / / | / / / / | / / / / | / / / / |
C#m E F#m A
Home is where the heart is
C#m E F#m A
Home is so re-mote
C#m E F#m A
Home is just e-mo - tion
C#m E F#m
Sticking in my throat
A | C#m7 | E E | F#m F#m |
/ / Let's go to | your place / / | / / / / | / / / / |
A | C#m7 | E E | F#m F#m | A | C#m *10 |
/ / Let's go to | your place / / | / / / / | / / / / | / / / / | / / / /
C#m F#m
Home is where the heart is
C#m F#m
Home is so re-mote
C#m F#m
Home is just e-mo-tion
C#m F#m
Sticking in my throat
C#m F#m
Home is hard to swal-low
C#m F#m
Home is like a rock
C#m F#m
Home is good clean liv-ing
C#m F#m
Home is - I for-got
| C#m7 | F#m A
Let's go to | your place / / | / /
| C#m7 | F#m A
Let's go to | your place / / | / /
Break
| C#m | */* | E | */* | C#m | E | */* | C#m | F#m
| E | */* | C#m | F#m | C#m
| C#m | B / A# / | C#m | B / A# / | C#m |
C#m F#m
Home is so sus-pic-ious
C#m F#m
Home is close con-trol
C#m F#m
Home is will you miss us
C#m F#m
Home is - I don't know
| C#m7 | F#m A
Let's go to | your place / / | / /
| C#m7 | F#m A
Let's go to | your place / / | / /
| B A# | C#m | B A# | C#m |
C#m F#m
Home is ag-gra-va-tion
C#m F#m
Home is so much fuss
C#m F#m
Home is mind your bus'-ness
C#m F#m
Thank you very much
| C#m7 | F#m A
Let's go to | your place / / | / /
| C#m7 | F#m A
Let's go to | your place / / | / /
C#m
I don't want to go back
I don't want to go back
I don't want to go back any more
Thanks for hosting, Berni!
Here is an original song in Teochew, a Chinese dialect.
Door gods (Menshen) are divine guardians of doors and gates in Chinese folk religions. They protect a room, house or building from evil spirits. Many different deities are worshipped as door gods. Two of them are fearsome brothers who throw evil spirits and demons to their pet tigers.
My song is not trying to be disrespectful towards people who believe in door gods or any other gods or goddesses in polytheistic religion. It is just my observation that people do ask/hope for different things from different gods. One of the things many worshippers ask for is wealth in the form of maybe winning lottery. I prefer the idea of door gods protecting a household from evil spirits and demons.
English translation:
(this is not what the Teochew words are saying exactly. But it is about 95% there....)
Door God! (X4)
You can believe, you can frown!
The Door Gods are in our house protecting us!
Warding off demons and evil spirits,
Throw them to their pet tigers as treats!
Door God! (X4)
Religion is such a funny business.
You don't think about it when life is a bed of roses.
When sickness and misfortune strike you, you lit some incense and get down on your knees-
There is a different god for every malady.
Door God! (X4)
The Door Gods keep your household safe and clean.
The God of Fortune makes you rich.
I was told Guanyin (the Goddess of Mercy) protects you from everything.
If I have extraordinary ukulele skills will I be worshipped as another deity?
Door God!(X4)
(spoken)may our home be safe and peaceful.
Thanks Elly!Omg Joo! I like this song of yours! Reminds me of my childhood days when there were Chinese variety live performances at my neighbrhood park. I don’t understand the dialect but i sure enjoyed some of the lively & catchy melodies!
I’m not Chinese, just that it ws common back then to hv such performances in our neighbrhd…as a child i ws intrigued by many things…Thanks Elly!
I am guessing you are Chinese, Elly? (Are you?) what is your dlalect group?
I remember those performances! We had puppet shows in Hokkien too.