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JISHOU, HUNAN — Wonder Girls are a Korean pop group, whose 2008 single, “Nobody,” is a big hit in Korea and in China. I swear everyone here knows the song’s tune and the Chinese/English version’s lyrics. I like it, too. So for your viewing pleasure, here is the Korean version.
There’s an English version, but frankly the lyrics are nearly unintelligible and don’t match up well with the choreography and melody. Their official website has the same version as the one I’m sharing. Possibly related posts:
JISHOU, HUNAN — Some musicians find fame right away. For others, it takes years. In the case of Boyd Lee Dunlop, he had to wait until he was 85 to get a record deal. Dunlop played jazz piano back in the 1950′s around Buffalo, NY, but his day job took precedence over his piano playing. Time passed and Dunlop ended up in a retirement home, where there was a beat-up old piano that he would play when he thought no one was listening. Then he was discovered by chance, and now you can buy his debut album on iTunes for $9.99. Most of the cuts are his own compositions, but one is a standard, the St. James Infirmary Blues. His playing is effortless and original. For an 85-year-old guy, he still has his chops. Dunlop’s story in The New York Times. Possibly related posts:
JISHOU, HUNAN — Every week, three of my Oral English students have to introduce three new words, phrases or idioms to their classmates. “Ferocious” was one that popped up last week, and “lunatic” came up last month. Name that tune! Can you think of two popular songs using each of those words? I’ll wait. . Time’s up. Here’s what my internal jukebox coughed up. For “ferocious,” Kim Carnes’ 1981 hit, “Bette Davis Eyes.” For “lunatic,” “You May Be Right,” by Billy Joel, from 1980. (I know, three ’80s hits in two posts. The jukebox seems stuck in that decade for now.) I used lyrics from both songs on recent vocabulary tests, and today I played “Bette Davis Eyes” for one class. Kim Carnes’ singing is, I guess, an acquired taste I never acquired. My students were also unimpressed. Granted, the lyrics are clever, and lent themselves to an impromptu lesson on American idioms, but Carnes’ vocal style on that song gets on my nerves, like listening to a tone-deaf teenager singing karaoke. [Factoid: Jackie DeShannon, co-writer of the song with Donna Weiss, is from Hazel, Kentucky.] The Joel song, which I like more, had a better reception. I’ve even seen it on local KTV playlists, with a totally random background video featuring a girl in an evening dress walking around a European-looking city and boats sailing across a harbor. (Often, KTV lyrics are wrong, too. I’ve learned to trust my memory more than the karaoke subtitles.) Possibly related posts:
JISHOU, HUNAN — For the last few days I’ve had this snippet of a song in my head — just the melody, not the lyrics. Gah! Some ’80s song was all I could remember about it. This evening, I decided to put my mind at rest and find the damn thing in the Internet. Searching on the few words I could remember was fruitless. Do you know how many songs rhyme “hurt you” with “desert you”? Then I remembered there’s an iPhone app that allows you to sing or play a tune and then identify it. While I don’t have an iPhone, I reasoned there must be a website that does the same thing. And there is: www.midomi.com to the rescue. It was the melody to the chorus that was stuck in my head. Here are the complete lyrics: Someday love will find you Congratulations if you have identified the song. Separate Ways (Worlds Apart) was a big hit for Journey (a band I never really cared for) in 1983. And don’t ask me why I didn’t care for Journey. I haven’t given them a thought in almost 30 years. (Has it really been that long? Yikes!) Possibly related posts:
JISHOU, HUNAN — First, the link. I can’t embed the video. Fuldans à lá Wheaton. One of my students, Luo Ye (Ellie), sent one to me. (That’s her in the previous post, with icing all over her face, by the way.) A Swedish band, Fulkultur (Ugly Culture), created the site to market themselves and raise a bit of money. For $1, you can upload a mugshot and personalize the dancing body. For $5, you can get high quality downloads of their music, too. Possibly related posts:
JISHOU, HUNAN — I am sure my last post tantalized you so much that you are dying to know more about Gelato, the perpetrators of the “Penguin’s Game” dance. So here are some more details I’ve coaxed out of the Internet. Gelato is a man-woman duo from the Remini part of Italy. He’s a DJ (and apparently the guy in the penguin get-up) and she a singer/dancer from one of the clubs there. I’m guessing she’s the tall blonde in the black coat with fake-fur trim. They like eating ice cream, so they named their band Gelato. “Penguin’s Game” was their first single, and they also released an album, Vanilla and Chocolate. I still don’t know their names, though. These info-nuggets come from their record label’s website. SAIFAM of Italy makes “small, anonymous but talentful dance projects,” according to one DJ website. SAIFAM’s own site says they also produce “fitness music,” the kind of catchy, bouncy music you want to get up and move to. In the immortal words of James Brown, “Get up offa that thing.” You can sample tracks by Gelato and other groups at the SAIFAM website, and even buy them if you are so moved. SAIFAM has produced literally hundreds of groups, none of which are recognizable to me. Most of what I listened to are the kind of throwaway dance tunes you could hear at a club — nothing truly awesome, but certainly pleasant enough. Possibly related posts:
JISHOU, HUNAN — I just came from the English Club Christmas party, where we danced a version of the “Bunny Hop” to a catchy tune I haven’t heard anywhere else but in China. So, in keeping with my recent tradition of scouring the Internet for perfectly useless trivia, I went googling, yahoo-ing and baidu-ing to learn something about it. Since it seems to be something akin to an oral tradition, getting anything definite about it was a real challenge. In China, the song is called “Rabbit Dance 兔子舞,” since the basic steps are just like the American “Bunny Hop” dance. [Ray Anthony's band did a 45 of this in the mid-1950s; the B side was the "Hokey Pokey." So now you know.] But if you pay attention to the lyrics to “Rabbit Dance,” the song we hear in China says nothing about rabbits or bunnies. The animal in question is … penguins. Here’s the lyrics. If I’m violating copyright, please excuse me. Tracking down the performers was hard enough.
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