An “earworm”…..you know, not the gross brain eating kind we were all warned about as kids (that’s another story, perhaps for Halloween) ….but the song stuck in your head kind. We’ve all had it happen. Sometimes you don’t even hear the song that day…you just think of it…….and there it is. For the rest of the day. And…sometimes actually listening to the song does not fix it. You are stuck with it until something else diverts the attention.
Today, it was that happy little whistling theme from the movie, “The Bridge On The River Kwai” If you haven’t heard of it, its a great film from 1957 that is set during WWII and deals with the POWs who were tasked with working on rail and bridge construction for the Japanese in the Burma theatre. I won’t spoil it, other than to say that in the movie, the POWs whistled the tune. (you can do a search and find it very easily) Originally this tune was known as the “Colonel Bogey March” and the sheet music for it dates back to about 1914. By WWII…and certainly by the time of my childhood, various assorted and often unsuitable lyrics had been applied to the simple tune, some of which actually got released as novelty songs during the war and others that perhaps just spread among troops and kids on playgrounds. …This may well have contributed to my habit of making up bawdy lyrics to whatever songs I happen to hear, who knows? It was also enough of a cultural phenomenon that the tune later appeared in the 1980’s movies, “The Breakfast Club” and “Spaceballs” …As a side note, the very first documented instance of a computer playing music was also THIS tune. Played at a computer conference in Australia in 1951 by the CSIRAC computer that had been developed by the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization. Take that! “techno-pop”
So…what lyrics have been stuck in mind and making me giggle today? Well, the first ones I learned as a kid of course:
“Hitler, has only got one ball. Goring, has two but they are small. Himmler, has something similar. But Goebbels has no balls at all.”
Maybe those lyrics weren’t so “unsuitable” after all.
Hahahahahaha! Loved it!