Jingle Bells, Silent Night, Joy to the World!
It took me years after we first moved into The Landfill to be able to discern that the ice cream truck was playing the theme from the movie The Sting. I *know* the music from The Sting. I saw the movie about a billion years ago and I’ve heard it on the radio or in the mall or wherever at least a brazillion times since then. But I also used to play it on the puano piano. Back when I actually played the puano piano with any regularity. The Commander had the sheet music at our house and I remember one occasion in particular when there was a bank party and one of Grandroobly’s fun bank friends kept asking me to play the music. And making me scotch and sodas. I don’t drink scotch and sodas now. I don’t drink ouzo either but that’s related to one of *my* friends, not Grandroobly’s. And the Alpha Bar and a story I will never tell on the internets. Er, maybe after everyone else involved is dead. Maybe.
But somehow, when the ice cream truck rolled by The Landfill, all I could hear was a sort of mournful sounding dingly dingly. The GG, who *listens* to music avidly but doesn’t sing or play anything that I know of, could get The Sting out of it. I could not. Years and years later, I finally heard it. Maybe they had fixed the sound system? I dunno. Anyway, today I was walking and there was a much newer ice cream truck rolling slowly along the street and I could hear this kind of distorted dingly dingly music. It didn’t sound like The Sting but I couldn’t tell what it was. When I got a little closer, I heard Christmas music! Say what? Is Silent Night actually supposed to make people buy ice cream on a hot July day? (Actually it was not that hot today, the temperature barely broke 70.) I dunno. I didn’t feel like buying ice cream. I just thought it sounded a little weird.
Hmm, Christmas must be in the air. NPR just played a snippet of Jingle Bell Rock. Something about the stock market, apparently.
July 14th, 2007 at 8:04 am
Somehow, attempting to put “familiar” jingles into electronic format doesn’t cut it for me. Especially since the electronic rendition has nothing stylistic about it. Then throw in that infamous Doppler Effect and the music gets really distorted – so you have to struggle at time to figure out just what is being played so badly. Around here, that noise is inevitably coming from some escapee from the salvage yard – which makes me wonder as to the food safety issues. Finally, it’s loud and annoying and I want that noise banned!!