Back in the day, my daily round-trip commute was 100 miles. On a motorcycle.
Stuck inside a helmet for that amount of time every day, you tend to invent ways to amuse yourself; mine was reciting Kipling poetry.
That's right, as that pink-and-blue Suzuki crotch rocket was peg-scraping down side roads or weaving through interstate traffic, inside my helmet there was a steady monologue of The Gods Of The Copybook Headings and The Young British Soldier...
...but I never thought to sing it!
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11 comments:
Never heard the Jim Croce abridged version, then, I take it?
I've been on a Kipling kick lately. Sounds pretty good aloud, in contrast to most of this modern higgerty piggerty. Not too bad sung, for that matter.
Leslie Fish has put a number of Kipling pieces to music...
Ms Tam... we ought'a have drink to Rudyard someday. I kept doing the Explorer on my trips to work and still do... another "born 200 too early - or 200 too late" kind'a guys I'm afraid.
Jim Croce version is up on Youtube. My version of this was on 8 Track.
Actually, I wonder if mounting an 9 Track on a motorcycle would count as "retro chic" ...
Hell, one of my favorite mashups is the Kipling poem (whose title I have forgotten and cannot find) set to Beethoven's Ode to Joy...
Let us now be up and doing
With a heart for any fate
Still achieving, still pursuing
Learn to [da-dah] and to wait.
(Well, if you can only remember it so poorly, it can hardly be a favorite, now...)
Point taken.
M
One of my favorites is still, "The Heathen":
"Getting clear of dirtiness, getting done with mess,
Getting shut of doing things rather-more-or-less;
Not so fond of abby-nay, kul, nor hazar-ho,
Learns to keep his rifle and himself just so!"
(Fortunately my edition of Unabridged Kipling included notes for stuff like "abby-nay", "kul" and "hazar-ho", otherwise in the pre-'Net days I wouldn't have found them in any dictionary.)
And who can forget Dudley Dooright's version of "Tommy", "...chuck him out, the brute."
Yeah, what Ian said.
Here's Leslie Fish and Julia Ecklar doing "Hymn to Breaking Strain".
Somehow the Kipling approximation of how "Tommies" talked doesn't go well with rolled "Rs".
Well, the collection is "Barrack Room Ballads" after all.
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