Fireworks and Finnish Anthems

As my regular readers know, I am a semi-professional musician who makes tens of dollars from playing out. Somehow I am always getting recruited into new bands, and last week I played with one that does hardcore Mideastern music, with the quarter tones and everything. It was so much fun! Then Saturday the folk band I am in drove south one state for a Scandinavian festival in a park. At least we got to sit in the shade as we played, wearing our band uniform of a T-shirt with dancing cows on it. The poor kids who danced around the Maypole (should that be Junepole?) were wearing warm-looking folk costumes and dancing in the sun! Fortunately, not a single one of them keeled over from the heat. The organizers had asked us to play the national anthems of Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, and Sweden so we had practiced them all... and then when we got there, they asked us to start with our own national anthem! Nobody has ever asked us to play "The Star-Spangled Banner" before, but luckily we know how it goes so we could fake it pretty well. Still, it is not nearly as easy to sing as, say, the Finnish National Anthem, which stays in one octave and has only three chords.

Then the kids danced around the Maypole singing songs about how frogs have no ears or tails, and how they (the kids, not the frogs) can play the violin and the flute, complete with actions. We accompanied all those songs, which tended to have two (at the most three) chords and very simple melodies. Hey! Maybe we should change our national anthem from an English drinking song set to a war poem to something much easier and happier to sing. I propose something in G (although C or D are also acceptable) about how our country is so cool because we have tropical places like Key West and Hawaii, and maritime places like New England, and flat places like Montana, and deserts like Arizona, and a football team owned by The People - the Green Bay Packers! That would be much better than a song with notes that only professional singers can hit and words that nobody uses in daily conversation. (Go ahead - use "ramparts" in a sentence when you're talking to your coworkers and see what kind of look they give you.)

I was bummed that we were going to miss the big fireworks show on Saturday just to make tens of dollars playing Scandinavian national anthems and children's songs, but fortunately for me they were postponed because of bad weather until last night. I suggested to Richard Bonomo that we ask to borrow Hardingfele's canoe and go out into the lake to watch the show, but he didn't like that idea. He wanted to bike out to the park, but I didn't want to get home so late on a work night. In the end he, Kathbert, Cecil Markovitch, and I went to the OTHER choir director's house and donned Martin Luther masks Cecil had ordered from some Lutheran gag store, then we knocked on his door and sang him Happy Birthday. (His birthday is today.) He let us watch the fireworks from his pier, but he was too tired to join us. As always, they were very cool, and my two favorites were the smiley faces and one that Rich said looked like a "universe simulation."

Palm Tree Fan lives right near the park where they do the fireworks show, so she just walked out the door to watch them. She was super happy because the F-16s did their flyover right above her head, and she loves fighter jets. You can see that her dogs had a good weekend too. Have you ever seen such happy dogs?

Leo and Buddy Are Happy

(photo credit: Palm Tree Fan)

Eusebius and I are both feeling better, and today we biked to work. Rich helped me change Eusebius's flat tire yesterday, and I am completely recovered, so I am looking forward to many happy hours of biking this summer.

Famous Hat