Doing a show is never the same. It depends on the mix of the crowd. Sometimes you lose them and then try again. with more rhythm, greater gusto, singing really load. How about Al Jolson, Red Robins, or the nineteen fifties hit ‘Love and Marriage’. Maybe a bit of the Beatles by diving into a ‘Yellow Submarine’, Elvis Presley’s ‘I’m All Shook Up’, and Dean Martin’s ‘When the moon hits your eyes’. Music they’ll cherish and taking us back to when we were around six-teen.
How about the ‘Doggy In the Window’ or ‘The Merry Widow Waltz’ or try to go to ‘bat’ with ‘Die Fledermaus’ by Johann Strauss. What about Showboat which reminds me of that stage at Kitsilano beach or Rosemary Clooney’s ‘This Old House’. Doing a show, folks, you ‘takes your chances’ and away you go. Why? Because songs like “There’s No Business Like Show Business’ can trigger fond memories so. Bring back Jimmy Stewart, Betty Hutton, Tony Curtis in ‘The Greatest Show on Earth’, and like Jackie Gleason used to say...”and away we go”!
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Accordion to some, the ideals of the nineteen six-ties have changed, just a tad. Do you remember the Limelighters, the Kingston Trio, Peter, Paul and Mary. How about all those hootenannies, banjos, gui-ars and songs that vibrated with so much hope and magic that folk music had. Spin one of those records today...still powerful? Very! From Woody Guthrie to Bob Dylan, Glen Yarbrough, Ian and Sylvia, Pete Seeger, Mary Travers, Leonard Cohen, how they all touched our soul, so sublime how those songs grabbed you. It can still play such an important role.
Many seniors remember that special era and how bright that light shone, creating a renaissance that inspired and, for a while and with wonder, changed the world. Except in our memories, and hopefully recordings, gone. Fortunately listening to an old vinyl, those feelings can still be replenished and unfurled. PUN-ISH-MENT I’ve always found puns to be fascinating and thought provoking. Others find them pun-ish-ing. Nevertheless, the following bit of rhyme might provide some food for thought. THE LAST STRAW It’s time to ‘ketchup’ on a few food puns. Like, if you become addicted to spreading too much mayo on a submarine sandwich you might end up a patient at the Mayo Clinic. When you bite into the English lan-guage, the food puns available are tons. Its adjectives, verbs and especially nouns can provide a delicious grammatical unorthodox picnic. Others with different tastes end up having the biscuit. Shakespeare, the great bard, occasionally incorporated this lowest form of humour. However, any dedicated punster, whatever the consequences, has no choice but to simply risk it, regardless whether they reside in the Big Apple, LA, Toronto or Vancouver. A portrait photographer from Montreal might think "c’est fromage" but nevertheless in English say "smile and say cheese". Speaking of culture did you know that some surmise the most successful is the yogurt. Somehow after that last one I can almost hear a reader think enough pun-ish-ment please. Perhaps the last example is the last straw, the proof is in the pudding, that too many puns can actually hurt. Guess it’s time to cut the mustard even though some relish puns because puns can provide a morsel of food for thought. Perhaps, for local seniors puns can be a pathway to remembering the heavenly taste of a huge bowl of baked custard for only twenty-five cents at Vancouver’s White Lunch Restaurant. Squeezing out a show at a seniors home with an accordion and bellowing songs from Jolson to Elvis can be instrumental to all kinds of reactions. So long old houses and shopping areas, hello to concrete tow-ers as they reach for the sky. It reminds one of that comedy from long ago starring Abbott and Costello in ‘Jack and the Beanstalk’. Thanks to modern machinery, the deeper they dig the higher today’s towers rise in Greater Vancouver. Thus, the following rhyme and song. The deeper they dig, the higher they rise. Practically everywhere in Richmond, Vancouver, the Lower Mainland, I can’t believe my eyes! Walking from Granville and Georgia to Bute on Robson, what a surprise. It can be tough on the emotions for some of us nostalgic senior gals and guys. In Richmond, Number Three Road down to the Casino, like Dude, so much that used to be is gone. Why, I don’t know. Vancouver, Dunbar, Downtown, even Kerrisdale and Kitsilano. It can be tough for us dinosaurs wondering where did so much go. We remember Buttermilk and Chocolate; those horses that went clippety-clop, delivering dairy products to where the Sylvia Hotel still stands. It seems like just yesterday, the nineteen fifties, when did that stop? The same with that old train service on Railway to Steveston, gee whiz. All that construction today gives rise. It’s hard on our poor necks looking at all those construction cranes up high. Just the cost of a cup of coffee at food courts can bring plenty of my, my. It makes some of us sigh for the old non-digital days, savouring grandma’s home baked pumpkin and blueberry pies. |
AuthorDan Propp's books are available on Amazon, Kindle, and other E-Book retailers' sites. To contact Dan please click HERE. Archives
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