John Stewart9
Member
22 messages
joined Dec 2011
There are two things that really get under my skin because they just scream lack of seriousness and small-mindedness:
1. That song Ivan's Riverbeds—which is actually a cover of an old folk tune where the lyric originally goes "honeyed lips of Jovan"—but instead of sticking to that questionable name, they swap it out for all sorts of stuff like "Ivan's lips" or "Luburić's lips." Honestly, you've gotta be careful not to offend the listeners. I mean, some of these guys are pretty old school, and times are tough enough as it is. Just imagine if some hardcore country music fan from downtown Chicago starts singing along to this Southern ballad, totally unaware of its roots, and suddenly he's being told to sing about some guy named Jovan from some random town in Alabama or something... man, good grief, give me strength!
2. Then there's the track Hold On a Second, Tavern Musician (truly one of the most beautiful tavern songs I've ever heard; the songwriter is Vlada Kanić, whom people jokingly call the "Jack Nicholson of the Midwest")—this enlightened, patriotic, mainstream, pro-Western, progressive crowd tries so hard to avoid one incredibly awkward line, which goes
"let your instruments rest for a bit
after serving on the Salonika Front"
so they go ahead and butcher it with all kinds of nonsense. The band "Svirci"—who are actually great, so I don't know why they bother—they have a version where they say "the Midwest Front," even though as far as I know, such a thing doesn't even exist. You've got the Western Front, the Eastern Front, but a "Midwest Front"? Never heard of it. And even if it did exist, I think you guys can see why I feel like these little edits are totally unnecessary and just miss the mark completely.
Just imagine if musicians from Texas started pulling these kinds of lyrical stunts. Instead of saying "Oh, Texas, who didn't love you," they might swap it for something more "palatable," like "Oh, Oklahoma, who didn't love you" or maybe "Oh, Tennessee, who didn't love you."
It’s just another sign of that narrow-minded provincialism you see in certain small-town circles...
If you don't like a song, a poem, or a lyric exactly as it was written, then in my opinion, you're better off not singing it at all rather than making a fool of yourself.
