The Folk Era was a special time in America, a time of innocence, when people sang Kumbaya and really meant it. When banjo music got airplay and Burl Ives had groupies. No one knows what caused the folk era, and scientists are studying what can be done to prevent it from ever happening again.
The nice people at royzimmerman.com have sent me another CD, The Best of the Foremen. They tell me this group was especially popular with biologists (I can see it—songs about wallowing in whale guts and what we euphemistically call “firing the Surgeon General” are always well received by us), and that SJ Gould had them play at his wedding. I can’t argue with Gould! Not any more at least.
Self-mocking folkies are always fun to listen to. Check ’em out.
Biologists? Folk Music? You must be referring to the Amphioxus Song! As sung by Joe Felsenstein (he of PHYLIP fame) at the Workshop on Molecular Evolution (although it is much older than him)
http://www.molecularevolution.org/resources/amphioxus/
PZ:
I am happy to see the that the connection with RZ is still ongoing.
Several songs from “Folk Heroes” are still completely relevant today – “Ollie Ollie Off Scott Free” and “My Conservative Girlfriend” spring to mind.
*sigh*
What could ever beat:
“And it’s one, two, three, what are we fightin’ for
Don’t ask me, I don’t give a damn…”
Gimmee an FFFFF
Sorry, but they just don’t make ’em like Tom Lehrer did anymore:
Some of us still live in a special time. You can too with their web streaming.
PZ,
I enoy your blog immensely. It fails to surpirse me that you have such great taste in music.
DFK
PZ,
I enoy your blog immensely. It fails to surpirse me that you have such great taste in music.
DFK
You can also hear “The Amphioxus Song” sung by Sam Hinton, the San Diego folk singer and marine biologist.
“Self-mocking folkies are always fun to listen to.”
Duck’s Breath Mystery Theater (they originated “Ask Dr. Science,” among other things) had a guy who did very funny folksong parodies from time to time. I still remember (sung in a plaintive tenor to a minor key melody, moving up into falsetto for the final line of each stanza):
I’m an old folk singer;
I’m just an old singer;
I’m an old folk singer;
Are you a folk singer, too?
I’m an old folk singer;
I’m just an old singer;
I’m an old folk singer;
These two chords are my life.
Best, Marc
I highly recommend The Mitosis Waltz by the ever-great Moxy Fruvous.
Hmm. Technically, when its not about traditional folksy stuff its called “Filk”. Reminds me.. I need to see if Firebird Arts and Music is still around, so I can replace some old cassetes from them with CDs…
Yep, they are still around:
http://www.firebirdarts.com/
and they even have a special Darwin Fish section, which is a major plus right there. ;) lol
Tom Lehrer also wrote:
There’s a Science Singers’ Association!
http://www.science-groove.org/SSA/pedagogy.html
The current issue mentions Greg Crowther, author of such songs as “Building a Histadine” and “Necessary but Not Sufficient.”
David Wilford writes <>
Wouldn’t biologists expect each generation to make lots of ’ems like Tom Lehrer?
Hard to believe all the resident wingnuts resisted the temptation to ridicule the ‘kumbaya’ reference…
There’s more than I expected on the Web: a database of 2000 songs; a “physics chanteuse” who sings about red dwarfs and diffy-qs; and a science band called Science Groove.
http://monado2.blogspot.com/2006/04/science-and-math-songs.html