The Sound of Silence

Paul Simon's best known song performed differently by Leonard Cohen.

April Come She Will

Because of my foot injury I returned to my old hobby: Playing the guitar and singing songs. Here is the last attempt of my favourite Simon and Garfunkel song, 'April Come She Will'. I stumbled a little over some of the words but on the whole I'm quite happy with it.

Learn English with songs

If you like songs and you would like to improve your listening skills this site is well worth checking out:

 http://www.lyricstraining.com/

Choose a song and select your level (beginner, intermediate, expert) and start listening to the song. The higher the level, the more gaps there are to fill in. If you don't know a word, the track stops until you have typed in the solution. If you register you can also compete with other members on the same level. Have fun!

Is you is or is you ain't my baby?

One of the first things you have to learn in English is which form of the verb 'to be' you have to use with which personal pronoun. By the end of the first year most students of English manage to master this grammar at least in Simple Present and in Simple Past. The problem (as always:) is with the native speakers. In some dialects they seem to make a mess about the whole thing. Watch this video to understand my point better. (lyrics of the song here)




As far as I know, this 'you is' conjugation is an example for African-American dialect from the first part of the last century and you shouldn't use it any more unless you are an actor playing a role in a prohibition-era film. But still it's there, they say it, they even sing it. What if my students find it??? *_~

Five years

"I think I saw you in an ice-cream parlour,
Drinking milk shakes cold and long
Smiling and waving and looking so fine, don't think
You knew you were in my song"

I keep listening to this song over and over again. It was released in 1972 and it was the opening track on David Bowie's Ziggy Stardust album. The basic idea of the song is simple: a radio announcement breaks the news that Earth has only five years left and the following chaos is described. This video on youtube shows a great live performance with good quality sound. The only thing I slightly dislike about it is the interruption of the closing drum fade-away, which sounds like a passing train or the sound of your heartbeat that you can sometimes hear when you abruptly awake from a vivid dream.





Pushing through the market square, so many mothers sighing
News had just come over, we had five years left to cry in
News guy wept and told us, earth was really dying
Cried so much his face was wet, then I knew he was not lying
I heard telephones, opera house, favourite melodies
I saw boys, toys electric irons and T.V.'s
My brain hurt like a warehouse, it had no room to spare
I had to cram so many things to store everything in there
And all the fat-skinny people, and all the tall-short people
And all the nobody people, and all the somebody people
I never thought I'd need so many people

A girl my age went off her head, hit some tiny children
If the black hadn't pulled her off, I think she would have killed them
A soldier with a broken arm, fixed his stare to the wheels of a Cadillac
A cop knelt and kissed the feet of a priest, and a queer threw up at the sight of that

I think I saw you in an ice-cream parlour, drinking milk shakes cold and long
Smiling and waving and looking so fine, don't think
you knew you were in my song
And it was cold and it rained so I felt like an actor
And I thought of Ma and I wanted to get back there
Your face, your race, the way that you talk
I kiss you, you're beautiful, I want you to walk

We've got five years, stuck on my eyes
Five years, what a surprise
We've got five years, my brain hurts a lot
Five years, that's all we've got
We've got five years, what a surprise
Five years, stuck on my eyes
We've got five years, my brain hurts a lot
Five years, that's all we've got
We've got five years, stuck on my eyes
Five years, what a surprise
We've got five years, my brain hurts a lot
Five years, that's all we've got
We've got five years, what a surprise
We've got five years, stuck on my eyes
We've got five years, my brain hurts a lot
Five years, that's all we've got
Five years
Five years
Five years
Five years

'Zat you, Santa Claus?

Merry Christmas to All of You with a not too traditional Christmas song!





Gifts I'm preparin'
For some Christmas sharin'
But I pause because
Hangin' my stockin'
I can hear a knockin'
'Zat you, Santa Claus

Sure is dark out
Ain't the slighest spark out
Pardon my clackin' jaws
Who's there
Who is it
Uh, stoppin' for a visit
'Zat you, Santa Claus

Are you bringin' a present for me
Something pleasantly pleasant for me
That's what I've been waitin' for
Would you mind slippin' it under the door

Four winds are howlin'
Or would that be growlin'
My legs feel like straws
Oh my, my, me, my
Kindly would you reply
'Zat you, Santa Claus
Yeah

Oh hangin' my stockin'
I can hear a knockin'
'Zat you, Santa Claus

Yeah, say now
Hey there, who is it
Stoppin' for a visit
'Zat you, Santa Claus

Whoa there Santa you gave me a scare
Now stop teasin' 'cause I know you're there
We don't believe in no goblins today
But I can't explain why I'm shakin' that way

Well I see old Santa in the keyhole
I'll give to the cause
One peek and I'll try there
Uh-oh there's an eye there
'Zat you, Santa Claus

Please, please
I pity my knees
Say that's you Santa Claus
That's him alright

Scientists with long hair

Do you have luxuriant and flowing hair? Are you a scientist? If the answer is yes to both of these questions you might want to be a member of a special club: The Luxuriant Flowing Hair Club for Scientists™. This can be found at Improbable Research, an organization that deals with "research that makes people LAUGH and then THINK". On glancing through the profiles and photos I was happy to find rock guitarist Brian May, one of my childhood heroes, among the members. I don't have long hair and I am not a scientist of any kind so I wouldn't qualify as a member. I still like the club a lot (besides, as Woody Allen said: "I'd never join a club that would allow a person like me to become a member"). Here is a nice photo of a scientist demonstrating her hair that so clearly qualifies her as a member:
















Dr, Diane DiMassa, club member (from here)


And now a song to get you even more into the "luxuriant flowing hair" mood:





Click here for the lyrics of the song.

Always look on the bright side of life with a tattoo

Last Friday we went to a local karaoke bar. Although I like singing, it was that first time for me in an actual karaoke place with strangers watching the "performance". What do you do to feel more at ease under this kind of pressure? Reassure yourself that you are the best, repeat positive thinking mantras, take deep breaths? All of these may help but this time I went for the good old traditional confidence-maker: drink everything near you that seems to contain alcohol. It worked for me and the other folks in the place didn't take their courage from yoga breathing either. (or used it simultaneously with the boozing technique, which is cheating, anyway) One of my chosen songs was 'Always look on the bright side of life' from the M.P. film 'Life of Brian'. It went pretty well and it was a relief to find that the whistling is included on the backing track. I even tried to imitate Eric Idle's thick British accent, which surprisingly made me feel more secure. I must have felt that if I sing with an accent the people will overlook my own random variations of the tune. So, here is the song with subtitles in case you wanna have a go at it too. (vocals included)






The monologue at the end isn't included in the video but you can find a complementary script here.
If you are not a native speaker of English you may find these language notes useful.


As the night progressed, the shows got stronger and stronger and the place got higher and higher. Is it normal to feel that the songs in the karaoke are getting longer after midnight? That was my feeling - things slowed down a lot but in a good way. In this pleasantly numb state, I somehow received a little surprise: tattoos on both my arms drawn with a ball-point pen. The next day it took quite a bit of watching and scraping to get rid of them. I quite liked the rabbit, actually. If that is what it was meant to be. Does anybody have any ideas about the identity of the secret artist?
























left arm art
























right arm art

Feeling Good

Summer is here. (Well, according to the calendar, anyway. I hope the weather will catch up soon.) It is time to feel good, relax a bit and leave the more scientific topics behind for a couple of weeks. The main feature of this week's post is a song. I first heard it some years ago at a friend's party. It was dawn and most of the folks had already left or had fallen asleep. A few of us were still up and we were just chilling out. Then suddenly there was this woman singing from a CD and I became wide awake. What a great song and what a voice! It was Nina Simone singing the song 'Feeling Good'. Since then, I have heard this song many times in many different versions but this one still remains to be my favourite.



















Nina Simone (picture from here)

Nina Simone (Eunice Kathleen Waymon) was a Grammy-award winner singer, songwriter, pianist, arranger and civil right activist. She was trained as a classical pianist and started singing only later in her career, when she got a job as a bar musician. (According to a legend, the bar's owner told her that playing the piano was not enough and she had to sing as well - big thanks to the anonymous owner.) She is mainly classified as a jazz musician although her style is a mixture of blues, jazz, classical music, folk music, RnB and gospel. She took on her stage name because she didn't want her mother to know that she played the "devil's music". Her songs have been used in many motion picture soundtracks (e.g. The Big Lebowski, Notting Hill, Sex and the City...) and many artists (e.g. Aretha Franklin, David Bowie, The Animals...) have covered her work. Now, let's listen to the song!





You can read the lyrics of the song here. After the text of the lyrics you will find a very easy exercise to revise the words of the song :-)

Nightingale

Last night I was crossing a park on my way home when I heard a bird singing so loudly that I could hear it through the music going on in my mp3 player. It was a kind of staccato birdsong with lots of high-pitched trills and it was simply mesmerizing. Besides the beautiful and clear melody it was the element of surprise that made me stop: you just wouldn't expect a bird to sing like that at 1:30 am. I listened to it for a while and when I left there the bird was still performing and the sounds of the song were reverberating from the nearby houses.
This afternoon, I have had some time to do a bit of research on the net and the mysterious night singer seems to have been a nightingale. It is a migratory species breeding in forest and scrub in Europe and south-west Asia. Nightingales are named so because they frequently sing at night as well as during the day. The song is impressive with a lot of whistles and trills and it is even louder near urban areas because the bird wants to overcome the background noises. (from wikipedia)
Nightingales are not very rare and they mainly sing in spring, so if you happen to walk in forests or parks these days at the nighttime, you are likely to hear them. It is a memorable experience.
This bird is the focus of many works of art: songs, poems, myths and short stories. Listen to this soulful jazzy tune by Norah Jones, titled "Nightingale":






Read the lyrics of the song.

Do some vocabulary exercises about the language content of this post.