Chanting in Mesopotamian, Part 2
And for those of you playing along with us at home . . .
You must descend/To the darkness beyond
Into the sands/Of the place without soulsDepart from us/Go where you belong
To the place of despair/We now cast you out.We abjure you by/The great goddess who is Three
Now you are bound/Now you are sealed
Now you are nightmare/Now we awake.
. . . is sung to the tune of
Istanbul was Constantinople
Now it’s Istanbul, not ConstantinopleBeen a long time gone, Constantinople
Now it’s Turkish delight on a moonlit nightEven old New York was once New Amsterdam
Why they changed it I can’t say
People just liked it better that way
Hear it here.
22 Comments so far
Leave a reply
LMAO! That’s fantastic!
Oh Why Did I Listen To This Right Before I Went To Bed? I Will Be Humming It And Not Sleeping.
It’s got a great beat and I love to dance to it. I give it a 96!
Oh, too funny! Thank goodness you posted the answer, I would have been wondering all night.
I always loved that song! But it’s so snappy no wonder I never figured out what music the chant went with. I imagine chants as slow, dignified things. *snort*
LOL! I start singing that whenever I hear about either Instanbul or Constantinople on the news, Jeopardy, whatever. And I am singing it now. Too funny. And really, it’s perfect.
Ooh! I have always loved that song. I used to work with a guyy who would ask me (in all mock seriousness), “Why did Constantinople get the works?” and I’d look at him and answer, “Andy, that’s nobody’s business but the Turks.”
I love hearing the chant with the especially dirge-like line of “Even old New York was once New Amsterdam.”
Whee!
LOL! TMBG needs *way* more airtime than they get. D&G is going to be a lot of fun to read knowing John & John & the boys have been so inspirational to you. ;)-
In fact they’ve branched into kids music the last few years and my 3 year old is constantly singing, “C is for conifer, my kind of tree…”
There are just some things you shouldn’t read at work. I can’t wait for this book.
You do realize, of course, that those of us who frequent this blog are going to be laughing our asses off at what seems to be a pretty serious part of the book. Too funny.
Yes, but there are only about 80 of you reading this blog, which is what is wonderful about it. Eventually, we’ll go wide and start promoting it, but for right now, it’s just us, talking about putting it all together. By the time we go wide, this post will be buried in dozens of others. Anybody who digs that deep will probably already have read the book.
The rest of you know so much about how we wrote this that you’ll be reading a different book from everybody else anyway. You saw the sausage being made.
I don’t even want to admit how much time I spent on that….
rocks totally, thank you very much. Now I have a replacement for the mesopotaaamians (sargon, hammurabi, ashiburnipal and gilgamesh…)
the flying brothers karamazov, who juggle, had a running gag about hammurabi’s code in the last show of theirs we saw (I didn’t know he was sick. badump bum)
TMBG definitely need more air time
there’s only 80 of us? huh.
Yep. We don’t advertise the blog any place. We told people about it when we put up and then we let it be what it was going to be. It’s really not that interesting unless you find three writers staggering toward the end of a novel fascinating. We don’t post daily or even weekly. It’s not like we have a PLAN. So we have our faithful eighty and we give them the good stuff, and then about two months before the book comes out, we’ll redesign the site and make it all glossy and shout, “Hey, look over HERE.”
But until then, there’s nobody here but us Mesopotamian-lovin’ chickens. We like that.
We told people about it when we put up and then we let it be what it was going to be.
I noticed that. One day I had to dig through all your archived post to find this place again. Eventually you put it up at the top.
Anyway, maybe it’s just me, but You saw the sausage being made.
Hmm…
Yeah it was an obscure path to find this blog, but am very glad to have found it.I find it entertainingly diverse and well perverse…or maybe that’s just me..and Melissa Blue, I snorted when I read the ‘you sausage being made too’.
saw…you saw the sausage being made…must check comment before submitting..bugger
Sausage *snort*
And, yes, we do find three writers staggering towards just about anything endlessly fascinating. At least, you three.
Anyway, off to bang my head against the wall until I get “Istanbul (Not Constantinople)” unstuck. You are evil and you must be destroyed.
But in a good way.
Only 80? I don’t think you are counting the lurkers.
Love the song to the chant. If only I could get the song out of my head!
Must go listen to something else before I go to bed.
It’s amazing that everyone knows such an old song. I don’t think I’ve heard it since I was a little kid and it was on some late night televsion rerun or something. Talk about longevity.
So … how about you go multi-media and release the soundtrack to your book?
It’s from their 1990 album Flood. Which also had “Birdhouse in Your Soul.” A classic.
Kira, getting the rights to all of the music would be a nightmare. But we can do a play list here and people can make their own mix tapes.
I would *love* to see a playlist on what y’all are listening to as you write. You’ve talked in the past about how important music is to your process - and I know how important it is to mine - that it would be fantabulous to have an “official” listing.
Ooo - you could have a contest: put up a list in no particular order and then have people try to put it in correct order to win a signed copy or something. Just a thought.
ZaZa - when I think of TMBG, “Istanbul (Not Contantinople)” is the very first thing I think of followed VERY closely by “Don’t Let’s Start”. But then I was in high school in the late 80’s so it might be an unavoidable by product.
(-: In the late 80s, I lived in a place so far out in the boonies, TMBG didn’t get any airplay. They thought they were alternative with Huey Lewis and the News. (-: They probably *were* pushing the envelope, at that.
When I think of Istanbul (Not Constantinople), I think of Cole Porter. Didn’t he write that? Or did we just have that at choir camp at the same time as a Cole Porter medley? Must google.
Wow, 80. I thought it would be more than that. But, being as how I’d like to make sausages myself someday, I find the blog really fascinating. And a great source of music tips and recipes (-:!