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The Offcuts Tim Flitcroft’s Monday night class. Stephan Fowler, Phil Godsell, Olly Secluna. Hawaiian War Chant. A song that has its roots in a languid love ballad, the War Chant appears on nearly every album of Hawaiian and exotic music recorded in the 1950s and '60s. The original melody and lyrics were written sometime in the 1860s by Prince Leleiohoku. The song was originally called Kaua i ka Huahua'i or "We Two in the Spray." It was not written as a chant, and the Hawaiian lyrics describe a clandestine meeting between two lovers, not a battle. The English title therefore has nothing to do with the song as it was originally written and performed in Hawaii. Across the Universe (1969, Beatles). Released first on a charity record and later in modified form on their final album “Let it be”. One night in 1967, the phrase "words are flowing out like endless rain into a paper cup" came to Lennon after hearing his then wife Cynthia, according to Lennon, "going on and on about something". Later, after "she'd gone to sleep-- and I kept hearing these words over and over, flowing like an endless stream", Lennon "went downstairs and it turned into sort of a cosmic song". The next morning he added the music and completed the song. The flavour of the song was heavily influenced by Lennon's and The Beatles' short-lived interest in Transcendental Meditation. This led him to add the mantra "Jai guru deva om" to the piece, as a link between the bridge and verse. In his 1970 interview with Rolling Stone Magazine, Lennon referred to the song as perhaps the best, most poetic lyric he ever wrote. I Can't Give You Anything but Love, Baby (1928, Jimmy McHugh & Dorothy Fields). This featured in the screwball comedy Bringing Up Baby (1938) in a scene where quirky heiress Susan Vance (Katharine Hepburn) and befuddled palaeontologist Dr. David Huxley (Cary Grant) attempt to coax a surly leopard named Baby off the roof of a house by singing "I can't give you anything but love, Baby". It is also used in the film version of The Green Mile. |
