Saturday, May 29, 2010

Second Lennon addendum.

Just another "I lived through it" reminiscence. I recall an egregious BBC Radio 1 morning deejay introducing the first airing of  "Give Peace a Chance" in 1969 and proving for all time his terminal unhipness when, in puzzled tones, he credited it to the "Plastic One Band." And by the end of the record, nobody in the booth had corrected him, so he repeated the misreading. (Even at thirteen, I'd already read about Lennon's new venture in the Record Mirror.)

To be rivaled by those awful pretentious announcers on New York's classical radio stations, who clearly don't know what they're talking about either. (Who uses words like "concertized"?)

Ponchielli's "Dance of the Hours" is famous, not only for providing the tune for Allan Sherman's "Hello Muddah, Hello Faddah" but also for inspiring the dancing hippos, ostriches, and crocodiles in Disney's Fantasia. But it didn't stop one announcer from blithely introducing it as the "Dance of the House." Now, a dancing house . . . that's something I'd like to see. . .*

Worst overblown-pretentious-can't-get-enough-of-listening-to-myself-saying-foreign-names moment ever. The female announcer (who could never resist pronouncing "Bach" without that clearing-of-the-throat final phoneme) book-ended  a broadcast of Barber's Adagio for Strings with a little mini-quiz: which movie is the piece strongly associated with? Answer: Oliver Stone's Platoon. But why did "Platoon" have to be pronounced -- twice -- as if it were a contemporary French word, for God's sake? What a lune.

*This year's "Dancing With The Stars" was won by former Pussycat Doll, Nicole "Jai Ho" Scherzinger, partnered by number 27 Acacia Avenue, Tenafly, NJ.

4 comments:

  1. I cringe every time I hear someone say, "a consensus of opinion."

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  2. How about "is centered around . . ."?

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  3. I don't remember which Librivox recording I was listening to, but one had some truly interesting pronunciations. It took me awhile to figure out that *fo-RIG-on-ers* was actually *foreigners*

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  4. Yeah, and I'm surrounded by people who think the word "tomato" rhymes with "potato."

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