Weekend Assignment 33 - Sing, Song, Sunk

Each week, AOL's "Blogfather", John M Scalzi, celebrated author of the "Book of the Dumb" (Volumes 1 & 2), "Old Man's War" and several others, leaves the AOL Journal community a meme for the weekend on the front doorstep.

Wait, it's the cat who leaves a mole on the front doorstep.

John leaves a meme for your consideration and entertainment on his AOL Journal each week about this time. This week, it's about music. Sort of. Leave a link to your answer in the comments over at By The Way.

Weekend Assignment #33: You can have any person, past or present, sing any song for you that you want. What is the song, and who is singing it for you?

Extra credit: Name a singer you wish you could sing like, but can't. So that means even those of you with excellent voices have to pick someone you can't sing like.


Dear John,

Hope this finds you all in good health, or at least better and recuperating. And I hope you are having much more success finishing that Rough Guide than I have been having with my NaNoWriMo, tentatively titled Four Horsemen. Enough of writing and health issues. Let's get down to the really important stuff: wine, women and song. I'll bring the booze and the music (your taste in music is highly suspect) and you bring the women. Fair enough?

So, assuming enough cups of grog and attention from the gals, we are confronted with choosing a song and a singer to perform it. This is going to be tough. But given my druthers (and those were the terms specified), I would have to choose my former college roommate as the singer, Peter Havas. As a young man in France, he recorded a couple of singles and an album that was well received there, but did nothing here. Sadly, the US had moved to bubble gum and schlock rock in the mid-60's; there was no future here for a balladeer, raconteur and folk singer. I lost touch with Peter shortly after we split as roomies. I have heard that he has retired to France after running a successful Jaguar dealership in Southern Maine for many years. He has married a luscious French Attorney and he is attempting, with some success, to make a retirement living as a writer of children's stories. Peter had a clarion tone to his voice, excellent phrasing and a wicked good sense of humor he allowed to spill over into his performing. His rendition of Gordon Lightfoot's "Canadian Railroad Trilogy" and later, "The Wreck of The Edmund Fitzgerald" won high praise from Gordon himself. I so wish I had a tape from those days. So my choice, for very personal and nostalgic reasons, would be to listen to Peter Havas performing the "Canadian Railroad Trilogy." It brings tears to my eyes, just to remember it now, some 32 years later.

Now, understand that I once upon a time had an acceptable singing voice. Too many years of cigarettes, whiskey and bad choices, coupled with the damage done by surgeries and extended intubations, have rendered me little more than a humming accompanist. That is, if I can find and hold the key, stay on tune and remember the harmony or counterpoint to the song in question. So I admire singers and hold good ones in high esteem. If I could have anyone's voice, though, it would have to be Placido Domingo's. Imagine being able to do "Danny Boy" at the pub on sing-along night with that voice ... I'd have them crying in their bitters, I would.

So much for fantasies of singing and music. Time to get back to the grindstone, sharpen my mind and put some more words down. Snow is due tomorrow, so time to hunker down and get serious. Here's hoping your week goes well. Kisses all around for the gals and a hearty slap on the back for you, too, me boyo.

Grins and giggles,

Wil