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Songs about Engineering

One for the metalheads :-)

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old mart26/02/2022 20:57:53
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The first one that comes into my mind starts: I had a girl with a -------------------.

Nigel Graham 227/02/2022 00:10:30
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Ahem.....

Restoring a little decorum to the proceedings.....

I have only a hazy recollection of it but I think there is a song that is a paen to the sewing-machine - possibly for advertising them. There is also a witty piece of light music written for typewriter and orchestra - I forget the proper title and its composer. The end-of-line bell features prominently.

Wichita Lineman, a huge hit for its first performer Glen Campbell, was composed in 1986 by Jimmy Webb. His inspiration was seeing a solitary lineman silhouetted against the setting sun, working atop a telephone pole, deep in rural Oklahoma.

'

Blacksmithing has its musical references:

The Anvil Chorus - from Il Trovatore by Guiseppi Verdi, is well-known. Actually The Gypsy Chorus by direct translation, the smiths being Spanish gypsies singing their praises of work, wine and women! (Sounds good!) [Source: Wikipedia - with lyrics in Italian and English]

Perhaps slightly less familiar but altogether darker, is the chorus of anvils - instrumentally - in part of Richard Wagner's The Ring of the Niebelung. I am not sure, but I think the forging is supposed to include that of the eponymous, accursed ring, from the gold stolen from the Rhine Maidens.

The art world fondly imagines forging to sound like frantic bell-ringing!

'

Noel, Nicholas -

Proud Mary, in Creedence Clearwater Revival's song, is indeed the name of the river-boat but as the setting for the narrator's rootless life as a gambler on the vessel. The impression given me by the rather metaphorical description of the ships' progress, is that the voyages were long and tedious.

Incidentally I heard on the radio quite some years ago now a dramatised, serial version of the original Showboat - the 1926 novel by Edna Ferber - on which the Kern & Hammerstein musical is based. Ferber had done a lot of research into this American form of entertainment venue, and in the prologue she explained that a show-boat was a floating theatre on a barge towed from town to town by tug. So not the ornate stern-wheeler ship of later publicity for the musical, then.

'

Staying on the mechanical transport theme:

The narrator in the late Meatloaf's Bat Out Of Hell has two loves in his life: his girlfriend whom he leaves behind in his rush to escape the grim city, and his motorcycle:

" I'm gonna hit the highway like a battering ram
On a silver black phantom bike
When the metal is hot and the engine is hungry
And we're all about to see the light "

Prescient words; for too much rush, too much thinking of her instead of the road ahead; the song ending with his dying thoughts, having crashed on a sharp bend.

[Source: The Genius web-site, I found simply by title and "lyrics".]

'

The old instrumental standard Pacific 231 refers to the locomotive of course - it was written in 1923 by the Swiss-born Alfred Honeggar, who later lived in France where the railwaymen counted axles rather than wheels (or if you like, the wheels visible in broadside view).

' ' '

While much more recently, Michael Flanders and Donald Swan mourned the loss of the Somerset & Dorset Joint Railway, in their Slow Train to Blandford Forum (one of the Dorset towns along the SR and LMS, Bath - Bournemouth line). The song plods sorrowfully from rail-joint to rail-joint in a slow " 1-and-, 2-and- " piano continuo.

Even older than these though... Funicali, Funicula. By Luigi Denza, lyrics Peppino Turco; 1880. A big hit from the start and still widely performed / adapted / plagiarised (even covered by the Grateful Dead!), it celebrates the opening of the first funicular railway up Mt. Vesuvius. It is actually a love song though. The singer is inviting his sweetheart to ride with him to the top where they can admire the view - though his marriage-proposal in the last verse is excitedly brief and to the point!

(Source: Wikipedia, whose article gives the lyrics in Italian and English.)

Hopper27/02/2022 02:25:32
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Posted by Nigel Graham 2 on 27/02/2022 00:10:30:

Wichita Lineman, a huge hit for its first performer Glen Campbell, was composed in 1986 by Jimmy Webb. His inspiration was seeing a solitary lineman silhouetted against the setting sun, working atop a telephone pole, deep in rural Oklahoma.

'

1968. i was singing along to that song when I was still in short trousers. Listened to it on an old Philco valve radio I scavenged off the local tip. Had no idea what a lineman was, or a Wichita or a county. But it's still a great song by a great singer.

Edited By Hopper on 27/02/2022 02:27:02

Hopper27/02/2022 02:31:25
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Born to be Wild by Steppenwolf. Theme song from the movie Easy Rider

Get your motor runnin'
Head out on the highway
Looking for adventure
In whatever comes our way

Inspired a whole generation of future motorcyclists. Within a fortnight of the movie's showing at our local theatre, we all had homemade extended forks on our push bikes. Totally unsafe made from other fork legs cut off another bike and jammed over our existing fork legs. All held together by gravity and youthful enthusiasm.

SillyOldDuffer27/02/2022 09:06:51
10668 forum posts
2415 photos

Ace of Spades?

thinking

Mike Poole27/02/2022 10:45:50
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3676 forum posts
82 photos
Posted by Hopper on 27/02/2022 02:31:25:

Born to be Wild by Steppenwolf. Theme song from the movie Easy Rider

Get your motor runnin'
Head out on the highway
Looking for adventure
In whatever comes our way

Inspired a whole generation of future motorcyclists. Within a fortnight of the movie's showing at our local theatre, we all had homemade extended forks on our push bikes. Totally unsafe made from other fork legs cut off another bike and jammed over our existing fork legs. All held together by gravity and youthful enthusiasm.

A schoolmate of mine fitted the rear wheel from a small wheeled Moulten bicycle to the rear of a standard framed bicycle, to recover the required ground clearance to pedal the creation he cut the rear downtubes off, bent the lower fork down and bolted new longer downtubes in.
Mike

Edited By Mike Poole on 27/02/2022 17:53:15

Mike Poole27/02/2022 10:52:51
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Glen Campbell was not only a good singer, his guitar playing skills as a member of the session band the Wrecking Crew were superb.

Mike

Hopper27/02/2022 10:59:50
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7881 forum posts
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Posted by Mike Poole on 27/02/2022 10:45:50:
Posted by Hopper on 27/02/2022 02:31:25:

Born to be Wild by Steppenwolf. Theme song from the movie Easy Rider

Get your motor runnin'
Head out on the highway
Looking for adventure
In whatever comes our way

Inspired a whole generation of future motorcyclists. Within a fortnight of the movie's showing at our local theatre, we all had homemade extended forks on our push bikes. Totally unsafe made from other fork legs cut off another bike and jammed over our existing fork legs. All held together by gravity and youthful enthusiasm.

A schoolmate of mine fitted the rear wheel from a small wheeled Moulten bicycle to the rear of a standard framed bicycle, to recover the required ground clearance to peddle the creation he cut the rear downtubes off, bent the lower fork down and bolted new longer downtubes in.
Mike

Junior engineers at work!

Hopper27/02/2022 11:00:25
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7881 forum posts
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Posted by Mike Poole on 27/02/2022 10:52:51:

Glen Campbell was not only a good singer, his guitar playing skills as a member of the session band the Wrecking Crew were superb.

Mike

I didnt know that. I will have to track some of their music down.

Norman Billingham27/02/2022 11:28:08
56 forum posts

Anyone remember Billy Bean and his Funny Machine? TV puppets from about 1953. As I recall the rather catchy title song went "Billy Bean built a machine to see what it could do. He made it out of sticks and stones, and nuts and bolts and glue" I don't recall the rest.

It predated cnc - the machine could build whatever Billy Bean drew on a screen

Mike Poole27/02/2022 15:08:09
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Glen Campbell

this is a bit about Glen Campbell and some of his session guitar work

Mike

Nicholas Farr27/02/2022 17:02:12
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Hi, Glen Campbell had some great hit singles in the UK but only five of them got into the top ten. Wichita Linesman got to number seven and All I Have To Do Is Dream (with Bobbie Gentry) got to number three, the other three; Honey Come Back, It's Only Make Believe and Rhinestone Cowboy, all got to number four. Honey Come Back and It's Only Make believe were two of my favourites along with Galveston, which got to number fourteen, another one I liked was Southern Nights which got to number twenty eight, but he was a very good artist and had ten chart entries in the UK.

Ref. Guinness book of British Hit Singles 13th edition.

Regards Nick.

Edited By Nicholas Farr on 27/02/2022 17:14:36

Grindstone Cowboy27/02/2022 17:54:13
1160 forum posts
73 photos

Was lucky enough to see Glen Campbell touring as part of the Beach Boys lineup back in the 90s.

Rob.

Gray6227/02/2022 21:07:44
1058 forum posts
16 photos
Posted by Chris Gill on 23/02/2022 16:57:31:

Back in the70's the Teesside Fettlers often sang at the folk club in the Sun Inn, Stockton-on-Tees. They produced two LPs with a number of songs about steel making, mining, and other aspects of life in the area. One of my favourite refrains is from the song "Steelmen" ...

Hammer it, weld it, roll it to and fro,

Cleveland steel is of the best, I'll have you's all to know.

Forge it, cast it, mould it how you like,

Neat as a Geordie hinnie bird and tough as a Yorkshire tyke.

Ah well, the rolling mills and blast furnaces may be gone now but I still have this on the workshop play list.

Ah, that brings back fond memories. As an ex Redcar steelworker the one that has always had the most meaning for me is Ring of Iron.

Nigel Graham 227/02/2022 22:02:05
3293 forum posts
112 photos

Norman -

Try this, which gives the rest of the err, song.

https://nostalgiacentral.com/television/tv-by-decade/tv-shows-1950s/billy-bean-funny-machine/

According to Wikipedia the show, which apparently only ran for a year (1954), was based on an American children's TV show, to the extent that Billy was dressed as an American locomotive driver.

+++++

There have been any number of folk-style songs written since the 1960s, romanticising various fields of work, sometimes inversely proportionately to the unpleasantness and dangers of the work portrayed - steel-making, deep-sea fishing, mining, etc. Although I like folk-music generally I've always thought these efforts rather pretentious and contrived,. and I cannot believe real steel-makers, fishermen and miners really sang about their work.

Somewhere I have a bootleg cassette, recorded by microphone in front of the wireless, of a 1970s BBC Radio Two Folkweave special devoted to a history of the Derbyshire lead-mining, which largely died out in the 19C. The narrative is fine provided you overlook that the compulsory " Somewhere Norf of Watford Gap Services " voice might not be Derbyshire at all. Oh Dear, though, the songs definitely owe more to the Ewan MacColl school of industrial-history than to any poetic inclinations among the men who climbed down the "dirty narrer shafts sometimes only two or three feet wide" to extract the ore, or who dug the impressively long (and still-active) Magpie Sough drainage adit that is described in the show.

[Why is that quote so memorable to me? I was especially interested in the programme thanks to my interests in industrial history and folk-music, but also as a caver who frankly finds a shaft as "narrer" as "only" two or three feet rather less intimidating to climb than one twenty or thirty feet across! I have also visited various old old metal mines and underground stone quarries, including one or two of the Peak District lead-ore workings.

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