Two musical questions

[rachelmanija]

1. What are the instruments playing in this song before the vocals come in? An organ? And... a piano? Chimes? Glockenspiel?

2. Please name a few songs with unusual subjects. Ideally, not pure novelty songs like "Mommy Got Run Over By A Reindeer."

Comments

[sholio]

The first thing that came to mind is "Snoopy vs. the Red Baron", but that probably falls rather squarely under the heading of novelty song.

"Yellow Submarine"? Actually, come to think of it, the Beatles have a few of these. On the general topic of the 1960s, there's also "Pinball Wizard", though that one's also kind of on the novelty song end of things. (Or ... about half the songs The Who ever wrote, come to think of it. "Boris the Spider"? "Happy Jack"? Maybe it's just something about the 1960s.)

"Copperhead Road" (Steve Earle) is about bootleggers.

When I was a teenager, I had an album by Fred Small, a little-known folk singer/protest singer, whose songs are basically ALL this. "Heart of the Appaloosa" - the last stand of the Navajo. "Talking Wheelchair Blues" - woman in a wheelchair is repeatedly ignored/dismissed by servers in a restaurant. "Larry the Polar Bear" - filmmaker takes a zoo-raised bear to the remote coast of Alaska to film a movie, but things really don't go as he'd hoped. And so forth.

[sholio]

Also "The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald" comes to mind, though "shipwrecks" as a general topic might not be that unusual. I can't think of any others that aren't by Gordon Lightfoot, though. (The man has at least a half dozen of them.)

[lenora_rose]

Shipwrecks are a BIG thing in Celtic music, especially Canadian Maritime Celts. One artist I know specifically said they don't travel by boat because they can think of maybe one song where the ship actually gets from A to B.

[sovay]

Fred Small, a little-known folk singer/protest singer

The Peace Dragon, cheerfully consuming nuclear submarine sandwiches and neutron bars: "Digesting deadly weapons seems a peaceful thing to do."

[pauraque]

Oh, Fred Small, that's a great rec here! Years ago a friend gave me a mix tape (dating myself here) with "Larry the Polar Bear" on it, and I became an instant fan.