Subscribe to RSS/Google Reader
Subscribe to RSS/MyYahoo
Cheeseheads love Neil Diamond too
By JOE DENNIS
Editor’s Note: Joe Dennis is a professor in the history department of Davidson College. He is also a Class of 1985 graduate of the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
| COMMENTARY |
The first time my daughter and I heard the Davidson band play “Sweet Caroline” she was surprised that I knew the words and could sing along. Inquiring about this unexpected fatherly talent I explained that Neil Diamond was the king of rural Wisconsin and that if you turned on A.M. radio anywhere between Grandpa’s farm outside Madison and the Minnesota border, there was a 90% chance that within ten minutes you would hear the royal voice. It just depended on how long the corn report or Bible reading lasted. “Sweet Caroline” was just the tip of the musical iceburg (that’s not a typo - Wisconsin folk build fishing hut hamlets on frozen lakes). The soothing sounds of King Diamond’s “Forever in Blue Jeans,” “Longfellow’s Serenade,” “Song Sung Blue” – all the classics – soften the sharp January winds off Lake Mendota as you sit on the UW Memorial Union Terrace, eat orange custard chocolate chip ice cream fresh from the university dairy, and watch the ice boats glide by.
Yes, they make marvelous flavors in Madison. I grew up across the street from a professor of ice cream. All day long he pondered the perfect proportions of sugar and fat. Badgers indeed are not made of cheese alone. Wisconsin basketball big men, Butch and Stiemsma, are triple-decker ice cream cones plugging up the lane, playing the beautiful game. In Badgerspeak that means letting small fast guys run into you until they get so frustrated and tired, they can’t even hit the open shots. My advice to the Wildcats: If you are 6-2 and 185 pounds, don’t run through the 6’11’’ 260 pound guy – it hurts.
For most of my life Wisconsin was the underdog to basketball behemoths like Indiana, Michigan State, and Ohio State and people went to the games mostly to hear the UW Band. Now, in Madison as in Davidson, “good times never felt so good” for basketball, yet the band rocks on. So as you enjoy Friday’s Sweet 16 matchup between the Cats and the Badgers, double your pleasure by singing along to Wisconsin classics as well as King Diamond.
Below are lyrics for songs you may hear. If you would like to hear the University of Wisconsin Marching Band play them, click here.
Of course, you probably already know “On Wisconsin!” the State Song of Wisconsin, which no less than John Philip Sousa called “the finest of college marching songs.”
On, Wisconsin! On, Wisconsin!
Plunge right through that line!
Run the ball clear down the field,
A touchdown sure this time.
On, Wisconsin! On, Wisconsin!
Fight on for her fame
Fight! Fellows! - fight, fight, fight!
We’ll win this game.
Another Badger game staple is “If You Want to Be a Badger.” While less insipid than the “U-S-A! U-S-A!” chant at the Olympics, it is equally repetitive and best sung after a few Leinenkugels, PBRs, Old Milwaukees, or other fine Wisconsin products. If you see me on the streets of Davidson, I will sing it to you for a quarter.
If you want to be a Badger,
Just come along with me,
By the bright shining light,
By the light of the moon;
If you want to be a Badger,
Just come along with me,
By the bright shining light of the moon.
By the light of the moon,
By the light of the moon,
By the bright shining light,
By the light of the moon.
It goes on, but I think you get the picture. For a moving and melancholy tune, try “Varsity,” which makes all Badgers wax nostalgic for Indian summer evenings at the Union. In fact, if you start to sing this song, a true Wisconsin alum will begin a heartfelt wave of the hand back and forth overhead.
Varsity! Varsity!
U-rah-rah! Wisconsin,
Praise to thee we sing!
Praise to thee, our Alma Mater,
U-rah-rah! Wisconsin!
Now that we know both Davidson’s and Madison’s songs, let’s all enjoy the show. And if anyone knows what King Diamond meant when he sang the following, please let me know. After thirty years I still don’t.
And the radio played like a carnival tune
As we lay in our bed in the other room
When we gave it away for the sake of a dream
In a penny arcade
if you know what I mean.
Filed under: Links
Well, Joe, it’s clearly about love and sex.
And the radio played like a carnival tune
As we lay in our bed in the other room
When we gave it away for the sake of a dream
In a penny arcade
if you know what I mean.
The best entertainment going up there in the frozen north seems to have been freezing your noseies and toesies off while sitting still on the ice, sitting on a terrace overlooking the ice, or sitting in class studying the production of edible ice—all ideally while eating something with orange and chocolate (tropical-sourced; no ice), even if that too was frozen. Cold scene, very cold. When the lovers finally get their toesies in the bed together the carnival music brings back memories; they think back to years, perhaps decades before, and remember their first youthful tryst, following a clumsy courtship and an earnest promise at the carnival. They gave it away—their virginity and a promise—to each other that night, as they dreamt of making it big in life, winning the big badger, the five hundred bucks in the penny arcade, and living on easy street in the land of oranges and chocolate a long, long way from lake Mendota. Well they’re still living in the frozen north, and they didn’t win the big badger, but they’ve got each other and they’ve got their memories . . . of the carnival, the kiss, the promise, the roll in the hay, and their cold little toesies.
Scott, I wish I had a literature professor on hand at all times to help me understand the world. Songs are even better when you know what they mean. Perhaps like the movement to place defibrillators in convenient spots everywhere, we could start a push for a “literature professor hotline” or have a “literature professor stand” in each neighborhood - life would be so much more meaningful.
Thanks for the explanation!
Joe