Hey Doc, I came across this the other day:
I like it. I now know the second verse of your national anthem better than I know mine. (I only know that it exists.)
What do you think? Is it bastardized crap or freakin' awesome?
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3 comments:
My vote goes with "freakin' awesome"... Adam Hills is Australia's funniest one-legged comedian (admittedly the competition is a bit thin on the ground, but he's pretty good nonetheless), and our national anthem is actually pretty widely regarded to be pretty lame. Actually politicians on both sides of politics have complained about it recently. So, we're not likely to respond to its 'desecration' in the same way as Americans do when, say, Borat has a shot at the Star-Spangled Banner...
However, having said that, the song that finished second in the voting when the current anthem was selected (in the late 70s) was about a homeless man who commits suicide by drowning himself to get away from the police after stealing a sheep... which is a good story, but maybe not really likely to inspire our athletes to greatness.
Oh, and also, there's a little-known two extra verses that are part of the original song but not formally part of the national anthem - the first of these is particularly classy:
When gallant Cook from Albion sailed,
To trace wide oceans o'er,
True British courage bore him on,
Til he landed on our shore.
Then here he raised Old England's flag,
The standard of the brave;
"With all her faults we love her still"
"Britannia rules the wave."
In joyful strains then let us sing
Advance Australia fair
I'm not sure how I'd react to someone singing our anthem to another tune. I get irritated when singers take "artistic license" to it during ball games.
Well, yours does have a really good tune to start with, whereas ours frankly doesn't. Also, Aussies tend to displpay patriotism in a completely different way to Americans - we don't sing the anthem before most sporting events (only the playoff games in domestic leagues, or international matches in most sports), we don't plaster flags all over everything (partly because we don't really have all that strong an attachment to our flag either), and we don't have a pledge of allegiance or anything like that. Instead, we tend to just be a little bit smug about how good we believe our country to be... and how we tend to win more than our fair share of sporting events.
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