Food and music

8 Comments

We had breakfast this morning at Dick Clark's American Bandstand Grill in the SLC airport. The sort of place I would normally go out of my way to avoid, but the food was surprisingly good, especially for airport food, and I have to admit that I actually kinda enjoyed some of the music.

Shortly before I left, Nena's "99 Luftballons" came on. Been years since I've heard that. I was hoping that the new Apple Music Store would have it available, but no. (Whoa—the album's still in print and available from Amazon. Almost tempting just for the one song.)

Catchiest song I know of about nuclear destruction. I suspect the English version isn't played in airports very often. Though on the other hand, I suspect most people who've heard the English version haven't ever listened to the lyrics (which, btw, don't really scan to the music, but I guess that's what happens when you translate a pop song from German (though "Major Tom" fared a little better)), so maybe it would be fine.

8 Responses to “Food and music”

  1. Ed

    99 Luftballons is also on a bunch of those “Sounds of the 80s” compilations, so you don’t have to buy a Katrina and the Waves album as well.

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  2. Hannah Bowen

    So are the German and English lyrics more or less identical? I was listening to the (mostly) English yesterday and wondered what I was missing.

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  3. Hannah Bowen

    Er. More or less identical in terms of content, that is. Seeing as they are two different languages and all. Yeah.

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  4. irilyth

    Especially in recent years, it’s not been uncommon for me to hear a parody of a song before hearing the original. This wasn’t one of those cases, but I’ll still always think “no more napkins at my parties” and “Purina Dead Baboon Chow” every time I hear 99 Luftballons. http://www.saco.net/baboon.html has the lyrics to which I refer to.

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  5. Dan

    Slightly off-topic, but what’s the story behind “Major Tom” and David Bowie’s “Space Oddity,” which also features a Major Tom? Is Bowie riffing off of the original German song? Is there some reference they’re both making?

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  6. Karen

    Bowie released “Space Oddity” in 1969 and Peter Schilling wrote his “Major Tom” in the early 80’s, so any riffing is being done in the other direction. Bowie has said that he wrote the song after watching the movie 2001: A Space Odyssey; it was inspired by the movie but not a reference to any real or fictional person. In other words: Bowie made the character up, and the German guy did an alternate take on Bowie’s song a decade-plus later.

    Anyway, we know Major Tom’s a junkie.

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  7. Celia

    I still insist that Schilling’s version ends happily, despite everyone disagreeing with me. I’m sure he has a safe splashdown and all that–he’s going home. 🙂

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  8. Dan

    Whoops. From the reference to “Major Tom” being translated from a German song, I somehow thought that Peter Schilling was not the original songwriter. Silly me.

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