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Songs of Science
Oct. 2nd, 2009 05:01 pmI've recently been informed that the Halloween party traditional at the annual department retreat may be replaced by "something that might resemble Oktoberfest and a short-sketch show possibly with group singing." Being the sort of person I am, this immediately provoked a web search for science-based songs that I could sing.
I was already familiar with a few, namely Tom Lehrer's Elements, Monty Python's Galaxy Song, and The Amphioxus Song (the latter stumbled upon when I was working at the genome center and doing amphioxus finishing). And I knew a bunch of programmer/sci-fi filk songs (HAL's Song - it's in the comments, search for "I sent Frank to fix the antenna" and sing it to "My bonnie lies over the ocean", You Can Build a Mainframe From the Things You Find at Home), but those seemed inappropriate for the group. Surely, surely there were more out there.
Surprise! There are!
The journal Nature runs a blog called The Great Beyond that has collected a whole lotta science songs, many with videos. There's possibilities there. They also link in one of those posts to rips of Singing Science records, a six-LP set for kids produced in the "late 1950s / early 1960s by Hy Zaret and Lou Singer. (Zaret's main claim to fame is writing the lyrics to the classic "Unchained >Melody" for the 1955 movie "Unchained", later recorded by the Righteous Brothers and more recently used in 'Ghost'.)" I listened to much of "What is an Animal?" before I broke under the wave of saccharine cuteness-for-5-year-olds and turned it off.
Happy Friday!
I was already familiar with a few, namely Tom Lehrer's Elements, Monty Python's Galaxy Song, and The Amphioxus Song (the latter stumbled upon when I was working at the genome center and doing amphioxus finishing). And I knew a bunch of programmer/sci-fi filk songs (HAL's Song - it's in the comments, search for "I sent Frank to fix the antenna" and sing it to "My bonnie lies over the ocean", You Can Build a Mainframe From the Things You Find at Home), but those seemed inappropriate for the group. Surely, surely there were more out there.
Surprise! There are!
The journal Nature runs a blog called The Great Beyond that has collected a whole lotta science songs, many with videos. There's possibilities there. They also link in one of those posts to rips of Singing Science records, a six-LP set for kids produced in the "late 1950s / early 1960s by Hy Zaret and Lou Singer. (Zaret's main claim to fame is writing the lyrics to the classic "Unchained >Melody" for the 1955 movie "Unchained", later recorded by the Righteous Brothers and more recently used in 'Ghost'.)" I listened to much of "What is an Animal?" before I broke under the wave of saccharine cuteness-for-5-year-olds and turned it off.
Happy Friday!
