I got a new cell phone a little while ago, because my old one just plain died after five years of abuse. The new one allows me to download .mp3 snippets as ringtones, and I've had some fun playing with it and putting in custom tones for the people who tend to call me. My wife gets the Monty Python Theme song (aka The Liberty Bell March), because she likes it.
Since I got the new phone, I've been using a “yes we can” audio clip as my default ringtone. (You can hear the part I use from the latter part of this video.) I got the idea from reading about South American electoral campaigns, in which I gather it is common for campaigns to produce ringtones and for supporters to use them. If nothing else, “yes we can” got a lot of knowing laughs.
But in my mind that was always a pre-election ringtone. Now I need something more permanent, or at least different. Ideally, I'd like something mixing the optimistic and the cautious, probably political, but more appropriate for the next months, a period in which the poetry of campaigning ripens into to the prose of governance. The ideal song would not be too obnoxious to others, and would sound nice to me, lend itself to excerpting, and no doubt meet many other criteria I'm too tired today to formulate.
Got any suggestions?
Note: I have never ever liked the sound of Happy Days Are Here Again. That is Not An Option. I also rejected these stanzas from Talking Heads' Don't Worry About the Government because, much as I like the song, it's too jangly for a ringtone I'll hear over and over.
That song, incidentally, has always meant “Rosslyn, Va” to me for no obvious reason except it seems to fit….
“I am not a crook.”
“You shook me all night long”
lol you know you want to Michael.
Carly,
I have to confess that my favorite video from the ’06 election was the one made to George Michael’s “Freedom”: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wm2OXQh3duI. I think the refrain would make a good ringtone.
The saddest music I ever heard was at the Chicago City Council meeting after JFK was killed, the little pep band from the giant Andy Frain Ushering company (closely tied to the Daley machine) in the their shabby blue and gold uniforms playing a funereally slow and solemn “Happy Days Are Here Again”. You knew they’d played it thousands of times, but never once like that. I never heard it again without thinking of that moment when a crowd of machine politicians were reduced to genuine unfeigned grief.
On the other hand, for you, for the moment, how about “Ding Dong the Witch is Dead”?
Too bad “Let America Be America Again” by Langston Hughes has never been set to music.
Make sure that you don’t download the ringtones that keep showing up on your statement each month. With the right freeware, you can make your own ringtones from your own sound and music collection. Gimme Shelter by the Stones, maybe?
I’m an old duffer and the ears are not as great as they used to be.
I couldn’t hear the basic ringtones, and went out and found a Free ringtone creator that saves them to my hard drive, and I can then xfer them to my micro-sd card for my phone.
I took the first 20 seconds or so of “Sgt Peppers Lonely Hearts Club Band” at max volume, you can adjust the portion of your favorite cd’s and what the volume should be. I like it.
you can download it at http://www.tonethis.com
Very nice stuff, and you can use your own music cd’s.
Let the Sunshine In! (Hair)