Back in the day, I used to spend a fair amount of time in thrift stores looking for old records. I especially looked for odd and/or funny album covers, or albums that might contain odd and/or funny songs on them.
One subcategory of albums I would look for would be albums featuring the organ. I'm not totally sure why. Part of it might have been because of a joke once told by David Letterman discussing the Oscar-nominated movie "The Piano" and comparing it unfavorably with a movie you might see at Times Square called "The Organ." For some reason this joke appealed to my sophomoric and/or moronic sense of humor.
Anyway, I ended up buying a few random albums of organ music. I didn't often listen to these albums, because I'm not actually a big fan of organ music. Usually. But then I saw that one of these organ albums featured a song by the name of "Tragedy."
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| Does the size of the organ really matter? Opinions vary. |
It couldn't be the same song as "Tragedy" by the Bee Gees from their "Spirits Having Flown" album, could it? The song that is a definite Honorable Mention to the HondoJoe Top 200, my favorite Bee Gees song (slightly ahead of "You Should Be Dancing"), and a song that we played in pep band back in the day? I had to find out.
And what I found was that yes, indeed, it was "Tragedy!" But it was "Tragedy" as I had never heard it before! With Jonas Nordwall pounding it out on the organ, "Tragedy" is about as happy and fun of a song as you'll be likely to hear! (The only "tragedy" is that Nordwall's version of the song is not available on iTunes or YouTube. It really is a hoot!)
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| A young Jonas Nordwall (and his large organ). |
And that's how David Letterman, Barry Gibb, Robin Gibb, Maurice Gibb, Jonas Nordwall, and a very large organ conspired to help make a happy little tune called "Tragedy" one of my favorite songs of all time!
COMING UP NEXT: Dream a little dream.
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