i suppose it was inevitable

[dragonlady7]

via http://bit.ly/2Fnimqh

I started banjo lessons in January, and i’ve posted about it before a bit probably, me and my dude are both taking lessons and I’ve got my own banjo now so we don’t have to share anymore, and we’re both actually pretty awful at it but we’ve learned like, half a dozen partial songs now and they’re all terrible and yet it’s a pretty instrument and if you don’t know what you’re doing it still sounds quite nice, which is A Concept. anyhow.

tonight the teacher looked at his watch and was like ok it’s time

and we were like time for what?

and he was like since there’s two of you and you both have banjos, you Must Learn This Song

and we’re like oh what song?

and he starts in on dueling banjos

yes he actually taught us the dueling banjos song. With a bonus mini-lecture on the history of the song. (It was originally a fiddle tune called Feudin’ Fiddles, and then there was an adaptation for banjo called Feudin’ Banjos, and then they adapted it for the movie and changed the name so they didn’t have to pay royalties to the guy who wrote Feudin’ Fiddles, so like, shrug emoji.)

So anyway now Dude and I can do Dueling Banjos and I’m sort of. I mean. Deep sigh. What a terrible movie. But. Well. Y’know. That’s what people always ask if I can play, so now I can give them a thousand-yard stare and do it.

Comments

[sabotabby]

That is delightful and you should post a video.

[dragonlady7]

We'd told him we were going on vacation together and bringing our banjos, and he was like "then you HAVE to learn this".
I figure I'll bring my little phone tripod and we'll practice it.

That way whoever's renting the other cabin on our little peninsula (the listing was like "total solitude! much silence! very isolate!" and then we looked at the pictures and were like "there's another cabin fifteen feet away" [found it in real estate listings, it's currently on offer for five million dollars, it is Not a small cabin like the one we're renting] and reread the listing and it was like "dogs OK no barking tho!", and like... ok not so solitude then!) can use the story at cocktail parties. "The people in the little shoebox next to us were, no shit, actually playing Dueling Banjos on the porch, I am not making this up!"

(It'd have less oomph if it's like "they were playing Bile Dem Cabbage Down" because nobody knows what that song is called, they just know it's That Other Banjo Song.)
(The Other Other Banjo Song is Foggy Mountain Breakdown but nobody knows what that one's called either. Yes, we've already had three pages of exercises on that one, and a lecture on how Earl stole it from his previous bandleader and changed one chord. But Earl invented the picking style it's played in so that's gotta add something, don't it? IDK, the banjo style is named after him and he bought a jet off the royalties so he's adequately compensated, I have some sympathy for the jilted bandleader in this story.)

[shy_magpie]

the association is unfortunate because its a charming tune

[oracne]

Hee!

[lazaefair]

Well, it’s very firework-y to the layperson - like the banjo-specific “Flight of the Bumblebee” - so I get why people like it.

Here is Bill Bailey doing Dueling Banjos on the piano with some other guy. A very entertaining 5 minutes or so.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=qz3wdDw3imw