Your Made up songs??

[wornoutboots]

Is it only I that am strange enough to make up songs after hiking endless hours day after day in the wilderness?? I certainly think not : O D!! I just heard Jon BonJovi's song "livin on a prayer" & it reminded me when I hiked from Erwin to Standing BEar in several days of rain & that song was stuck in my head for days but mine went something like Oh Oh"Livin in Rain gear". Any other catchy tunage out there?? Maybe we can put together a Long distant Hiker CD

[Kerosene]

Yes, I've certainly bastardized popular song lyrics in my head while walking for hours on end.

However, my most interesting "composition" came on a long uphill slog in Virginia where I started with a relatively simple classical melody line about 16 measures long. I came up with several neat variations and started adding different instrumentals, until the additional of tympani drum exclamations when I reached the summit. Pretty cool, and definitely took my mind off the warm climb. I vowed that I would remember my opus, only to have it fade completely from my memory by the next morning!

[Namaste]

Hahaha, oh yeah, "bastardized" (love that Kero) many. Nothing specific comes to mind right now but I believe it's the state of delirium that brings it on.

[Rasty]

As a child I thought the lyrics to You picked a fine time to leave me Lucielle went like this.

400 hundred children and my crotch in the field.

Wasn't until later I realized it was

4 hungry children and the crops in the field

[HikerMom58]

Ha ha... that's so funny Rasty. I wish I could remember the song lyrics I "bastardized"... there were many. :)

[Namaste]

Aha, one came to mind...."Jeremiah was a virgin".....I won't print the rest but I remember singing this out loud and changing the lyrics to reflect my sour mood while hiking in pouring rain for 5 days straight!

[hikerboy57]

Hahaha, oh yeah, "bastardized" (love that Kero) many. Nothing specific comes to mind right now but I believe it's the state of delirium that brings it on.
delirium, thats it. ive had music running though my mind since i was a kid, impossible for me to remeber all the songs ive yancovicked or all the ditties i made up.
i did sing the doobie bros "black water" with mandela and terranauta in maine for 2 hours straight followed by singing in the rain for another hour or so. we had hiked for hours through a daylong downpour .kept our spirits high to sing.
delerium.

[SCRUB HIKER]

My friends and I made up a hundred of these songs--subbing the real lyrics with hiking lyrics, Weird Al-style--but I can't remember any of them. I know I wrote a bunch of them in shelter logs. Speaking of "Livin' on a Prayer," I'm sure you've seen this, right? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OnFMQ2NAgyk

[SCRUB HIKER]

I did one with a Robert Frost poem that I wrote down. It's in this thread: http://www.whiteblaze.net/forum/showthread.php?83601-Sand-and-Snow&p=1282738&viewfull=1#post1282738

[Feral Bill]

Hello Mister Bear
Since you asked:
(Please respect my copyright, no commercial use w/o permission)

Tune: Hello Mary Lou

Walking down the trail one day
Cast your big brown eyes my way
Looking at me like I was your lunch
Staring at your mighty jaws
Shining teeth and razor claws
I began to get an awful hunch

I thought hello Mister Bear, goodbye heart
Intestines, stomach, liver, kidneys too
It’s you, Mister Bear, tear me apart
So hello Mister Bear, goodbye heart

Earlier I caught the scent
Of a pile of excrement
Pepper spray and bear poop full of bells
Now it’s starting to make sense
Wish I hadn’t been so dense
Things for me are going not so well

I said hello Mister Bear, goodbye heart
Intestines, stomach, liver, kidneys too
It’s you, Mister Bear, tear me apart
So hello Mister Bear, goodbye heart

Looking up what did I see?
My pal getting set to flee
Said I “to out-run bears you cannot do”
Looking tall and fit and thin
Speaking with a silly grin
He says “All I need’s to outrun you”

And so hello Mister Bear, goodbye heart
Intestines, stomach, liver, kidneys too
It’s you, Mister Bear, tear me apart
So hello Mister Bear, goodbye heart

I got scared and dropped my pack
Didn't want to be your snack
Griz don't climb so I went up a tree
You stood up and looked around
Pulled that tree right from the ground
Can't believe what's happening to me

(alternate verse for east)
I’ve heard bears can't run downhill
So I took off with a will
Trying to save body, mind and soul
Now it seems that I’m mistaken
And I’m being overtaken
Bears can’t run downhill but they sure can roll.

I cried hello Mister Bear, goodbye heart
Intestines, stomach, liver, kidneys too
It’s you, Mister Bear, tear me apart
So hello Mister Bear, goodbye heart

I'm a person, you're a beast
shouldn’t matter in the least
Don't you think that we could just be friends?
I can see you disagree
Things are looking grim for me
I'm afraid that this must be the end

[Feral Bill]

While we're at it, I made up this on the Wonderland Trail.

The Hiking Song
(to the tune of The Garden Song)

Inch by inch, step by step
up the mountain we will schlepp
‘tll we all run out of pep
and fall beside the trail


Inch by inch, mile by mile
this is gonna take a while
but we'll make it by and by
if we keep to the pace of a snail


Mile by mile, we descend
Will this downhill ever end?
I just hope our knees still bend
when we reach the end of the trail


We must all be insane
hiking in the pouring rain
but we'll do it all again
'cause we have the brains of a quail

[Odd Man Out]

I think of lyrics to classical melodies that are written without lyrics.
If you are a cello play as I am, you are probably familiar with Schubert's Unfinished Symphony.
The second melody (cello soli) can be sung to this:

This is the symphony
that Schubert wrote but didn't finish.
This is the symphony
that Schubert wrote but didn't finish.
He wrote but didn't fin....

[Old Hiker]

I'm a Man of Constant Hiking - sung to I'm a Man of Constant Sorrow. I started writing the lyrics in trail shelters and my journal to remember them, but now I can't find my journal! I like the Soggy Bottom Boys version best. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08e9k-c91E8

[Shiraz-mataz]

I've always liked the classic Elton John sond, "Don't Let Your SON Go Down On Me."

[Namaste]

Feral, I think you missed your calling...hahahahaha. I was with a group that also used the Garden Song but completely different lyrics than yours of course.

[OzJacko]

I love this!
I have absolutely no musical talent but I like playing with lyrics.
I'm working on 14 verses (1 for each state) to the tune of "Walking to New Orleans" with the chorus "Walking to Katahdin".
I hope to have a couple with the idea of some night getting someone or a group singing it around a campfire for YouTube or something.:D

[schnikel]

I was hiking in the Rocky's one year with my wife. It was mad hot and we were hiking endless switchbacks up a mountain. I started signing a song to the tune of love shack by the B-52's. Can't remember most of the song except the refrain where we both would sing "switchbacks baby, switchback BABY!" It was funny then and now. The song was sung again on the endless switchbacks on the JMT in '11.
Schnikel

[3_dogs]

Ellie's one of my dogs. Here's her song, to the tune of the "freecreditreport.com" tune:

Elmos bad puppy.com
Tell your friends, tell your dad, tell your mom
That she's a bad little mutt
And she needs whipped in the butt

[SevenPines]

At Konnarock Crew this past year we came up with a song for the privy called "poopie trench"

such behavior is acceptable at Konnarock.