The National Anthem...your favorite?

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The National Anthem...your favorite?

Postby rmiller » July 6th, 2008, 7:17 pm

I know this forum has people from all over the world, so please forgive the topic if you are not an American.

With this being Independence Day weekend, my wife and I were talking about the National Anthem at sporting events, and our favorites that we remember. For me it would have to be Whitney Houston- Superbowl XXV. The reason is-I was raised on military bases all over the world, and we had just returned from the Middle East (Turkey) a few months before the first Gulf War broke out, and knew many people there in the effort. It was one of the most beautiful versions I ever heard at a sporting event or anywhere else. Gives me goose bumps and tears to this day!

Any stick out to you? If you have a link to a show a clip of your favorite I’d love to see it.

Heres mine:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qi-pdsYSzN4
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Funky

Postby drzubia8 » July 6th, 2008, 7:36 pm

Marvin Gaye NBA All Star game

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QRvVzaQ6i8A
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Postby ristankor » July 7th, 2008, 9:22 pm

A good, old- fashioned ballpark organ version, where everyone can sing. :D
No vocal gymnastics, please.
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some questions of the Banner

Postby softball66 » July 8th, 2008, 7:54 am

Where was Francis Scott Key when he wrote the verses? Name of Fort?
What music did they set his verses to? What rather gruesome verse was left out of the SSB?
:roll: :?:
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Postby wjr953 » July 8th, 2008, 10:22 am

Gotta love that Whitney Houston version. Very inspiring. I have heard it many, many times and it still never fails to lift me up.

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Postby awarsoca » July 8th, 2008, 4:01 pm

NO REFUGE COULD SAVE: BY DR. ISAAC ASIMOV

I was once asked to speak at a luncheon. Taking my life in my hands, I announced I was going to sing our national anthem -- all four stanzas. This was greeted with loud groans. One man closed the door to the kitchen , where the noise of dishes and cutlery was loud and distracting. "Thanks, Herb," I said.

"That's all right," he said. "It was at the request of the kitchen staff"

I explained the background of the anthem and then sang all four stanzas. Let me tell you, those people had never heard it before -- or had never really listened. I got a standing ovation. But it was not me; it was the anthem.

More recently, while conducting a seminar, I told my students the story of the anthem and sang all four stanzas. Again there was a wild ovation and prolonged applause. And again, it was the anthem and not me.

So now let me tell you how it came to be written.

In 1812, the United States went to war with Great Britain, primarily over freedom of the seas. We were in the right. For two years, we held off the British, even though we were still a rather weak country. Great Britain was in a life and death struggle with Napoleon. In fact, just as the United States declared war, Napoleon marched off to invade Russia. If he won, as everyone expected, he would control Europe, and Great Britain would be isolated. It was no time for her to be involved in an American war.

At first, our seamen proved better than the British. After we won a battle on Lake Erie in 1813, the American commander, Oliver Hazard Perry, sent the message, "We have met the enemy and they are ours." However, the weight of the British navy beat down our ships eventually. New England , hard-hit by a tightening blockade, threatened secession.

Meanwhile, Napoleon was beaten in Russia and in 1814 was forced to abdicate. Great Britain now turned its attention to the United States, launching a three-pronged attack.

The northern prong was to come down Lake Champlain toward New York and seize parts of New England.

The southern prong was to go up the Mississippi , take New Orleans and paralyze the west.

The central prong was to head for the mid-Atlantic states and then attack Baltimore , the greatest port south of New York. If Baltimore was taken, the nation, which still hugged the Atlantic coast, could be split in two. The fate of the United States, then, rested to a large extent on the success or failure of the central prong.

The British reached the American coast, and on August 24, 1814, took Washington , D.C. Then they moved up the Chesapeake Bay toward Baltimore. On September 12, they arrived and found 1,000 men in Fort McHenry, whose guns controlled the harbor. If the British wished to take Baltimore, they would have to take the fort.

On one of the British ships was an aged physician, William Beanes, who had been arrested in Maryland and brought along as a prisoner. Francis Scott Key, a lawyer and friend of the physician, had come to the ship to negotiate his release.

The British captain was willing, but the two Americans would have to wait. It was now the night of September 13, and the bombardment of Fort McHenry was about to start.

As twilight deepened, Key and Beanes saw the American flag flying over Fort McHenry. Through the night, they heard bombs bursting and saw the red glare of rockets. They knew the fort was resisting and the American flag was still flying. But toward morning the bombardment ceased, and a dread silence fell. Either Fort McHenry had surrendered and the British flag flew above it, or the bombardment had failed and the American flag still flew.

As dawn began to brighten the eastern sky, Key and Beanes stared out at the fort, trying to see which flag flew over it. He and the physician must have asked each other over and over, "Can you see the flag?"

After it was all finished, Key wrote a four stanza poem telling the events of the night. Called "The Defense of Fort McHenry ," it was published in newspapers and swept the nation. Someone noted that the words fit an old English tune called, "To Anacreon in Heaven" -- a difficult melody with an uncomfortably large vocal range. For obvious reasons, Key's work became known as "The Star Spangled Banner", and in 1931 Congress declared it the official anthem of the United States .

Now that you know the story, here are the words. Presumably, the old doctor is speaking. This is what he asks Key:

Oh! say, can you see, by the dawn's early light,
What so proudly we hailed at the twilight's last gleaming?
Whose broad stripes and bright stars, through the perilous fight,
O'er the ramparts we watched were so gallantly streaming?
And the rocket's red glare, the bombs bursting in air,
Gave proof thro' the night that our flag was still there.
Oh! say, does that star-spangled banner yet wave,
O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave?

("Ramparts," in case you don't know, are the protective walls or other elevations that surround a fort.) The first stanza asks a question. The second gives an answer:

On the shore, dimly seen thro' the mist of the deep
Where the foe's haughty host in dread silence reposes,
What is that which the breeze, o'er the towering steep.
As it fitfully blows, half conceals, half discloses?
Now it catches the gleam of the morning's first beam,
In full glory reflected, now shines on the stream
'Tis the star-spangled banner. Oh! long may it wave
O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave!

"The towering steep" is again, the ramparts. The bombardment has failed, and the British can do nothing more but sail away, their mission a failure. In the third stanza I feel Key allows himself to gloat over the American triumph. In the aftermath of the bombardment, Key probably was in no mood to act otherwise? During World War I when the British were our staunchest allies, this third stanza was not sung. However, I know it, so here it is:

And where is that band who so vauntingly swore
That the havoc of war and the battle's confusion
A home and a country should leave us no more?
Their blood has washed out their foul footstep's pollution.
No refuge could save the hireling and slave
From the terror of flight, or the gloom of the grave,
And the star-spangled banner in triumph doth wave
O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave.

(The fourth stanza, a pious hope for the future, should be sung more slowly than the other three and with even deeper feeling):

Oh! thus be it ever, when freemen shall stand
Between their loved homes and the war's desolation,
Blest with victory and peace, may the Heaven - rescued land
Praise the Power that hath made and preserved us a nation.
Then conquer we must, for our cause is just,
And this be our motto --"In God is our trust."
And the star-spangled banner in triumph doth wave
O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave.

I hope you will look at the national anthem with new eyes. Listen to it, the next time you have a chance, with new ears. Pay attention to the words. And as much as our present leaders are doing to destroy the true meaning, don't let them ever take it away ... not even one word of it.
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Postby wjr953 » July 8th, 2008, 4:37 pm

Thank you for taking the time and effort to print this for all of us to read. I for one, have a new found respect for the Star-Spangled Banner and our national anthem. Every time I hear that song from now on, I will think of what you have written here, the words that Francis Scott Key wrote so many years ago. Again, thanks.

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wow!

Postby Cowboy7130 » July 10th, 2008, 1:54 am

Whoa! That is so cool! 8)

I used to announce at Little League games, and play music between innings. I had several versions of the SSB on CD's, including a nice symphonic orchestra version, a very nice acapella version by the Christian group Acapella, and a little kid singing version. But my favorite was a borrowed CD, on which Boston, the rock group, paid tribute to Jimi Hendrix, with a really wicked good rock guitar version. However, most of the mommies and daddies and grampas and grannies in the stands complained when I played that one, and I never got to play it again! Then to add insult to injury, someone stole my CD's later that week and I have never seen them again! :cry:
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Postby Cowboy7130 » July 10th, 2008, 1:55 am

oh and back to the original question ... Huey Lewis and the News acapella version ... I think it was at an all-star game?
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Postby Cowboy7130 » July 10th, 2008, 2:04 am

my bad ... 1985 home opener for the Giants at old Candlestick ... GREAT YouTube video ...
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Postby Cowboy7130 » July 10th, 2008, 2:33 am

and now some old NFL trivia ... what was the name of the trumpet player who was the traditional soloist at every Dallas Cowboy home game in the 1960's and 1970's? :?
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