It’s now pretty normal to be able to include it in a concert program without any apologetic note or “This may be more familiar as …”.
Also “Funeral March for a Marionette” , though one of the announcers on our classical station has a weekly program of film (and TV) music and has played the original and rewritten-theme version for comparison.
“A Young Person’s Guide to the Orchestra” is often played outside of “youth concerts”, generally without narration and in that case with a different title.
“Peter and the Wolf” is not generally, as far as I know, played without narration — nor should it be!
Mitch4’s comment has me thinking. I assumed the proposed tag was for the Lone Ranger. But I can see it for the song too.
Mark M, I guess what I was implicitly agreeing has gone geezer would be the *association* of the W Tell Overture with the Lone Ranger.
The Benjamin Britten “Young Person’s Guide” when performed without narration is often then identified as “Variations and Fugue on a Theme of Purcell”.
Yes.
Certainly not. There was just a movie a few years ago, and they used the William Tell to great effect.
A movie nobody saw.
No geezer tag needed
We shouldn’t expect everyone to remember what “Kemosabe” means, either:
. . . or heard of? What was the movie?
Heck, thinking that ringtones are sold at a physical counter is geezer-tag-worthy.
Speaking of “Peter and the Wolf”, here is the Klezmer version: Pincus and the Pig.
“. . . or heard of? What was the movie?”
“The Lone Ranger”
With Johnny Depp and Armen Hammer.
It was 2015 or 2016 or so and *certainly* a summer pre-fab blockbuster[*] for over three years ago will *always* need a geezer tag won’t it? I mean nobody can *possibly* remember the summer blockbuster from the year before last, can they? And no-one expects anyone to.
Anyway, the buildup and of the over the top choreographed Lone Ranger theme was the highlight of the film. It was a toe-tapper.
[*] “Blockbuster doesn’t mean it did well. It’s a word for a genre of films of which this was a thoroughly average and forgettable one.
Armie Hammer (as opposed to Armand Hammer, Armen Hammer and Arm & Hammer)
I remember something about Johnny Depp wearing a dead crow or raven on his head.
Mark in B — thanks for Pincu & the Pig! I only listened to a couple minutes so far, but am delighted and and eager to hear more when I have a chance.
It is often claimed that the brand name originated with tycoon Armand Hammer; however, the Arm & Hammer brand was in use 31 years before Hammer was born. Hammer was so often asked about the Church & Dwight brand, however, that he attempted to buy the company. While unsuccessful, Hammer’s Occidental Petroleum in 1986 acquired enough stock for him to join the Church & Dwight board of directors. Hammer remained one of the owners of Arm & Hammer until his death in 1990
Friday’s Funky Winkerbean also references “kemosabe.” Must be something in the air.
I grew up in the 60s and was loosely conversant with a lot of 30s-40s references because old Warner cartoons were always on TV. Also, from the 60s on there was a nostalgia industry keeping various antiquities in pop culture’s peripheral vision — LPs and tapes of old radio shows, for example. Ironically, a relic like the Lone Ranger is less known now despite an unprecedented quantity of the radio and TV shows being readily available. There might always been a niche audience, but not the broad-based awareness that once was.
Ah well. Day is coming when a middle-aged adult will drop a Seinfeld or Simpsons reference and then will have to explain it.
Minor Annoyance, I hate to tell you this, but the last Seinfeld episode aired almost 22 years ago: that day might already be here!
Cultural osmosis ought to be sufficient here, but maybe not. As beckoningchasm notes, the 12/20 Funky Winkerbean suggests geezerhood for the Lone Ranger. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a single episode of the Lone Ranger, but I know a fair amount: the silver bullets, the names of both horses, “Who was that masked man?”, etc. Also, I think one of the Green Lanterns is related to him.
It used to be said that the mark of a cultured American was someone who could hear the William Tell Overture without thinking of the Lone Ranger. I suppose we need a new benchmark.
I think if Rossini were alive today, he would definitely be writing theme songs for TV shows. He’s was pretty damn good at it when there weren’t any!
DemetriosX: Don’t know about a Green Lantern connection, but The Green Hornet is/was related to The Lone Ranger (son of Ranger’s nephew Dan Reid, or something like that).
I think it was Patrick Stewart who defined an intellectual as “someone who could listen to the William Tell Overture and not think of the Lone Ranger.”
And here it is in proper context, via one of the rarely-seen German Monty Python specials. I suppose Germans and Brits have a different association with the piece:
@Shrug: Was it the Green Hornet? I sometimes mix them up, even though they’re nothing alike.
@Dysfunctional: Patrick Stewart might have said it at some point, but I heard it long before he was known for anything. I heard it sometime between I, Claudius and Excalibur. He was likely quoting. Also the British don’t have the Lone Ranger association, so he ould have had to said it after he went to the States.
Well, three years ago I was at a trivia game with by buddies ranging 20 to 30 younger than I am. We were ask to identify music and it was a comic version of the William Tell overture played on tubas. They didn’t recognize it as either the William Tell Overture or as the Lone Ranger theme. Then again it was a comic rendition so I didn’t get it as quickly as I would have. But when I said William Tell Overture I didn’t get the “Oh, yeah! of course” responses as I expected. I said “You know the lone ranger theme” to which the response was fairly tepid.
Now, geezer like me are always quick to overgeneralize how a slight anecdotal evidence means The Younger Generation Doesn’t Know X, and to be fair they didn’t give my what the heck are you talking about stares, and when you haven’t heard something in a long time it takes a while for the familiarity of something that was long ago well known but not heard it a while to fall into place. And to be fair took my about 7 seconds of tingly “wait I know this” and seven seconds of “I think its this but let me listen a little more it might be …. oh no, definitely this now”.
But the looks were not the looks of absolute surety one would have thought.
I can’t really conclude that the Lone Ranger is a geezer reference– I certain can *not* imagine any one say “The Lone Ranger? What’s that?” but I think the immediate quick association with a slight musical phrase to “Hi-Ho Silver!” is not as immediate among the younger than it was with us.
Ask your niece or grand-child the riddle “Where does the Lone Ranger take his garbage” and I don’t think it will get the laugh you’d expect.
The Lone Ranger was the Green Hornet’s great-uncle (though that’s probably been retconned to “great-great-great uncle” by now)
Kemosabe means “Trusted scout” according to the old Lone Ranger Radio program, The early movies and maybe the TV show. There are a lot of jokes about the true meaning because Tonto means “stupid” in spanish.
Tonto saved the life of the Lone Ranger when he was a Texas Ranger whose entire platoon was wiped out by bad guys. This and the discovery of the lost silver mine gives us the Lone Ranger that emerged.
@CIDU Bill – although the last first-run Seinfeld episode may have been 22 years ago (May 14, 1998 was “The Finale”, and it premiered 30 years ago), it still runs regularly in reruns … such as TBS (4 episodes Monday, at least, and four afternoons per week – https://www.tbs.com/shows/seinfeld), streaming on Hulu for a while and then Netflix in 2021, etc.
You definitely are a geezer if the scherzo of Beethoven’s 9th symphony reminds you of the Huntly-Brinkley Report. (“Good night, Chet.” “Good night, Dave.”)
You might be a geezer if Mendelssohn’s Spring Song reminds you of a dinosaur with a concussion.
You are not a geezer if Katchaturian’s Sabre Dance reminds you of a m———-g bear on Conan O’Brien’s show.
My first exposure to the “Simple Gifts” hymn tune as an instrumental was as the theme for CBS Reports. I don’t know whose arrangement it was, but not the Copland.
More recently I had not the Sabre Dance but the Lezhginka from the same work as the top track of an “alarm clock” Playlist on an iPod. Equally energetic.
Lezginka from Gayaneh…
“That’ll cost you a fistful of dollars, Buckaroo.” (Thank you, I’ll be here all weekend).
In Mad Magazine, Dave Berg had a “Lighter Side of…” cartoon about hearing the William Tell Overture without thinking of the Lone Ranger sometime in the late 50s/early 60s.
And I don’t know what color he wore on the radio or in the B&W serials and TV, but the colors in the strip are not what I remember him wearing from later work.
There were some movies made contemporaneous with the Clayton Moore TV show. In those, his outfit was light blue.
The other night at one of the candlelight night reenactments he was asked by one of a group of teenaged girls why he wears his hat in the house. As his 18th century self he explained that “tis the fashion and the other gentlemen do so also”. He now is going crazy as the girls could not understand what fashion meant. Today he asked his 17 (18 next month) yo niece and she did not understand it either. The concept of fashion as wearing what others are wearing is a geezer thing?
On the covers of the 1936 LONE RANGER pulp magazine, his outfits were all over the place, but none of them looked like what would later become traditional:
Meryl, are you saying teenage girls don’t understand “the concept of fashion as wearing what others are wearing”???
Yeah, I’m not sure what the intent was. Is that that they think “fashion” means something else? I think that, “Modern teenage girls don’t follow trends” is pretty unlikely to be the case.
Bill – I was in another room, but he says that they could not understand when he said that wearing his hat inside was the fashion. Perhaps they could not understand that fashion was based on wearing something in a certain place? Shocked me also. I guess he should ask his niece about it – she will 18 in a couple of weeks – and might better understand other teenage girls.
Maybe the concept of fashion for old men and/or existing over 300 years ago seemed odd to them.
I can sort of see it. The coverage for “fashion” may have narrowed some in recent years, though not changed fundamentally. So, younger people today may see it as restricted to publicized / designer styles in clothing, not as we do a more general kind of “What’s the popular, in-thing to do” in all sorts of areas.
(Though “where do men wear hats” may seem close enough to clothing styles to still be fashion even in modern usage)
“That’s the way influencers were doing it at the time.”
Comics I Don't Understand 
Yes. Probably.
It’s now pretty normal to be able to include it in a concert program without any apologetic note or “This may be more familiar as …”.
Also “Funeral March for a Marionette” , though one of the announcers on our classical station has a weekly program of film (and TV) music and has played the original and rewritten-theme version for comparison.
“A Young Person’s Guide to the Orchestra” is often played outside of “youth concerts”, generally without narration and in that case with a different title.
“Peter and the Wolf” is not generally, as far as I know, played without narration — nor should it be!
Mitch4’s comment has me thinking. I assumed the proposed tag was for the Lone Ranger. But I can see it for the song too.
Mark M, I guess what I was implicitly agreeing has gone geezer would be the *association* of the W Tell Overture with the Lone Ranger.
The Benjamin Britten “Young Person’s Guide” when performed without narration is often then identified as “Variations and Fugue on a Theme of Purcell”.
Yes.
Certainly not. There was just a movie a few years ago, and they used the William Tell to great effect.
A movie nobody saw.
No geezer tag needed
We shouldn’t expect everyone to remember what “Kemosabe” means, either:
. . . or heard of? What was the movie?
Heck, thinking that ringtones are sold at a physical counter is geezer-tag-worthy.
Speaking of “Peter and the Wolf”, here is the Klezmer version: Pincus and the Pig.
“. . . or heard of? What was the movie?”
“The Lone Ranger”
With Johnny Depp and Armen Hammer.
It was 2015 or 2016 or so and *certainly* a summer pre-fab blockbuster[*] for over three years ago will *always* need a geezer tag won’t it? I mean nobody can *possibly* remember the summer blockbuster from the year before last, can they? And no-one expects anyone to.
Anyway, the buildup and of the over the top choreographed Lone Ranger theme was the highlight of the film. It was a toe-tapper.
[*] “Blockbuster doesn’t mean it did well. It’s a word for a genre of films of which this was a thoroughly average and forgettable one.
Armie Hammer (as opposed to Armand Hammer, Armen Hammer and Arm & Hammer)
I remember something about Johnny Depp wearing a dead crow or raven on his head.
Mark in B — thanks for Pincu & the Pig! I only listened to a couple minutes so far, but am delighted and and eager to hear more when I have a chance.
AndrĂ©a — I assume you know, but others may not, the currently popular actor who goes by “Armie” Hammer is Armand by full name, and is great-grandson of the original tycoon Armand Hammer. (Who did in fact for a time own the Arm & Hammer baking soda brand, but was not the originator of that company, and probably bought it only because the idea tickled him.)
Correction / qualification from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arm_%26_Hammer:
It is often claimed that the brand name originated with tycoon Armand Hammer; however, the Arm & Hammer brand was in use 31 years before Hammer was born. Hammer was so often asked about the Church & Dwight brand, however, that he attempted to buy the company. While unsuccessful, Hammer’s Occidental Petroleum in 1986 acquired enough stock for him to join the Church & Dwight board of directors. Hammer remained one of the owners of Arm & Hammer until his death in 1990
Friday’s Funky Winkerbean also references “kemosabe.” Must be something in the air.
I grew up in the 60s and was loosely conversant with a lot of 30s-40s references because old Warner cartoons were always on TV. Also, from the 60s on there was a nostalgia industry keeping various antiquities in pop culture’s peripheral vision — LPs and tapes of old radio shows, for example. Ironically, a relic like the Lone Ranger is less known now despite an unprecedented quantity of the radio and TV shows being readily available. There might always been a niche audience, but not the broad-based awareness that once was.
Ah well. Day is coming when a middle-aged adult will drop a Seinfeld or Simpsons reference and then will have to explain it.
Minor Annoyance, I hate to tell you this, but the last Seinfeld episode aired almost 22 years ago: that day might already be here!
Cultural osmosis ought to be sufficient here, but maybe not. As beckoningchasm notes, the 12/20 Funky Winkerbean suggests geezerhood for the Lone Ranger. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a single episode of the Lone Ranger, but I know a fair amount: the silver bullets, the names of both horses, “Who was that masked man?”, etc. Also, I think one of the Green Lanterns is related to him.
It used to be said that the mark of a cultured American was someone who could hear the William Tell Overture without thinking of the Lone Ranger. I suppose we need a new benchmark.
I think if Rossini were alive today, he would definitely be writing theme songs for TV shows. He’s was pretty damn good at it when there weren’t any!
DemetriosX: Don’t know about a Green Lantern connection, but The Green Hornet is/was related to The Lone Ranger (son of Ranger’s nephew Dan Reid, or something like that).
I think it was Patrick Stewart who defined an intellectual as “someone who could listen to the William Tell Overture and not think of the Lone Ranger.”
And here it is in proper context, via one of the rarely-seen German Monty Python specials. I suppose Germans and Brits have a different association with the piece:
@Shrug: Was it the Green Hornet? I sometimes mix them up, even though they’re nothing alike.
@Dysfunctional: Patrick Stewart might have said it at some point, but I heard it long before he was known for anything. I heard it sometime between I, Claudius and Excalibur. He was likely quoting. Also the British don’t have the Lone Ranger association, so he ould have had to said it after he went to the States.
Thanks for the A____ Hammers explanation. And here’s the FW comic about TLR:
https://www.comicskingdom.com/funky-winkerbean/2019-12-20
Well, three years ago I was at a trivia game with by buddies ranging 20 to 30 younger than I am. We were ask to identify music and it was a comic version of the William Tell overture played on tubas. They didn’t recognize it as either the William Tell Overture or as the Lone Ranger theme. Then again it was a comic rendition so I didn’t get it as quickly as I would have. But when I said William Tell Overture I didn’t get the “Oh, yeah! of course” responses as I expected. I said “You know the lone ranger theme” to which the response was fairly tepid.
Now, geezer like me are always quick to overgeneralize how a slight anecdotal evidence means The Younger Generation Doesn’t Know X, and to be fair they didn’t give my what the heck are you talking about stares, and when you haven’t heard something in a long time it takes a while for the familiarity of something that was long ago well known but not heard it a while to fall into place. And to be fair took my about 7 seconds of tingly “wait I know this” and seven seconds of “I think its this but let me listen a little more it might be …. oh no, definitely this now”.
But the looks were not the looks of absolute surety one would have thought.
I can’t really conclude that the Lone Ranger is a geezer reference– I certain can *not* imagine any one say “The Lone Ranger? What’s that?” but I think the immediate quick association with a slight musical phrase to “Hi-Ho Silver!” is not as immediate among the younger than it was with us.
Ask your niece or grand-child the riddle “Where does the Lone Ranger take his garbage” and I don’t think it will get the laugh you’d expect.
@ AndrĂ©a – Batuik should rename his strip to “Funky Cancerbean“.
The Lone Ranger was the Green Hornet’s great-uncle (though that’s probably been retconned to “great-great-great uncle” by now)
Kemosabe means “Trusted scout” according to the old Lone Ranger Radio program, The early movies and maybe the TV show. There are a lot of jokes about the true meaning because Tonto means “stupid” in spanish.
Tonto saved the life of the Lone Ranger when he was a Texas Ranger whose entire platoon was wiped out by bad guys. This and the discovery of the lost silver mine gives us the Lone Ranger that emerged.
@CIDU Bill – although the last first-run Seinfeld episode may have been 22 years ago (May 14, 1998 was “The Finale”, and it premiered 30 years ago), it still runs regularly in reruns … such as TBS (4 episodes Monday, at least, and four afternoons per week – https://www.tbs.com/shows/seinfeld), streaming on Hulu for a while and then Netflix in 2021, etc.
You definitely are a geezer if the scherzo of Beethoven’s 9th symphony reminds you of the Huntly-Brinkley Report. (“Good night, Chet.” “Good night, Dave.”)
You might be a geezer if Mendelssohn’s Spring Song reminds you of a dinosaur with a concussion.
You are not a geezer if Katchaturian’s Sabre Dance reminds you of a m———-g bear on Conan O’Brien’s show.
My first exposure to the “Simple Gifts” hymn tune as an instrumental was as the theme for CBS Reports. I don’t know whose arrangement it was, but not the Copland.
More recently I had not the Sabre Dance but the Lezhginka from the same work as the top track of an “alarm clock” Playlist on an iPod. Equally energetic.
Lezginka from Gayaneh…
“That’ll cost you a fistful of dollars, Buckaroo.” (Thank you, I’ll be here all weekend).
In Mad Magazine, Dave Berg had a “Lighter Side of…” cartoon about hearing the William Tell Overture without thinking of the Lone Ranger sometime in the late 50s/early 60s.
And I don’t know what color he wore on the radio or in the B&W serials and TV, but the colors in the strip are not what I remember him wearing from later work.
There were some movies made contemporaneous with the Clayton Moore TV show. In those, his outfit was light blue.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Lone_Ranger_and_the_Lost_City_of_Gold
The other night at one of the candlelight night reenactments he was asked by one of a group of teenaged girls why he wears his hat in the house. As his 18th century self he explained that “tis the fashion and the other gentlemen do so also”. He now is going crazy as the girls could not understand what fashion meant. Today he asked his 17 (18 next month) yo niece and she did not understand it either. The concept of fashion as wearing what others are wearing is a geezer thing?
On the covers of the 1936 LONE RANGER pulp magazine, his outfits were all over the place, but none of them looked like what would later become traditional:
http://www.philsp.com/homeville/fmi/t/t4263.htm#A107482
Meryl, are you saying teenage girls don’t understand “the concept of fashion as wearing what others are wearing”???
Yeah, I’m not sure what the intent was. Is that that they think “fashion” means something else? I think that, “Modern teenage girls don’t follow trends” is pretty unlikely to be the case.
Bill – I was in another room, but he says that they could not understand when he said that wearing his hat inside was the fashion. Perhaps they could not understand that fashion was based on wearing something in a certain place? Shocked me also. I guess he should ask his niece about it – she will 18 in a couple of weeks – and might better understand other teenage girls.
Maybe the concept of fashion for old men and/or existing over 300 years ago seemed odd to them.
I can sort of see it. The coverage for “fashion” may have narrowed some in recent years, though not changed fundamentally. So, younger people today may see it as restricted to publicized / designer styles in clothing, not as we do a more general kind of “What’s the popular, in-thing to do” in all sorts of areas.
(Though “where do men wear hats” may seem close enough to clothing styles to still be fashion even in modern usage)
“That’s the way influencers were doing it at the time.”
Brian in STL –
đŸ™‚
Speaking of William Tell Overture . . .
https://madlyodd.com/school-choir-sings-lone-ranger-theme-funny/
Faster link . . .