Audience Add-Ons to Songs

You forgot that one!

Makes me wonder what the genesis of that was. Big, adult concert memes I can see, but how the heck do little kids around the country absorb that one?!?

You just reminded me of a similar tradition at the nerd camps I went to as a youth, where I first heard this song (and learned to hate it). And every social event we had ended with American Pie.

After song slowed down near the end and McLean sang “This’ll be the day that I die,” as the song started picked up speed again, the group would add

“LIVE LIVE DIE DIE SEX SEX MORE MORE!”

It always seemed like nonsense to me. Anyway, I think the “sex” part bothered somebody in charge and they tried to ban this chant.

We also used the “like George Washington”

“Pass it On” is a song I’ve sung at both Girl Scout events and in church. The third verse has a line that goes

“So I’ll shout it from the Mountain top” at which point the audience inserts either “Hey, World!” or “Praise God”

“DUHN-DUHN-DUUUUHN!”

Well, how do things like “Great Big Gobs of Greasy, Grimy Gopher Guts” and “Jingle Bells, Batman Smells” get spread so far and wide? It’s actually a recognized phenomenon in the academic study of folklore, IIRC. And, as you’ve seen just with the responses to my posting of the “canon” form of the song from the region I grew up in, there are differences with region, as with most folklore.

In the Barenaked Ladies song “Pinch Me”, there are two lines that go:

“I could hide out under there”
(slight pause)
“I just made you say underwear”

So obviously when the song is done live, the audience screams “under where?” and then we all giggle.

Everyone* knows it’s:

*Join in any reinder games (like football)
*

Pinocchio? Monopoly? How on earth are you supposed to shout those out, as a group, in the normal interval between lines, without it all turning to mush? Sheesh.

  • well, apparently not everyone.

The variations I learned (other than those already mentioned: Like Dumbo, ho-ho-ho) are in bold:

Rudolph with your nose so bright
won’t you guide my sleigh tonight? (Sure!)

Then all the reindeer loved him (loved him!)
and they shouted out with glee (HOO-RAY!!)
Rudolph the red-nosed reindeer (reindeer)
You’ll go down in history (like Lincoln!)!

It’s not a very fast song. There’s enough time to count “2, 3, 4” between the lyrics and that’s enough to say something like “Like Monopoly!”

Do we still hurl Kraft Dinner at them too, or has that passed? I haven’t seen them in a few years :frowning:

Most of the time, the live version of Screaming Infidelities by Dashboard Confessional ends with the audience trailing off “your hair is everywhere…” multiple times until Chris steps away from the mic (and once or twice after that.) The album version I’m most familiar with ends with just a slow version of the chorus. Since the audience sings half the songs anyway I don’t think Chris could stop us from singing it like we do :slight_smile:

Heh…I don’t think supervenusfreak had ever actually clearly heard the lyrics in that part of the song until we heard it in a quiet hotel room while watching their episode of “Private Sessions” on TV last year, because he did the kind of surprise snerk-laugh you do when you finally figure out a joke that’s been passing you right by for a while.

I had forgotten all about that.

My friend’s brother always quips “loose wheel” in lieu of “Lucille”.

And who can forget the ZZ Top classic “Every girl’s crazy about a cross-dressed man.”

And Depeche Mode’s People are People…“I can’t understand…what…makes a man date another man.” This usually led to snorting beer through your nose when the refrain was followed by the dramtic two crashes and following pleaful “Help me understand…”

At Ben Folds/Ben Folds Five concerts:

During the into to “Underground” (which is different than the radio edit), the singer sings “I was never cool in school/I’m sure you don’t remember me” “Who the fuck are you?

When Ben started touring by himself w/o much of a backup band, he started instructing the audience on how to be the horns on “Army” and the harmony on “Regrets.”

There’s some audience clapping in, I think, “Zak and Sara”

Also, anywhere in Ohio (hopefully), one is expected to stand up and spell “O-H-I-O” with one’s arms while saying “O-H-I-O” during “Louie, Louie.”

I was in a pub in Galway when the band played FoA and the crowd went nuts with the participation parts. As a visiting American, I was quite perplexed until some inebriated locals explained it to me (and then spilled beer on my wife). :smiley:

Love that song.
Now I want to book some tickets.

I came in for that one. I don’t know who sings the actual song, but I know all of the rejoinders.

Not sure if this counts, but when Barenaked Ladies sing If I Had a Million Dollars, the crowd used to throw Kraft Dinner onto the stage at the line:

We wouldn’t have to eat Kraft Dinner

A friend of mine won front row tickets to a BNL concert ages ago and took me along. When that line came a huge slew of shit was thrown onto the stage, and I got beaned in the shoulder by a box of Kraft Mac n’ Cheese from some weak thrower in the balcony.

Still have that (dented) box, in fact. I’m not really a big BNL fan, but it’s the only concert I’ve ever been in the front row for and it’s a fun memory.