You’re in a supermarket. There is a stacked pyramid of Campbell’s Tomato Soup cans on display. You pick one up to look at the ingredients, then you put it back. The pyramid collapses, creating a major clatter. This shocks a young mother so much that she runs her cart over a dog. Her cart flips, ejecting her baby clear across the store and through a plate glass window. The resulting sound and fury of the shatter shocks a driver on the street, and causes a five car pileup. One car is a limo carrying Bush, another is a limo carrying Putin. An international incident is born. Nuclear war breaks out, and all life on Earth is destroyed.
So what do you do? Walk away, hands clasped behind your back, and you pretend you didn’t do it. And what else do you do? You whistle. You know the tune. It’s five notes, in a descending pattern that covers somewhere between a perfect fifth and an octave. Dotted eighth, sixteenth, two staccato eighths, and a quarter.
And it’s never – NEVER – any other tune.
Who wrote it? Why do we all know it? Do those of us who are accident-prone owe thousands in royalties?
Well, and… me neither! Dragnet is most clearly, emphatically, NOT what I’m thinking of. Highlight my response in post #4 for more information on the matter.
And I’m not sure what my age has to do with it, but I’m 45. And the little tune I’m thinking of goes back to Bugs Bunny days.
Heh, I know what you mean…that insouciant DEEE dee-dee dee-dee, sometimes with a little upswoop at the beginning of the first note so it’s kinda deeeEEE .
Joke’s on me…I thought that was just a spacing issue, and didn’t realize the “not” was there!
I was asking your age because I was surprised that you didn’t know the tune you were referring to was Dragnet. But since it wasn’t, then I retract the question!
I am just going by memory on the E D C A G thing and tying it to one of those things I will whistle or hum or even put syllables to.
In my case it sounds like what they would play in Westerns whenever the Indians appeared above the horizon or on the mountain top or whenever an Indian would appear behind a bush or rock and the wagon train suddenly became vulnerable to attack.
Dun-dun-dunnan-dun sort of thing.
If it has a name I never heard it. Nor can I connect it with any other musical piece. Just one of those ditties you know but may not know its name.
Ah, yes. The Scoop. As if to say “I didn’t do it, so don’t notice me, but I’ll add a little flourish so as to draw attention to the fact that you’re not noticing me.”
