>martin schiller wrote:
>
>> "Little Boxes"
>
>I always regarded that song as offensive -- it's an attack
>on people.
i think that's a bit stongly put.
i'd say at most the song dissed the form of social life and upbringing the inhabitants of the sung-about "little boxes" enjoyed, the drab yet gracious uniformity of suburban life in post-war america. i learned the song when while still one of those "pretty children" (well, not so pretty) growing up in one of those little boxes (well, not that boxy) on the hillside (though our neighborhood was built as a cooperative). relatives of my mother ran a summer camp after the war somewhere in New York State with the lovely name Camp Rengaw (spell Wagner (Grandma's maiden name) backwards and it sounds vaguely Indian). i'll spare the gorey details abt. higher education.
anyway the song definetely reflected the world i came from and i never found it offensive. what i always wondered however, was, what is ticky-tacky?
My father also had a song to the tune of "if I had the wings of a turtle-dove" to sing in the car on saturday shopping excursions. "Little boxes", Tom Lehrer songs etc. did make life in the burbs a bit more bearable, and taught me the value of self irony at an early age.
Anita (whose all time faves are "bella ciao", "sag mir wo du stehst", and Erich Muehsam's "Es war einmal ein Revoluzzer vom Berufstand Lampenputzer")