Nothing like the original. There the  words the melody  get their strength and is given eternal life . It is the reason everyone try to capture their essence in re doing them.

This is one of the eternal love songs like "Love story" or unchained melody or the first time ever I saw your face or something or my quirky choice of Iris.

Thank you, Siggy, but don't play for us two alone. Get the others involved. Perhaps, yuh can play da sang dat goh like dis:

Fowl cack ah knack a drum

Guinea bird ah dance

Oh me raja...

Yuh hug me, yuh kiss me, yuh bruk me tillaree....

Stormy likes La Vie en Rose too. Great! We got company.

Gilly..per your request.

I love Siggy's song, friend.

Anyway, thank yuh fo pulling up dis recarding. Gyam fyah!

I wanted to write a commentary when I posted Celine Dion's version. But didn't know how to go about it. Your sentiments is exactly how I would have written it. I would not have been able to assemble the words as you do. 

Yes, the lyric-such simple words and the mood of the melody. It speaks, It gives life, It gives memories.

My mother ( Actually my aunt but she raised me ) loved languages and  music and on her knees I learned to appreciate both. She spent a few months in Europe in her teens before gong off to school in the US.  She never finished because she was 24 when my father died and she   had to return home to take care of  my sister and me.

She used to  crammed our heads with all sorts of stories growing up because those few years  of freedom meant so much to her. It was always through music.  She later  dragged us to all sorts of places that made her feel alive. She spent  her life being a little peculiar from most people but was the most loving mother one can ever imagine. I miss her every day.

Edith Piaf and Lolita were always on the record player in my house . My mom especially  loved spanish gypsies bulerias. Some boyfriend of hers taught her the patterns and she taught us. She would emphasize the 123 123 123 12 12 12 with smacks of her hands and shouts "see" "See" and you get a loving knuckle on the head if you missed it.

Listen to the song below is a stripped down folk song by Gypsies.Take note to change ups on the 12 beats to the bar. Amazingly it also came out of India and evolved into this form in Spain. It is simple  but can build up overwhelming layers of complexity quickly. It is people music. The same structure is in  this song.You can also recognize it in our Chutney  but there is an insipid sameness that permeates chutney that bores me.

That is a beautiful version also.

I think I have everything  Edith Piaf ever recorded.

I love the line, "music sets u at ease, it relaxes ur facial muscles." It calms the spirit.

I would experience the sound of words and music at a early age- two, I believe.

My parents had this gramaphone, the cranking type. The 78 records were in a foreign language. Many years later, I found out it was Bengali songs.

I love music, I wish I could play an instrument. When I get much much older, I hope to get a piano. The type that plays by itself.

Did the gramaphone look like this???

When i was around eight years neighbor had one i will

hang around in her yard to get a chance to play it.A few

years later the spring cut and they throw it out,i asked

for it and got a few records i tried to fix the spring did

not work, so i used to spin it with my hands to listen

to the music.

In my twenties studying electronics my first project

build an amp with one vaccum tube a triode-penthode.

If you have those 78s they would be worth a lot. Any 78 has value.

Music is life. You do not need to know the language. It is the harmony that the soul feels. You may not know one word of spanish but the simple lines of this song  would be in your head all day if you just listen to it because you are already familiar with the rhythm.

Yes.

I was amazed at how the sound got through the stylus. I thought of it as a nail.

Doan have the records anymore. Moving from place to place and with younger brothers-they would find excitement in breaking records. The man had a collection of rare stamps-I believe  see a black magenta in the collection. He had coins and notes. To tell u the truth, if I was conscious of the value at the time, I would have stored them away. I left Guyana when I was 21 years old. By the time I realized the values, everything was displaced after his death. I am still trying to find the photograph of me showing the fighting sign of the PPP-I was 5 years old. 

Rekha is fiery in the one I posted. More of the western ways.

Django, similar to your amp with one triode-penthode, I had to do the same with solid state components for an exam in 1972.  Starting with designing the circuit board and adding all the components.

I still have the amp  and connect it to a HP tube tone-generator and Morse key, while myself and the kids would send code to each other.

I have a number of VT test equipment : Motorola RF generator, HP oscillator, etc.   

But vacuum tube was my first love......in electronics.  Me first real love was at Catherina and had nothing to do wid Gilly or his family. Dem WC gyal are always a knockout. Some even show dem quality hea.

In our town that is celebrating its 100 years in 2015, we just uncover a 25 year time capsule, that was buried when our new university was started in 1990.

The university was started when thousands of $5.00 shares was sold to our community, before government funding kicked in.  

This year we are also burying a 100 year time capsule. In additional to photographing the public library to  add photos for the capsule. I wrote extensively and added other items.

1. Three vacuum tubes made by RCA, Sylvania and GE.  I wrote about Marconi on Signal Hill and the day I wrote the letter, New Horizons was sending back the first close-up photos of Pluto. What would technology be in the year 2115 ?

2. Without realizing it, when I was at the tel company, I was given one of the first cell phones made by Motorola. Cost $3800.  It was so heavy it used to pull my pants down in additional to my tool belt, when I would accompany the field crew.

I have three of these phones and included one in the time capsule, without the battery, suggested by Motorola. I also know that batteries will deteriorate and contaminate  other items.

I also included a 2012 Guyana Digicel cel phone, to show comparison.  I wrote about communications and what will it be like in 2115. Would we be able to use a transporter for humans, as they did in Star Trek ?

3. I added some Canadian and US money, bills and coins, suggesting that all purchase transactions will be done electronically. I also said if it is so,  to go to my grave site and say ' Yes Tola you were right'.

4. I added a brand new unused black rotary telephone and wrote  about the advancement of voice communication for the past hundred years.

Fortunately, I was involved in the process of changing the telephone switching equipment to touch-tone and talked about voice communication presently.  I suggested that in 100 years there might be voiceless communications, where our thoughts are used to communicate. This is presently done with electronics and sight.

5. I wrote our family children's children about the courtesy in our town. No honking, buying coffee for the unknown person in front of you at Timmys or Mc D and how we treat each other now, by holding doors open for the person behind us.   What would courtesy be like in the year 2115 ?

6. In 2015 the Canadian flag is 50 years old and Canada Post issued its first fabric stamp, which I included in the time capsule.

Comparing to Betsy Ross, the first Canadian flag was sewed by a volunteer 18 year old daughter of government official , overnight, to be presented to parliament in 1965.  I wrote about emails and how we might communicate electronically  in the year 2115.  Canada Post already starting to cease home delivery of mail.

I have a Hammarlung HQ 180A SW VT receiver[Google], that still works to listen to Voice of America and Radio Moscow, in addition to Morse from ham operators. I do have an advanced ham licence, but never got around to building a station, constantly being urging by friends, but Black Bush Polder was occupying my time.

I have a large box of vacuum tubes retired by Sask Tel, let me know if you have any request.          

Tola..

[I have a Hammarlung HQ 180A SW VT]

This was made in 1966 (year of Guyana Independence)

i was in Form1 then.

I built a solid state stereo amp on bread board in

the mid 70's.When television station started in

Guyana,I built converters,de-scramblers and designed

antennas.

When i migrate i started working for an Electronic

Service Center,the owner retired in 2005 and i bought

the business,i have lots of test equipment which i hardly

use today due to the change in technology.

As for building stuff not much except assembling

computers for my business and my personnel use.

Very commendable Django, Guyana produced some really good people. If only the politicians would get their act together, many of us would want to get out  of this deep freeze and make Guyana prosper.

Most of my equipment are antiques, but the still work well. I am now in the process of getting rid of about 50 rotary desk and wall  phones.     

Even though electronics was paying the bills, my main interest was international photography and sustainable projects in developing countries.

Our first project was with the Zapatista where we assisted  four Mayan Women of Dignity co-op groups at a place called Ovantic [Google] in Chiapas to print catalogs of their crafts, to sell in Europe.

I was getting discouraged with modular repairs of test equipment, no more component  trouble-shooting. It was isolating the problem to a  board and returning the old board to the factory for repairs.

Our department also came under an alarm monitoring and control systems for heavy route radio  sites. This also  became discouraging for the radio men, because the system would ID the defective card on a radio  and all the guys had to do was put on a static strap, change the card, turn off the light  and go home with four hours of overtime.    

In 2005, the phone company was offering $50K separation bonus, with full pension and medical. Many of the guys took it and afterwards some even bid on the jobs they did for business customers at a lower rate and took the contracts away from the tel company, who trained them.

Canadian RRSP's was in place by the feds to protect the bonus from taxes, until a later retirement date.

I took the package and decided to start my own company with systems installation,  res and business repairs, but health issues caused a downsize and I eventually sold it, to one of the workers.

I still do projects in Canada and overseas, with photography that pays for the travel, but I don't want to take on tel system jobs in GY.

My summer project was making a new garden and  restoring a 37 year old toy wagon, belonging to our son as a child. Its for his son who was born a few months ago.

I took all the metal parts apart  and restored the wood.  The wagon has a sticker of a monster truck from a company in Texas, I Google the name and saw the same monster truck on their website. They are sending me more stickers and they want pictures of the wagon for their promo work, for US$$  for the grandson education account.

Its repainted all the original colours and due to the monster truck sticker, I decided to sign paint MONSTER WAGON on one side...OFF-ROAD on the back and  PERSEVERENCE on the other side.

What is neat, the original wagon has a vehicle small licence plate with our son's name, I got one also, much bigger, with the GS name, that will be mounted at the back, with reflectors all around.

One of the things I did not like about owning my own business was the constant demands of customers during my free time, that was seldom available, due to the work load.

If not properly controlled, it could take a toll on relationships and family life.

As I did with stuff for the time capsule, electronics is changing at fast rate and might be hard to keep up. In some ways I am happy to get out now from the pressure.

There has to be time we have to start fully enjoying life, because I have a long time friend who did very well in business, a multi millionaire in the Caribbean. 

Two years ago his son died in an accident, his wife died six months later from a  heart attack and now, he is lost for directions.

Take care.         

While reading Django and Tola's posts a fellow came to mind.

Anyone remembers there was a fellow in G'Town who repaired radios etc..I believe he was a Chin?

I ran into him in Toronto many years ago, he was in the same business

I made an important modification to the wagon.  When our son was a child he used to pee in the wagon and the liquid  damaged the floor board, that had to be replaced.

This time I drilled two pee holes to avoid this problems reoccurring. Who knows, maybe, like father, like son.  

Cain, there is a guy in Berbice  who do electronic repairs, that I met in Montreal in the 70s. He is called 'Burn-boy', correct name Sase. He trained his wife to do similar repairs, who is as good as he is. I believe they still have  a business in Berbice. I was so impressed that his wife could talk technical stuff.

One of my random  meetings at a mall in Toronto with another Guyanese, was about 40 years after I took a phone message to their house at Albion, that his sister died overnight in hospital.

While delivering the message early in the morning, his mother collapsed with a spoon in her hand, because she was cooking when she answered the door.

As I reminded him of the message, he became very emotional as he remembered that time in their family's life.

She was a teenager like me at the time and they loved her very much.

It is interesting how  things like these don't affect us emotionally, until we become senior adults.          

Ok Tola, so far I got, like father,like son...you used to pee in your truck.

I don't know of this "Burnboy" it is great the wife chose to learn the business, kudos to her.

The last one I feel bad, you kill a ole lady with she own pot spoon...or you jus knock she out. I lil confused.

There is a hell of a lot you can do if you know how to use a soldering iron and have a basic understanding of electronics. You have an above level grasp of the subject and can be putting all of that to use especially if you live in a house.

Size and build yourself a completely off the grid house. That is a fun project. You can start by making the home smart and then adding the solar power components later.

Around the house I build everything from good battery banks for my bike for night riding and replacement laptop battery to building, repairing or rewiring  humbuckers for my guitars. Then there are lots of car mods you can do especially if you are into camping and have a big SUV.  All of these things save you money and make life easy

Danyael..i got good soldering skills,i have hot air tools

for soldering but prefer to use use soldering iron,which i use to

solder tiny quad pack IC.I still do repair to component level in

my Service Center,todaymost companies want us to change out

the complete boards.I have been in the field since 1976,planning

to retire soon.

Cain..i just saw your post there were lots of repair shops

in GT,knew most of the techs,can't recall that name.

Good one Cain, me forget about senior father and senior son. But me used to pee pan de dankey cart wheel.

De old lady collapse from shock, but recover afta some limacol and suga wata.

Rass, me knew so little about delivering dead message as a teenager.

'Aunty, you daughta dead last night in New Amsterdam  hospital'. Bam,  down pan de ground she go.     

perhaps wrong name, he was in g,town

When I started with the tel company in the 70s, Strowger switching equipment was still in place. [I still have a bank in storage]. The electric soldering iron for rack jumper-wire work used a big soldering iron. Similar to  the iron my dad used on the sugar estate that was heated with coconut husk. British equipment  in Canada...British equipment  in British Guiana.

In the 80s I bought and rebuilt a new Chevvy van for family use that was in an accident and converted it into a camper. We removed the damaged side panels by drilling the  spot welds.

With replacement panels from auto wreckers, we wire-feed weld all the holes from the  new panel to the floor. This was  a bit different from arc and gas welding. More durable to vehicle vibration.

Batteries...There is logic on ships  that the battery bank is located on the upper part of the ship, thus giving the operator more time to send a distress message, before he goes under.          

"With replacement panels from auto wreckers, we wire-feed weld all the holes from the  new panel to the floor. This was  a bit different from arc and gas welding. More durable to vehicle vibration."

It's called "spot welding" That was one of the jobs I did for awhile, then onto arc. Spot welding is tricky, it can burn through the material quite fast and the darn thing spits like crazy.

My buddy had a bad habit of throwing on his shoes without doing up the laces and it never failed every time he started, the stuff would spit and the hot sparks would get into his boot...he was good at doing James Brown moves after that.