I found a site with several dozen versions of the Internationale.There are, of course, the darkly intriguing a cappella Dr Zhivago rendition , the classic rousing French march, and the beloved Bard of Barking backed by full choir and orchestration.
Max Klaxon's Intenationale 2000 annoys at first then grows on you before it quickly withers and dies, at which point it still has about two thirds of the song left to go. Then there's about 30 seconds of gunfire at the end. In a way, kind of like real Communism.
There's also a drunken off-key Swedish sing-along and a fittingly tinny lo-fi Cuban recording, in which some of the syllables don't quite fit into the measures.
Pete Seeger's Anglo-French arrangement doesn't seem to work, which seems fitting, and I don't know what the fuck is up with this ditty.
Finally the Esperanto version is my favorite from an ironic standpoint as, between the content and context, it pretty well sums up the triumphs of social engineering.
Update: Here's Billy Bragg with more fitting instrumentation.
4 comments:
Hehe. The Billy Bragg version sounds like a Monty Python tune.
Yeah, his thick accent really clashes with the arrangement making it sound like a parody.
Hooray for social engineering masked as liberation.
Nope. Every time I think of the Internationale the little man in my head gives me this. Quite the opposite, therefor nearly identical.
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