Bananaphone
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Bananaphone.jpg
Bananaphone is the name of an album released in 1996 and a humorous song by the children's entertainer Raffi, written in 1994. The lyrics describe a combination between a banana and a telephone, using many puns ("It's a phone with appeal!") and nonsense words like "bananular" and "interactive-odular".
Track listing
- Bananaphone
- Shake A Toe
- The World We Love
- Slow Day
- The Changing Garden Of Mr. Bell
- Naturally
- Spring Flowers - Instrumental
- C-A-N-A-D-A
- Michael Row The Boat Ashore
- First Peoples
- Dee Myth - Instrumental
- Cowlit Night
- The Gorilla Song
- Simple Gifts
- Down By The Riverside
- The Shmenge Polka (A tribute to John Candy) - Instrumental
"Bananaphone" on the Internet
The song was popularized as the soundtrack for a Flash animation named osakaphone.swf (http://www.google.com/search?q=osakaphone.swf+filetype%3Aswf), which features a wiggling Gundam in a banana suit being held by a Shift-JIS art rendition of the character Osaka from the manga/anime Azumanga Daioh. This animation first appeared on cookiethievery.com (http://www.cookiethievery.com/). The picture of Osaka, drawn in a style characteristic of 2ch, was from the 4chan forum, introduced by "Shii". The song used in the Flash is sped up from the original by +9 semitones, making it livelier and more humorous than the original.
A later Flash, bananaphone.swf, was made by combining the song from Bananaphone and the visuals from the Flash Badger Badger Badger (with Bananaphone additions); it can be found at lemonizer.com's list of mirrors (http://www.lemonizer.com/banana/). It was created by a user of the General Mayhem forums after the original Flash was posted there.
The Gundam "Bananaphone" itself has now appeared elsewhere, although since it has no resemblance to a phone outside of the original Flash this is something of a misnomer.
The song also appeared in a bizarre animation (http://thefriendsociety.com/anim.php?id=bananaphone&w=550&h=400) by Dave Teatro of The Friend Society (http://thefriendsociety.com).
It has also appeared in a less disturbing animation (http://ghostalmedia.com/banana/) by Ghostal Media.
The song also made numerous appearances in YTMND, including one intercut with Darth Vader's infamous "Nooooo!" from Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith and parts from the song Yes, We Have No Bananas, so that the phrase went "Yes, we have NOOOOOO bananaphone".
The sped up version of the song has been used as an audio gag on the Opie & Anthony Show on XM Satellite Radio starting the week of January 31, 2005. Anytime a phone is mentioned during the show, one of the hosts plays this song in an effort to get it stuck in their listeners' heads.
External links
- Banana Phone Flash Animation (http://thefriendsociety.com/anim.php?id=bananaphone&w=550&h=400)
- The Bananaphone Flash Animation (http://www.transbuddha.com/osaka/osakaphone.html)
- Bananaphone album (http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/B0000003HW/) by Raffi
- Banana phone lyrics (http://lyrics.rare-lyrics.com/R/Raffi/Banana-Phone.html)