ACA Home Forums Banned camp songs

The songs banned at my camp were generally songs that the counselors (or dean) just could not stand to listen to anymore. We never told the kids the song was banned, so if they remembered it from the previous year and started singing it we might just go along with it, but we tried our hardest not to bring it up. One song in particular that I remember loving at a camper that we banned last year was the bubble gum song, the chorus of which went a little something like this:

Na-na-na-na-na BUBBLEGUM!
Na-na-na-na-na BUBBLEGUM!
Na-na-na-na-na BUBBLEGUM!
I BOUGHT SOME BUBBLEGUM!

Sung while jumping up and down and spinning in circles. Ah, memories.

I think banning songs because someone somewhere in the world constues them as offensive is a travesty of justice. I know as a child some of my favorite songs were songs that are now banned at my camp. The Titanic song was my favorite. It still is my favorite. Charlottestown is burning down, the buffalo song, also the third verse of Desperado: "he went to coney island just to take in all the sights, he saw the hoochie coochie and the girls in purple lights, he got so darn excited that he shot out all the lights" whoa dirty. But when I was a child, I sang these songs blindly and never thought anything of it. I never even knew what hoochie coochie was. Songs like that are tradition I think banning them is robbing children nowadays of the joy of being a kid.

I think that banning songs because you just get tired of hearing them is ridiculous. I was told that the Bubblegum song was banned one summer, but really it was because someone was tired of hearing it. I taught it anyway. I don't think that children that come late in the summer should have to suffer just because the kids at the beginning of the summer already sang that song a bunch. Aren't we getting paid to suffer for these children?

Banning songs. I see not allowing vulgar or not very appropriate songs could be okay. I don't want to see or hear an 8 year old singing songs about certain things. I don't see where the Buffalo song, or a lot of other songs on this post should be banned. There is a limit of what is tolerable.

The thing at our camp is that we don't sing enough songs for one to be annoying. We have the traditional Pizza Man song, Pickle Story, Buffalo, about every 5th year the Titanic, Circle Game, Sugar Mountain, that are sung at our campfires. Needless to say the kids will sing the modern songs at campfires since we have a tradition of not singing "traditional" camp type songs. Yes we do screen for vulgarity and appropriateness since there are young ones there.

so i guess you guys wouldn't be hearing "shake your tail feather" on a ghetto blaster walking by a cabin???

we do a cheer that was started a few years ago (that our counselors taught my bunk, the whole camp caught onto it and we felt sooo cool lol) that originally went like this "we are camp blue ridge and we live in a hut, and if you don't believe us, just watch us shake our butt" well after the first day the whole camp did it in the mess hall, our old director decided she didn't like the word "butt" in a cheer so we changed it to "we are camp blue ridge and we live by a lake, and if you don't believe us, just watch us move and shake" and now every time we're in teams, the team changes the cheer to fit the team, so the banned word was for the better, now we get the funniest variations of that cheer!

Some "fem-a-Nazis" at my camp last summer got JIG-A-LO banned!!

We tried to switch it to "Rock the Show" but the campers were like, what the heck is going on here? Especially the campers who had been at the previous session when we sang Jigalo.

Meg

We sing it "wiggle-oh"--"jig-a-lo", which is how I had thought of it, doesn't seem bad at all, but someone pointed out that we probably shouldn't be sending the kids home singing "This is how I gigolo..." A few of the kids do come knowing it as jigalo or gigolo or whatever, but it's never been a big deal. It's such a great song and I'd hate to see it go--besides, it is really funny to hear a counselor singing about how it's time to "wig"...

we dont have to worry about that because we call it bugalow at my camp

We buff-a-low at my camp.

fem-nazis...hahahah


camp last year was like the camp version of PCU

Hey Lizzy, Is the cannibal king like the Zulu king? its about a king with a big nose ring and his sweetheart and they kiss and have lots of kids?

conformists!

My camp has "banned" Titanic out of respect for our british international staff's feelings who may have lost family members when it sank...

Banned songs from the 3 resident camps I have worked at the last 5 summers:
- Titanic
- Bubble Gum (though, I really love that song.)
- Little Sally Walker
- "They say Camp Concord..." I personally got this one re-banned, after a friend of mine and I found it in one of the song books. It basically pokes fun at every aspect of the camp, which is the worst camp I have ever worked at. My director put a ban on it real quick, but not before a couple of my girls had been flipping through the song book and remembered the song from when they were younger, before the director was there...let's just say hilarity ensued, and I had to mock-up some disgust and astonishment that anyone would sing that song. I was laughing on the inside, though.
- Georgie
- The last verse or so of the Crawdad song

Has anyone ever had skits banned? At the camp I was at last year, I guess there was this "mint milkshake" skit the year before that made some kid throw up, so it got banned forever. Another camp I worked at banned "Hole in My Bucket" (an acting-out of the irritating song), as well as Guava Hunt, because both skits kept getting dragged out and no one was paying attention at campfire anymore.
I can't imagine "One Tin Soldier" being banned. That's just going too far. You have to take it in context, and since the song is about peace and friendship, I don't think the whole song should be banned because of one line with the word "bloody."

Your camps still sign The Cat Came Back. My camp banned that so many years ago. A few years ago on the last day of staff week, the song leaders played it and then collected the copies of the words and burned it.

The Cat WILL NEVER Come Back to my camp!

Personally, I don't feel it's necessary to band the word god, lord or father out of graces or camp songs, if the Camp's mission statement promotes Christianity and its values. If parents send their kids to such camps, that promotes a higher power, they shouldn't be shocked or be complaing to the camp about using the words like god, lord etc. If the camper feels uncomfortable with saying the word god (given that we are in a camp that promotes Christian values), they could simply just not participate grace(s) or sing those songs, and be respectful to others who does particpate in those activites. The reason I say this is that if you are at someone's house where you are the guest, and if the host's family decides pray, you would not complain about it or stir up trouble. The polite thing to do is be silent and be respectful during that time.

The Cat Came Back? What are the words?

The Cat Came Back:
Well, old Mr. Johnson had troubles all his own. He had an old yellow cat that wouldn't leave home. Tried everything he knew to get the cat to stay away, even took him up to Canada and told him for to stay
Chorus:
But the cat came back the very next day they though he was a gonner but the cat came back 'cause he wouldn't stay away.
Well, they gave a boy a dollar for to set the cat afloat and he took him up the river in a sack in a boat. Now, the fishing it was fine till the news got around that the boat was missing and the boy was drowned
repeat chorus
Well, the farmer on the corner said he'd shoot him on sight and he loaded up his gun full of rocks and dynamite. The gun went off, heard all over town, little pieces of the man was all that they found
repeat chorus
Now, they gave him to a man going up in a balloon and they told him for to leave him with the man in the moon. The balloon it busted back to earth did head, seven miles away they picked the man up dead.
repeat chorus
Well, they finally found a way this cat for to fix they put him in an orange crate on route 66. Come a 10 ton truck with a 20 ton load, scattered pieces of the orange crate all up and down the road
repeat chorus
Well, they took him to the shop where the meat was ground and they dropped him in the hopper when the butcher wasn't 'round. Well, the cat disappeared with a black curdling streak and the towns meat tasted furry for a week
repeat chorus
And from Cape Canavarel they put him in a place, shot him in a rocket going way out in space and they finally thought the cat was out of human reach. Next day they got a call from Miami Beach that
repeat chorus

Here you go

at my home camp, very few songs are banned.. actually, I can't think of any.. Just Titanic.. cause no one knows the whole song anymore..

We sing it all: little green frog getting licked up by a dog to evreyone dies in songs! "death" songs.. those are sung too.. uhm-plucka-plucka (he went down to *cough cough* and sizzled and fried!)

I find it interesting that my camp doesn't ban songs, yet we ahve a policy about unusual peircings and odd hair colours..

i teach my older girls the songs so they dont get lost, and ask them to refrain from singing them in front of 1) little girls and 2) office staff...

particularly since it was found in the staff manual that they cannot ban camp songs, just suggest that they not be sung.

but this way everyone is happy, older girls learn songs, so they can be passed on, and office staff doesnt have to hear them

Hmmm...Never heard of it!! Thanks Melon

your welcome. it's actually pretty funny :p

The baby shark song!!! Hayfever, I can't believe you didn't say what it was really used for!!! Oh, if only the campers knew why they were being called baby sharks!!!

My first summer at camp there were a bunch of banned songs. Like Baby Shark, The Titanic, and Georgie... there were a lot more. Then I found out that the staff director at the time banned them because she just didn't like them, not because they were "bad" songs. Now we have a new director and staff director, so all of the songs are back.

- Teenster

baby sharks....

and i thought of another song they didn't want us singing at camp...

Rainbow Made of Children... something about the whole "I was taught that black was evil, I was taught that white was good" lyric.. in case anyone was wondering... heres the whole song at least as i remember it...

Chorus
We're a rainbow, made of children
We're an army, singing songs
There's no weapons that can stop us
Rainbow love is much too strong

I born in Alabama
Saying yes sir, to a man
-to a man
When I found out, it got me no where
Never said it again

Chorus

I was taught that black was evil
I was taught that white was good
-white was good
but in a rainbow made of children
every color's understood

chorus

Old man Tucker, had a rifle
Protecting Mama's apple pie
-apple pie
when i offered him a flower
he just stood there and asked me why

Chorus