If you could hie to Gilligan’s Island

In honor of it being Jeanne’s birthday today, and also with April Fools Day coming rapidly upon us, here’s something she and i came up with together.

Our ward’s choir sings once each month (on the Sunday the high council dude speaks). Last month, they sang “Oh My Father” to the tune of “If You Could Hie to Kolob”.* (This is an unprecedented two-fer—you get the two space-doctrinest hymns in the hymnal, both at once!) This was a new combination for me, even though i’d already known that you can sing either of these to the tune of either “The Ballad of Jed Clampett” or “The Ballad of Gilligan’s Isle”—and so that got us thinking of fun tricks choir directors could play with the hymnal.

Our favorite was the idea of singing every single 7676D-meter song in the hymnal (and the 7777D songs that would work)** to the tune of “If You Could Hie to Kolob”, a different song with the same tune each month, and see how long it took the congregation (and, more amusingly, the bishop) to catch on to what was going on. (My guess is that it might take some members of the choir a couple months to catch on, actually.)

I almost want to go up to my bishop next Sunday, shake his hand, and say “Hey, bishop, i’ve got this great idea for an April Fools prank on the ward…” just to see the initial expression on his face before he realizes that this is only what he should have come to expect from me by now.

* I know a lot of people absolutely heart both of these songs, but i would like to insert an obligatory gag here. There is no end to the “no end” verses, to begin with.

** By the way—does anyone know why you can’t search by meter on the church’s music web site? One would think it would be relatively trivial to implement, and quite useful.