The Secret Sleazy Origin of Mahna Mahna

[alexxkay]

Today's metro had a profile of a band called "Menomena", with a sidebar on the connection between their name and the famous Muppet song. Only it turns out not to be original to the Muppets, after all.

The song "Mah Na Mah Na," composed by Piero Umiliani, was first featured in the 1968 film "Svezia Inferno e Paradiso," which explored the seedy side of Swedish sex culture.

Comments

[bkdelong.livejournal.com]

I saw the Statler and Waldorf on the cover of the Metro and asked my wife to turn to read the article.

Found a very interesting page dedicated to the Mahna Mahna song. (http://www.geocities.com/pieroumiliani/)

[juldea.livejournal.com]

I found this out sometime last year, when the video clip from Svezia with that bit of the song on it was up on YouTube. I can't remember where I got it from, but it could be one of these: http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=Svezia+Inferno+e+Paradiso&search=Search
(I can't check from where I am, right now.)

[alexx-kay.livejournal.com]

Nope. I'm doing some lengthy builds at work today, so went looking a bit further. Didn't find it so far. But *man* there are a lot of versions of this song out there! I liked this sped-up version (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VREPh6lpQaU). And there was another version that I didn't think was at all well done, but I appreciated the high concept: "Chapter one of Voltaire's satire Candide in claymation. The music is a cover of Mahna Mahna by Cake."

[new-man.livejournal.com]

Hunh. I never thought it was original to the Muppets.

[laurion]

I keep forgetting that this is not common knowledge, and I'm constantly surprised when people don't know it was a softcore soundtrack. For amusement value, track down the mashup of this song done by a group called Toxic Audio.

[hungrytiger]

Actually we have a copy of Mahna Mahna on a disc of "Silly Songs from the 50s and 60s" that's one of LittleM's favorite CDs. In addition to Mahna Mahna, it's got stuff like The Name Game, Purple People Eater, Itsy-Bitst Teeny-Weeny Yellow Polka Dot Bikini, and The Witch Doctor (her favorite song and the reason I bought the disc).