TV Cream

Bric-a-Brac: U is for...

Unterlander’s Heimweh

Pom pom-pom, pom-pom, pom, po-pom...A “German folk song” of unknown provenance, familiar to amateur musicians of a certain age through its inexplicably perennial appearance as a demonstration tune on the Casio VL Tone electronic keyboard, alongside the more understandable if no more enjoyable Greensleeves and Old Folks at Home. Its vaguely Teutonic plodding melody (“Lowlander’s Loneliness” is the predictably depressing English title) is hard to describe in print – a cross between the theme from My Music and that old standard If I Were Not in Play School Now, Something Else I’d Like to Be is the nearest we can manage – but was unlikely to have been enhanced by transcription into the tinny, bleepy form through which millions of unwitting knee-high Liberaces came to know and weary of it.

4 Comments

4 Comments

  1. JQW

    August 11, 2009 at 5:47 pm

    This was one of the four songs in the ROM-pack that came with a Casio keyboard jobbie my mother bought about 25 years ago. The other songs were Greensleves, The Old Folks at Home and another German folk song.

    Supposedly other ROM-packs were available, but despite our best efforts of trying to order one from Dixons, we could never find them. Eventually a stack of them turned up in a local bargain shop for a few quid, but they were all the Latin one.

  2. Richard Davies

    August 10, 2010 at 9:20 pm

    I wonder if anyone has tried collecting 1980s keyboard demo tunes?

    I’ve still got the demo from my old Yamaha on tape somewhere.

  3. Jill Sandwich

    July 12, 2011 at 10:34 am

    We had 3 of the ROM packs, we had to order them from a music shop. God, I bet they’re worth a fortune now!
    *Checks eBay*
    Well, not a fortune, but 20 quid isn’t bad.

  4. Nick

    June 27, 2020 at 8:16 pm

    For the record, the song isn’t German at all as it is actually a Japanese children’s song called “Yama No Ongakuka”

Leave a Reply

Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

To Top