Child Like Lyrics - Oh Yeah!

Got into a discussion about Syd Barrett tunes last week, and went to find the spelling for Effervescing Elephant. In doing so I found the lyrics. When I read them I realised just what great lyrics they are - they are typical Syd. You could read them to your kid and he wouldn't be any wiser that they were written by someone who lost the plot in the 60s, partially due to the amount of drugs he was doing - he'd just think its from some kids song book. And the wife would for that matter! So here they are. As with any song, they are better when you know the tune:

An Effervescing Elephant
with tiny eyes and great big trunk
once whispered to the tiny ear
the ear of one inferior
that by next June he'd die, oh yeah!
because the tiger would roam.
The little one said: "Oh my goodness I must stay at home!
and every time I hear a growl
I'll know the tiger's on the prowl
and I'll be really safe, you know
the elephant he told me so."
Everyone was nervy, oh yeah!
and the message was spread
to zebra, mongoose, and the dirty hippopotamus
who wallowed in the mud and chewed
his spicy hippo-plankton food
and tended to ignore the word
preferring to survey a herd
of stupid water bison, oh yeah!
And all the jungle took fright,
and ran around for all the day and the night
but all in vain, because, you see,
the tiger came and said: "Who me?!
You know, I wouldn't hurt not one of you.
I'd much prefer something to chew
and you're all to scant." oh yeah!
He ate the Elephant

Bank Holiday Monday Rundowns

This was an email to a friend (Dan Lawrence) in work, but he suggested I blog it - I didn't think that was such a bad idea. The required blog-rant/theories can be found nearer the end. Here it is:

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There are so many 'Top X of All Time' charts around at the moment. Anyone would have thought we'd just had a bank holiday Monday!!

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/5294652.stm

Pink Floyd get a couple mentions in this one. Suprisingly, Wish You Were Here gets in the Top 10, and Dark Side of the Moon is number 1 for the albums that didn't make it to number one.

On the topic of these charts appearing on Bank Holidays, I remember for a while when I was younger that it was all the craze at one stage for stations to run big countdowns.. then people got tired of them. I seem to remember different artists/albums make it into the chart depending on what has happened recently.

I think that if this chart were ran in 98, Floyd would have been much lower, but I think Live 8 re-ignited interest in them, and so they do well.

Which leads me to stray further again and mention how it's interesting to see how demand plays a big part on someone's career.

Dave Gilmour releases an album in 78, probably having more to say with a more cutting edge sound (not to mention that Pink Floyd are at the peak of their career, or not far from it), but it goes pratically un-noticed.

The now David Gilmour, releases an album 20 years later, with an out-dated sound and very little to say (for the record I like the album btw) and it sales well.. if there had been a Floyd album a year before and one around the corner in a couple years, I don't think anyone would have cared as they would have had their Floyd fix and would know another was on the way.