Any fellow Incredible String Band fans on here? Or indeed, fans of Jack Bruce songs with the lyrics written by Pete Brown?
I love them both, but ‘far out’ doesn’t come close.

One String band song which springs to mind:
“Ask anyone”, he muttered, as he gazed amazed at four lost eyebrows lisping into the unexpected, “I would advise stilts for the quagmires and camels for the snowy hills. Any survivors, their debts I will certainly pay” Beat that!

sleep jerusalem aka the dopesmoker album/song lyrics make perfect sense, when the whole thing is about a caravan of mechants carrying hash across the deserts smoking as they go and the visons and trance like states they experience.

Exactly, right?

Or as Sleep would have it: proceeds the weedian Nazareth.

.I always thought that Band Aid’s “well tonight thank god it’s them instead of you” was a bit of an odd choice of line for a charity record.

I think the lyrics of “Do they know it’s Christmas?” are some of the most bizarre , patronising and ignorant European looking down on the Africans lyrics I have heard. Bob should be ashamed – talk about the colonial vision of the black man.

“There won’t be snow in Africa this Christmas” – well, other than the Atlas Mountains and Kilimanjaro
“Nothing ever grows” – other than the vineyards of South Africa, the fertile plains in Kenya, the mountains where they farm tea and coffee, the hashish fields of Morocco – and the rain forests.
etc etc

A girl with kaleidoscope eyes doesn’t exactly make perfect sense….but my girlfriend thought they were singing ‘a girl with colitis goes by’, which makes even less…

I always thought that Band Aid’s “well tonight thank god it’s them instead of you” was a bit of an odd choice of line for a charity record.

Pretty straightforward. It’s about appreciating how lucky you (the listener) is to live in a nice home with plenty food, rather than being unlucky enough to be a country stricken by war, famine, drought etc.

“Scuse me while I kiss the sky” apparently misheard by millions for many years

This came out while he was trying to avoid draft by claiming to be homosexual so lots of people decided it was something to do with that – ‘scuse me while I kiss this guy (and therefor cannot join the US army)

I think he droped the bit in brackets to make it scan better

Jimi was in the army and invalided out.

The James one is “She knows there’s nowhere to hide in the dark – she’s a star” so fairly obvious really.

Not a confusing lyric, more than it’s utterly terrible banality, but the Razorlight one

“I met a girl,
she asked me my name,
I told her what it was”

as deep as a puddle eh

Bill Bailey taking apart The Killers -All These Things That I’ve Done

I always think of his version when I hear it being played now.

The opening 3 verses to ‘Where’s Me Jumper?’ by Sultan’s of Ping FC, before the song gets into the less confusing subject of a misplacing an item of clothing at a disco.

My, brother, knows, Karl Marx,
He met him eating mushrooms in the peoples park,
He said ‘What do you think about my manifesto?’
‘I like a manifesto, put it to the test-o.

Took it straight down to meet the anarchist’s party.
I met a groovy guy, he was arty farty,
He said ‘I know a little latin man a cus man a kai’
I said ‘I don’t know what it means’ he said ‘neither do I

Eat natural foods, bathe twice daily,
Fill your nostrils up with gravy.
Don’t drink tea and don’t drink coffee.
Cover your chin in yorkshire toffee.

Well thanks chaps – I am now both amused and confused

Never got my head around the line in the Feeder song, Buck Rogers

“Drinking cider from a lemon”

Some weird West Country game?

Erm … any Cocteau Twins song. Do I win?

Never got my head around the line in the Feeder song, Buck Rogers

“Drinking cider from a lemon”

Some weird West Country game?

I see your “cider from a lemon” and raise you a “cider from eleven”.

And yes, probably.

Errr……Joy Division Oven Gloves

Nothing odd about that, I’ve got a pair of Joy Division oven gloves!

Nigel is often just playing with words, and there are so many pop-culture references as well; it’s been said that there’s a song title or lyric in HMHB songs for pretty much any subject you care to name.

Erm … any Cocteau Twins song. Do I win

I hear your Cocteau Twins and raise you Sigur Rös and Magma. The link is their lyrics are all basically a made-up language, intended to sound good when sung but carrying no meaning. Jon Anderson’s lyrics are in much the same vein, as someone quoted him as saying; designed to sound good when sung, interpret them however you wish.

Actually, that rather includes R.E.M., circa ‘Murmur’, because the vocals are rather buried in the mix and Stipe does mumble them, and are very open to various interpretations, which Michael Stipe was perfectly happy to go along with and encourage.

Honestly though, does it matter? I’ve got albums sung in Irish and Scottish Gaelic, Welsh, Cornish, Breton and a number of other languages, and I’m just as happy listening to them not making a bit of sense as I am with Yes, R.E.M. or Cocteau Twins.

They’re just painting pictures with words – pretty abstract pictures, and some you might say are just Pollocks, but enjoyable none the less. 😎

I was just amused adn bemused by “Love is like hypnotising chickens” and trying to work out what if anything it meant.  Just a bit of idle fun

Cum on Eileen!?!

WTF!? Popular song though!

Re Bowie- he used cut up technique for a lot of his songs, where he’d write a stream of prose and then he’d cut it all up & re-arrange it into what sounded good.

I was just amused adn bemused by “Love is like hypnotising chickens” and trying to work out what if anything it meant. Just a bit of idle fun

“The song’s lyrics contain a number of references to William S. Burroughs’ experimental novel The Ticket That Exploded, most notably mentions of “Johnny Yen” (described by Burroughs as “The Boy-Girl Other Half strip tease God of sexual frustration”) and “hypnotizing chickens”. ” Source – Wikipedia. Still no idea what it means though.

You can hypnotise chickens:

It’s apparently pretty easy, so I’m guessing the lyric refers to that? Sort of the opposite of herding cats on a difficulty scale.

“Don’t go chasing waterfalls”

I always heard “Go Go Jason Waterfalls” when I was younger and was very confused.

Nothing odd about that, I’ve got a pair of Joy Division oven gloves!

Nigel is often just playing with words, and there are so many pop-culture references as well; it’s been said that there’s a song title or lyric in HMHB songs for pretty much any subject you care to name.

I own a pair too. Wasn’t saying the song was odd, more that not all their lyrics make, or need to make, literal sense. And yes often it’s just Nigel enjoying some fun wordplay.

On car journeys heading down south I play Life’s a PBR (perpetual Biscuits reference). So many things to spot including people not keeping two chevrons apart, taking junction 16 for Crewe, Nantwich, Hoylake, signs for tractors turning, Knutsford city limits, stopping at Tebay with a girl called Joyce and so many more. My one big disappointment is having never been caught in a bottleneck at Capel Curig.