I’m positive the lyric from the theme to the show Good Times is “Hangin’ and a Jivin’” rather than “Hanging in a chow line.”
"Mondegreens" where you are utterly convinced that you are right, and the rest of the world is crazy
You’re close. I resurrected an old thread last year to provide the evidence.
http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?p=14475670#post14475670
Nah, Biffy’s right. It’s “flying spoon.” I’ve always heard it that way. I just took a quick listen to confirm it.
It’s “Mirrors on the ceiling, the pink champagne on ice.”
And before anybody mentions “Cherry Bomb,” it’s “That’s when a sport was a sport.”
Well, I can’t hear “flying spoon”, and I’ve listened to it innumerable times.
And, when I had no idea of what the lyrics were, thought that it was “glide-wheel spoon”, so it’s not determined by my expectations.
And my wife, independent of me, came to the same conclusion about what the lyrics were.
Pink Floyd’s Point Me at the Sky is dreadfully mangled and inconsistent throughout on all of the lyrics sites. It doesn’t help that the band changed up the lyrics fairly frequently when live. I have a bootleg of a live version with very clear vocals and I’ve come to disagree almost completely with most of the lyrics sites.
Some examples:
Lyrics sites: “Hey Eugene, this is Henry Mclean” or “Hey Jean, this is Henry McClean”
Me: “Paging Mr Henry McClean”
…and on from there. It would violate board rules for me to give my version of the entire song 
I heard it as “Paging Mrs. Henry McClean”. Cause it was from the era when women were sometimes still known as Mrs (Husband’s name). Of course your three examples make more sense (but don’t sound as similar to the actual sounds they’re singing.)
Not unless you have confirmation of that from the authors, it isn’t. I’m sure you’re a wonderful person with all sorts of redeeming qualities but, in this matter, I don’t give a wet fart what you think you hear.
I always thought it was flying spoon.
All Right Now by Free. I refuse to belive the line is not “Let’s move before they raise the fuckin’ rent.” Granted, I don’t think it makes any more sense than “parking rate,” but it sure sounds right.
That’s fine. I’d prefer it if you kept your farts to yourself, thenkyewverymuch.
Some of you folks need to go back and read the title of the thread:
Yes, I know that the posted lyrics say “flying spoon”. I’m sure cochrane knows what the supposedly correct lyrics are. We Know All This. But that’s not the point of this thread.
I agree that you are all crazy. It is of course “flying school”, with 1920’s-style barnstormers among the fantastical creatures. I’m sure of it.
And I missed the edit for the ‘s’ in my previous post. Agree that it is “Mrs” Henry McClean, with the song’s subject rocketeer inviting his sweetheart to come with him.
At the end of Black Sabbath’s “Paranoid”, I always heard:
I tell you to end your life.
I wish I could, but it’s too late.
All the online lyric sites seem to have:
I tell you to enjoy life.
I wish I could, but it’s too late.
If my version is not what Ozzy actually sang, it should have been. It is a lot more emotionally powerful, a lot more in the despairing spirit of the rest of the song (and the Sabbath oeuvre in general), and it scans better.
I think you are right. Personally, I originally heard it as “Martin”, but I am fairly sure I have seen it given as “Modern” somewhere fairly official, and it makes a lot of sense in context.
Not everyone by any means, not everyone in that thread, and certainly never for me.
I got the “pink champagne” from an album cover which had all the contained lyrics. This was around 1980.
And, here it is, about 3/4 of the way down on the right.
“Mirrors on the ceiling. The pink champagne on ice.”
Nice find, Leaffan. That should end a long standing SD debate.
Firmly disagree. While early iterations of the line do seem to drop the “my”, you can clearly hear the line in the version of the song you link. At the end of the song, around 3:08, they go into repeating that line. The My gets more clearly enunciated, the line is more clear.
There’s no f sound. “She feels it coming” doesn’t fit the song. He’s singing about realizing the situation is never going to work out, it’s time to move on.
“My ship isn’t coming and I just can’t pretend” that is it coming.
Waiting for my ship to come in also happens to be a well-worn turn of phrase for waiting for the big payoff, for success, “to win the lottery”. He’s clearly referring to that phrase.
It really sounds like “winging” to me, and as pointed out, that is a perfectly poetic word meaning flying.
I agree your line makes more sense. He’s clearly telling the audience they should be a musician like he is. The “if it were” line suggests he’s telling the audience they could be a musician if it were that easy, but it’s not that easy so they can’t be a musician. “There’s work easy as” tells the audience that being a musician is simple and relaxing, they can get into the game if they just realize it. It fits much better with the rest of the song.
Wait, it’s not “flying squirrel”? 
Hey, that works with all the other animals. But I’ll buy “flying school”.
Liner notes aren’t always right. There’s one for a Rush song, “Free Will”, the line goes
*You can choose a ready guide in some celestial voice. *
*If you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice. *
It’s very clear in the recording. However, my copy of the liner notes says something like
*You can choose a ready guide in some celestial voice. *
*If you still choose not to decide, you cannot have made a choice. *
I’ll go verify that, but that’s what I recall. However, in this instance I’ll take the liner notes saying “the pink champaigne on ice” over “depict” or dropping the “the”. In the common radio version there’s clearly a beat before “pink”. Sounds like “and” to me, but I’ll take “the”. Though the unplugged version drops the lead in beat.
Nope. Watch this one where you can see his lips, at least later in the song. He’s saying “My ship.”
Jimmy Buffett’s “Why Don’t We Get Drunk” - all the lyrics sites, and even some actual cites, have him singing “They say you are a snuff queen / Honey, I don’t think that’s true”.
Well, sorry, parrotheads, “snub queen” makes more sense, both linguistically and contextually. So I’m sticking with it.