‘Ventura Highway’
“…The nights are stronger than moonshine”
How can a night be…strong?
Q: “How was your night dear?”
A: “Strong”
Okaayyyyyy…
“Welcome home, hon. How was your walk?”
“Very nice. No alligator lizards in the air.”
“What’s it like out?”
“The night is strong.”
“Really? As strong as a hearty merlot?”
“Naaah, stronger.”
“Kentucky Bourbon?”
“Keep going…”
"Are you saying… the night’s stronger than moonshine?”
“'Fraid so.”
“Well, then, close the door! And don’t let the dog out.”
“… and don’t forget to give your horse a name.”
Yeah, I don’t know why I can’t stay away from these threads with post after post of:
“I hate metaphor”
“There’s no place for fun in music”
“‘Texas’ doesn’t rhyme with ‘facts is’”
Can you image how dead music would be if these people got their way?
copied from Wikipedia:
Dewey Bunnell, the song’s vocalist and writer, has said that the lyric “alligator lizards in the air” in the song is a reference to the shapes of clouds in the sky he saw in 1963 while his family was driving down the coast from Vandenberg Air Force Base near Lompoc, California, where they had a flat tire. While his father changed the tire, his brother and he stood by the side of the road and watched the clouds and saw a road sign for “Ventura”
Say what you want, but if you’re supporting a song that rhymes “bowl” with “cereal”**, I won’t even know where to start with you. This is a very real song of great realness and is so dreadful that I shan’t link it because I am not that cruel. But if you feel masochistic, you’re free to look up “Friday” on your own.
** The rhyme was “bo’” and “cere-o” for the record.
Those two muskrats were screwing on the front lawn again.
America must win this thread. “Tin Man,” anyone?
But Oz never did give nothing to the Tin Man
That he didn’t, didn’t already have
And cause never was the reason for the evening
Or the tropic of Sir Galahad
So please believe in me
When I say I’m spinning 'round, 'round, 'round, 'round
Smoke glass stain’d bright colors
Image going down, down, down, down
Soapsud green like bubbles
Yeah, that is … remarkable.
And yet their consistently nonsense lyrics have never impeded my enjoyment of their radio singles.
I’d like your blue eyed horseshoe
I’d like your emerald horny toad
I’d like to do it to your daughter on a dirt road
Actually, these make perfect sense to me.
Did you ever see the “Making of” video?
From “Banana Boat:”
A beautiful bunch of ripe bananas!
Who puts RIPE bananas on a banana boat? Are they sure it wasn’t a fruit fly boat?
LMAO !! Thanks for that 
When I was a kid growing up within walking distance of the Ventura Highway, when that song was a current radio hit, it was a well known ‘fact’ that Alligator lizards would jump out of trees and land on your head, just sayin’.
Thank you!
Almost all the lyrics of “Barracuda.”
“Sell me, sell you” the porpoise said
Dive down deep to save my head,
You, I think you got the blues too
All that night and all the next
Swam without looking back
Made for the western pools, silly, silly fools.
China Girl by David Bowie has a couple…
I stumble into town just like a sacred cow
Visions of swastikas in my head
???
My little China Girl you shouldn’t mess with me
I’ll ruin everything you are
That is kind of harsh and doesn’t fit the rest of the song.
The thing I always found exceptionally weird about T-Rex is that they have a LOT of songs about cars, even though Marc Bolan apparently did not drive a car (easy to do if you live in London) and yet he wound up dying in a car accident in which he was the passenger. I can think of a number of other Bolan songs involving cars. Jeepster, which is a sort of primitive touring-car made by the Willys/Jeep company; Buick McClane; he claims to drive a Rolls-Royce (because it’s “good for my voice”) in Children of the Revolution; and then the aforementioned Bang a Gong where he makes a rather odd comparison of a woman’s body with a car. (Rather remarkably, with his phrase “diamond star” he even managed to inadvertently name-drop a Chysler-Mitsubishi joint venture that wouldn’t come into being until eight years after his death. I know they’re just two flowery words, but what are the odds?!)
It’s David Bowie. He strung together surreal stream-of-consciousness stories that nevertheless coalesced into a coherent message when considered as a whole. “China Girl” is heroin. He has a love-hate relationship with it. It helps him escape; he’s a mess without it; it makes him feel “tragic like Marlon Brando”; the line about stumbling into town could either point to a spiritual experience (the “sacred cow” line could suggest that the “swastikas” are the Hindu or Buddhist variety) or feeling like he’s living in a dystopian Nazi scenario (Bowie had admitted a fascination with the drama and pageantry of the Nazis, though he was certainly no racist.) And finally, he’s pissed at the China Girl heroin for fucking up his life, and wishes he could exact some kind of revenge (I’ll ruin everything you are) but ultimately as the song returns to the same refrain that opens it, it seems he just can’t break free. It’s Bowie we’re talking about here. Everything he sung about had meaning.
Except The Bewlay Brothers?
Bowie himself is said to have told producer Ken Scott that it was a track for the American market, because “the Americans always like to read things into things”, even though the lyrics “make absolutely no sense”
j
ETA wink - just funning with ya!
Yes, but have you considered the fact that “pompatus” isn’t even a real word?