Very Distraughtening

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Lyrics


Ronnie Williams: Buh-bah-bahdn
Spider: Oh!
John: There it went again..
Spider: It's a little pig . . . with wings
Pig With Wings: EE . . .
Gross Man: I hear you've been having trouble with pigs and ponies!
Left channel:
Calvin: To . . . just the opposite . . . going around to the other direction
Right channel:
Calvin: How 'bout us, don't we get any?
Gail: We don't get any . . .
Calvin: That's very distraughtening
Gail: We don't get any because we're otherwise
Spider: Everything in the universe is . . . is . . . is made of one element, which is a note, a single note. Atoms are really vibrations, you know, which are extensions of THE BIG NOTE, everything's one note. Everything, even the ponies. The note, however, is the ultimate power, but see, the pigs don't know that, the ponies don't know that. Right?
Monica: You mean just we know that?
Spider: Right!
Spider: "Merry Go Round! Merry Go Round! Do-Do-Do-Do Do-Do-Do Do-Do-Do!" and they called that "doing their thing."
John: Oh yeah, that's what doing your thing is!
Spider: The thing is to put a motor in yourself.

Players On This Song

Records On Which This Song Has Appeared

Singles

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Tribute & Cover Albums

Notes About This Song

The second half’s opening vocal that sounds like it’s coming from a drunk guy trying to sing along with the mainstream music that’s been darting in and out -- something like “ba-BOMP-BODDY!” -- will, with the release of The Lost Episodes, reveal itself to be a fragment of “Ronnie Sings?”, a recording of Frank’s boyhood friend Ronnie Williams (who introduced him to Paul Buff of Pal Studios, which would become Studio Z) making rough-throated scat sounds to Frank’s guitar accompaniment in an Ontario living room in 1961 or ‘62. Ronnie’s booger-saving, fart-lighting and accidental urine-creature-making activities are among the subjects of “Let’s Make the Water Turn Black” on the Money album; that song also cuts momentarily to the voice. It figures into the plot here as a “little pig with wings” (even though it sounds more like a goat with emphysema).

The pig will fly around inside the piano again on Civilization, Phaze III. In 1975, Frank will record a long, comical piece called “The Adventures of Greggery Peccary,” concerning a pig who sits in his office and comes up with trends to sell to the world’s youth. When talking about the pigs not being able to question any part of their system, lest their livelihoods be threatened (the perspective-clouding “smoke” must be kept stationary), Spider mentions “that thing on their neck,” a precursor to the tie markings on Greggery.

The stanza that ends with “Just one more time” features Captain Beefheart’s vocals from Studio Z, circa 1963.

CC Clues In This Song