Buying the LPs sampled on Nice Enough to Eat (the last one!)
Track 3 on Side 2 is “Ship of Fools” (6.18 or 6.56). This is a truly excellent song, and clearly may have something to do with The Serene Boy. Indeed, the surreal lyrics, which loosely concern a ship on sail, could well be seen a a sung interpretation of the back cover. An oft-repeated refrain is: “Sound the foghorn horn”; and this must be the only song to include the phrase “We need a metal surgeon”.
Track 4 is the penultimate song on the LP, and is “Frosty Mornings” (3.59), another excellent tune. Although it has a deliberately childish feel to it, the song is far from infantile, and is an absolutely perfect example of hippie folk.
The LP ends with Track 5, the longest on the LP at 8.48, the epic “Donnybrook Fair”. This is an excellent song, and a brilliant way of ending the album. Basically, it is in two sections, the first being about 3 times longer than the second. The first section is a tremendously cheerful “hippies do Dubliners” surreal ballad, in which the unicorn is a starring character. It will be recalled that in the picture on the back cover, the knight in the sub-waterline cut out section of the hull is riding a unicorn.
The second section starts with a jaunty rendition of the first verse of the old Christian hymn “The King of Love my Shepherd is” repeated in a partly spoken version, which is followed by the following verse, to the same jaunty tune:
What will ye have? Will ye have a pint?
I’ll have a pint with you, sir,
And if somebody doesn’t order soon
We’ll be thrown out of the boozer.”
There is then a repetition of the hymn verse, wholly spoken, and the song concludes with an absolutely straight sung church service version, the last word on the LP being an angelic “Amen”.
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