It is partly a medley of Soft Machine's older songs and other related stuff, or at least lyrically it is.
The "Now I love your eyes - see how the time flies" verse is from "You Don't Remember"
The section about living in New York reflects the end of their US tour with Hendrix when the band split and Wyatt stayed in America considering a solo career before deciding he missed the trees and the rain!
In the final section he sings a few lyrics of former Soft Machine member Kevin Ayers' songs. There's a bit of The Hat Song - "You say you like my shirt, you say you like my hat, but you never say that you like me or anything nice like that". This may have summed up some of Robert Wyatt's feelings about the band. This was his last major contribution to Soft Machine as he gradually parted company with the others' vision of the band. Similarly, Ayers' lyrics from Singing A Song in the Morning show a tendency to prefer the original formula of songs with proper words, even if they didn't mean very much.
It has so many of the ingredients that made early Soft Machine great - the humour, the way Robert Wyatt could sing something almost mundane about the nature of the song, something nonsensical (or pataphysical) or something with meaning. "Oh wait a minute!"
It's worth knowing that Robert Wyatt recorded nearly all of the sung part on his own - all drums, bass and keyboards. Then just at the end of this section, Hugh Hopper's fuzz bass kicks in and Mike Ratledge goes off on a massive solo which kicks more arse than anything he did since.
It is partly a medley of Soft Machine's older songs and other related stuff, or at least lyrically it is.
The "Now I love your eyes - see how the time flies" verse is from "You Don't Remember"
The section about living in New York reflects the end of their US tour with Hendrix when the band split and Wyatt stayed in America considering a solo career before deciding he missed the trees and the rain!
In the final section he sings a few lyrics of former Soft Machine member Kevin Ayers' songs. There's a bit of The Hat Song - "You say you like my shirt, you say you like my hat, but you never say that you like me or anything nice like that". This may have summed up some of Robert Wyatt's feelings about the band. This was his last major contribution to Soft Machine as he gradually parted company with the others' vision of the band. Similarly, Ayers' lyrics from Singing A Song in the Morning show a tendency to prefer the original formula of songs with proper words, even if they didn't mean very much.
It has so many of the ingredients that made early Soft Machine great - the humour, the way Robert Wyatt could sing something almost mundane about the nature of the song, something nonsensical (or pataphysical) or something with meaning. "Oh wait a minute!"
It's worth knowing that Robert Wyatt recorded nearly all of the sung part on his own - all drums, bass and keyboards. Then just at the end of this section, Hugh Hopper's fuzz bass kicks in and Mike Ratledge goes off on a massive solo which kicks more arse than anything he did since.