Two marvellous birds from the Zoo
©Giliell, all rights reserved
©Giliell, all rights reserved
And as an unrelated bonus:
A video I stumbled across indulging in my love for Peter, Paul and Mary: Puff, the Magic Dragon.
What I love about the performance isn’t so much the artists, but the audience who is singing along, or at least mouthing the words, from the toddler to the grandpa.
Back in the days where schoolkids sang songs about smoking opium…
@1 Marcus
Authors adamantly declare it isn’t any such thing, and given that it originated in 1959 -- when the Red Scare and public prudery were in ascendance and drug use as counterculture wasn’t yet mainstream -- I am inclined to believe them. It’s a sad song about the loss of innocence, and the whole drug thing comes from the same kind of conspiracy theorists who think every Beatles song, practically every rock song, has to be about drugs too.
It is, in fact, a song about turning from the sort of person who hears the story about a dragon and a little kid into the kind of person who hears edginess and hidden corruption in everything.
I once saw an animated version of “Puff” that was just a series of drawings of Jackie Paper and his dragon buddy, illustrating the events described in the song. But the makers were obviously concerned that the last verse was too depressing for little kids, because they added a couple drawings at the very end, showing Jackie returning to a revived and delighted Puff. I was aghast… It was a real “unclear on the concept” moment.