Lyr Add: Run the Film Backwards (Sydney Carter)

Subject: Lyr Add: RUN THE FILM BACKWARDS (Sydney Carter)
From: Jack Blandiver
Date: 27 Jul 10 - 09:39 AM

Funny the songs that get into your head, and none funnier than this one, in terms of that quirky peculiarity that typifies the work of Sydney Carter. A search online reveals a slightly different set of words to be sung to the tune of Grandfather's Clock, but these here are transcribed this from Sydney Carter's singing on And Now it is So Early and sung to a far more interesting tune with hand-drum accompaniment. I'll be assimilating it presently for a future YouTube presentation, meanwhile here's the lyrics.

RUN THE FILM BACKWARDS - Sydney Carter

When I was 87 they took me from my coffin;
They found a flannel night-shirt for me to travel off in.
Innocent and toothless, I used to lie in bed;
Still trailing clouds of glory from the time when I was dead.

The cruel age of 65 put paid to my enjoyment;
I had to get a bowler hat and go to my employment.
But at the age of 60, I found I had a wife,
And that explains the children I'd wondered all my life.

I kept on growing younger, and randier and stronger
'Til at the age of 21 I had a wife no longer.
With mini-skirted milk-maids I frolicked in the clover;
The cuckoo kept on calling me until my teens were over.

Then algebra and cricket, and sausages a-cooking,
And puffing on a cigarette when teacher wasn't looking.
The trees are getting taller, the streets are getting wider;
And mother is a world to me - and soon I'll be inside her.

And now it is so early, there's nothing I can see,
Before the world or after - wherever can I be?

Subject: RE: Lyr Add: Run the Film Backwards (Sydney Carter)
From: Jim Dixon
Date: 28 Jul 10 - 12:43 PM

Lyrics to RUN THE FILM BACKWARDS were previously posted in here and here in Dec. 1998.

Subject: RE: Lyr Add: Run the Film Backwards (Sydney Carter)
From: GUEST,Suibhne Astray
Date: 28 Jul 10 - 01:04 PM

Not quite, Jim. If you'd bothered to read my OP you'd realise the lyrics here are as sung by Sydney Carter on the album And Now it is So Early, wheras the lyrics on the other posts are quite different. They may be Carter's own variations, they may be modified by other singers, but whatever the case I much prefer these, coming as they do from the horses mouth, and most certainly not to the tune of Grandfather's Clock!

Subject: RE: Lyr Add: Run the Film Backwards (Sydney Carter)
From: Jim Dixon
Date: 30 Jul 10 - 11:52 AM

Well, now I have re-read your first message carefully, and I see nothing there that would have precluded me from linking your lyrics to the other lyrics.

Regardless of whether your lyrics are better or worse, newer or older, a little different, a lot different, or exactly the same as the other lyrics, it will likely be useful to future users of Mudcat to have all related versions of a song linked together.

Better yet, they should all be in the same thread, but since I don't have the power to combine threads, or move messages from one thread to another, and I don't like having duplicate copies of the same lyrics in different places on Mudcat, the best I can do is create links as I did.

I hope you understand.

Subject: RE: Lyr Add: Run the Film Backwards (Sydney Carter)
From: GUEST,Suibhne Astray
Date: 30 Jul 10 - 07:38 PM

In which case the best thing you could do would be to post the other version here as neither of the other threads concern the song as such, then they all would be in the same thread.