The Big Bright Green Pleasure Machine - Gerry & The Pacemakers ( 1966 )

[rslitman]

I'm thinking of putting together a playlist of "Songs You May Know By Simon and Garfunkel", and if I do it, I'll add this song to it.

[eydie57]

grow up? never! as john mellencamp says, "growing up leads to growing old and then to dying, and dying to me never seemed to be all that much fun." let's agree to disagree. it's just opinion, anyway. songs are very personal to me and i see meaning in everything. if you don't, then that's you and that's cool. truce.

[eydie57]

precisely what is the big green pleasure machine? is this code for something? what am i missing?

[amylNRG]

It's not code for anything. It's just another stupid 60s song, and the "big bright green pleasure machine" is just more or less nonsense syllables like "ding-a ding-a dong" in a Eurovision song. It has no meaning, which is why the song failed to chart and is now forgotten.

[leonaofficial]

Far from being forgotten, the original of this Paul Simon composition is from the Simon & Garfunkel 1966 album Parsley Sage Rosemary & Thyme . The song may seem slight on the surface ( as it would to musical idiots ) but is an anti-war song that reflects the joy at being alive and the optimism of youth in a time of crisis ( the Vietnam War ).

Ps when does a song have to have a meaning to chart LOL !

[eydie57]

@leonaofficial thank you, now that's info i was looking for. and it's written by paul simon and i know for sure that he doesn't write stupid anything.

[eydie57]

@amylNRG well, since you didn't write the song, i don't think you can say for absolute certain that it doesn't mean anything. and lots of really good songs don't chart and lots of horrible songs do chart, so that's not valid either. but thanks for writing.

[amylNRG]

@eydie57

Nonsense, of course I can say that it doesn't have a meaning, because it doesn't. It may have a _private meaning_ to the writer, but that doesn't give it meaning in the general sense of the word. Say I type the phrase "blah-di-blah". Any rational person would say this has no meaning, even if I give it the private meaning of "I want a banana". Meaning only exists when it is communicated: the process of ascribing meaning requires two minds communicating. This song doesn't do that.

[eydie57]

@amylNRG so it doesn't have a meaning for you. i maintain that many awesome songs don't chart and one look at today's music illustrates that garbage does plenty of charting.

[eydie57]

@amylNRG the funny thing is, i don't even like this song, but i'm starting to feel protective of it.

[eydie57]

@amylNRG if meaning only exists when it is communicated between two minds and paul wrote the song for a special someone, then that's two minds, thus, meaning. we just don't happen to understand the meaning because we weren't in on it.

[amylNRG]

@eydie57

Oh, grow up! If that's the best you can come up with, what's the point?

Asserting that there's some hidden meaning that neither you nor I can observe is like a child asserting the existence of the Easter bunny: you can't see him, but you say he's there because to believe otherwise would require you to face a truth that doesn't fit your world-view. Look at the facts you can observe, rather than asserting some fiction unsupported by evidence.

[leonaofficial]

@amylNRG - as you like gay related & hi-energy songs I dread to think what you were searching for on youtube that made you look up` big bright green pleasure machine `!

[amylNRG]

A martian with something entertaining...

[rslitman]

I thought I had remembered "Girl on a Swing" coming out in the U.S. near the tail end of 1966, which would have made it later than this one, but I just looked that one up, and it entered the Billboard Hot 100 on Sept. 10, 1966. (I almost typed it in U.S. abbreviated date form as 9/10/66, but for some people, that is October 9, which makes a difference in this case.)

[YCSMusic]

Possibly not commercial enough to chart, which makes it all the more interesting to listen to in my book, I thought it was a very decent track.

[45rpmSINGLES]

Yes I agree quite often the songs that havent charted are more interesting than those we are all familiar with.