At dinner on Friday, my excellent poet friend and I regaled everyone with a performance of the Barnes and Barnes song "Fish Heads," which I was so tickled to find she knew. I have finally remembered to go hunt out my own copy of "Fish Heads," after all these years. (My brother and I used to watch the Doctor Demento countdown every time it was on MTV, because "Fish Heads" was always the #1 video.)

For those of you who don't know the song, here's a taste, as it were, though one cannot get the full dementedness of the song from its lyrics alone. However, it reads not unlike Seussian absurd. Imagine many of these lines (chorus in particular) delivered in falsetto (a mid-post postscript, from Wednesday afternoon: go here, or to iTunes, for a sound sample).

Chorus:
Fish heads, fish heads,
Roly poly fish heads,
Fish heads, fish heads,
Eat them up, yum. (repeat!)

In the morning, laughing happy fish heads;
In the evening, floating in the soup. (chorus)

Ask a fish head anything you want to.
They won't answer. They can't talk. (chorus)

I took a fish head out to see a movie.
Didn't have to pay to get it in. (chorus)

They can't play baseball.
They don't wear sweaters.
They're not good dancers.
They don't play drums. (chorus)

[all in a rush:] Roly poly fish heads are never seen sipping cappuccino in Italian restaurants with Oriental women. Yeaaahhh.

(chorus)
(repeat)
(repeat again)
(repeat, sans music)
Yeah.

And there you have it. An anthem of my youth. If you only have time to check out one song I've referenced tonight, I wouldn't have this be the one (go for Hem!), but if you have the spare time, it's worth digging this one out, simply for the unbelievable weirdness of the thing.

source of tonight's image: I've gone easy on those who may feel squeamish about seeing actual fish heads; tonight's image is obviously of fake fish heads, from the Gallery of Functional Art.