I have been told that some people don’t understand the “semolina pilchard” references. So, for all of you that are not up on the latest popular music, I’ll help to get you current as of 1967.

Semolina: (noun) The gritty coarse particles of wheat left after the finer flour has passed through a bolting machine, used for pasta. [Alteration of Italian semolino, diminutive of semola, bran, from Latin simila, fine flour, ultimately of Semitic origin. See smd in Semitic Roots.]

Pilchard: (noun) 1: small fatty fish usually canned [syn: sardine] 2: small fishes found in great schools along coasts of Europe; smaller and rounder than herring [syn: sardine, Sardina pilchardus]

So, semolina pilchard is pasta bran-sardines. Makes perfect sense, right? But you already knew that.

John Lennon put these words together in I Am The Walrus (lyrics exactly from the liner notes):

Semolina pilchard climbing up the Eiffel Tower.

Elementry penguin singing Hare Krishna man you should have seen them kicking Edgar Allen POE.

I am the eggman, they are the eggmen — I am the walrus GOO GOO GOO JOOB

GOO GOO GOO JOOB GOO

GOOGOOOOOOOOOOOJOOOOOB

Supposedly the story behind this song is that Lennon was visiting a friend who showed him a newspaper report on how English teachers were assigning students the task of analyzing the meaning behind Beatles lyrics. (”What does ‘Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds’ really mean? Write five pages double spaced for Monday. Extra credit for avoiding drug references.”)

Lennon found it interesting that people were searching for meaning in what he wrote, and so he purposefully set out to write the most bizarre juxtaposition of meaningless lyrics that he possibly could. He was throwing down the gauntlet to those pretentious people who were seeking for meaning behind his lyrics, in essence saying, “OK, try to find the meaning of this!” I Am The Walrus is the result.

What has been greatly neglected by music historians is the link between I Am The Walrus and other classic, ground breaking songs that came before.

I Am The Walrus is not the first song to use nonsense lyrics. Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy of Company B is a song Lennon would have undoubtable known. Notice the similarities of the nonsense lines, particularly the use of the double O.

A-toot a-toot, a-toot diddle-ee-ada-toot

He blows it eight to the bar

In boogie rhythm

He can’t blow a note unless the bass and guitar

Is playin’ with ‘im

He makes the company jump when he plays reveille

He’s the boogie-woogie bugle boy of Company B

A-toot a-toot. Goo goo. Do you really think it is just a coincidence?

But even more significant is the similarities to the classic childhood song, Fuzzy Wuzzy:

Fuzzy Wuzzy was a bear.

Fuzzy Wuzzy had no hair.

Fuzzy Wuzzy wasn’t fuzzy, was he?

In the standard version of this song, it begins with just the recitation of the facts. We start with the name of the bear. Fuzzy Wuzzy. Then we learn the surprising fact that the bear is in fact bald. We are forced to admit that the song has by the second line taken us on an unexpected tangent. But we are still in the realm of facts. Then the song takes a truly bizarre turn in revealing that the name of the bear can be understood to be a contradiction of the previously established facts through the clever manipulation of a pun. The listener is left with a feeling of conflict as the name and the facts clearly do not go together in an understandable way.

Just as Fuzzy Wuzzy’s name doesn’t go with his lack of hair, semolina and pilchard do not go together in any understandable way. But Lennon goes one step further than the notable author of Fuzzy Wuzzy, for on top of the dissonance of putting semolina and pilchard together, Lennon has them climbing the Eiffel Tower, leaving us dizzy with the confusion.

As a matter of fact, we are so confused that you might find us sitting on a cornflake, waiting for the van to come.