This is a hauntingly beautiful song about introspection, specifically about looking back at a relationship that started bad and ended so poorly, that the narrator wants to go back to the very beginning and tell himself to not even travel down that road. I believe that the relationship started poorly because of the lines:
"Take me back to the night we met:When the night was full of terrors: And your eyes were filled with tears: When you had not touched me yet"
So, the first night was not a great start, but the narrator pursued the relationship and eventually both overcame the rough start to fall in love with each other:
"I had all and then most of you"
Like many relationships that turn sour, it was not a quick decline, but a gradual one where the narrator and their partner fall out of love and gradually grow apart
"Some and now none of you"
Losing someone who was once everything in your world, who you could confide in, tell your secrets to, share all the most intimate parts of your life, to being strangers with that person is probably one of the most painful experiences a person can go through. So Painful, the narrator wants to go back in time and tell himself to not even pursue the relationship.
This was the perfect song for "13 Reasons Why"
Boom boom acka-lacka lacka boom
Boom boom acka-lacka boom boom
It was a night like this forty million years ago
I lit a cigarette, picked up a monkey skull to go
The sun was spitting fire, the sky was blue as ice
I felt a little tired, so I watched Miami Vice
And walked the dinosaur, I walked the dinosaur
Open the door, get on the floor
Everybody walk the dinosaur
Open the door, get on the floor
Everybody walk the dinosaur
Open the door, get on the floor
Everybody walk the dinosaur
Open the door, get on the floor
Everybody walk the dinosaur
I met you in a cave, you were painting buffalo
I said I'd be your slave, follow wherever you go
That night we split a rattlesnake and danced beneath the stars
You fell asleep, I stayed awake and watched the passing cars
And walked the dinosaur, I walked the dinosaur
Open the door, get on the floor
Everybody walk the dinosaur
Open the door, get on the floor
Everybody walk the dinosaur
Open the door, get on the floor
Everybody walk the dinosaur
Open the door, get on the floor
Everybody walk the dinosaur
One night I dreamed of New York
You and I roasting blue pork
In the Statue of Liberty's torch
Elvis landed in a rocket ship
Healed a couple of leapers and disappeared
But where was his beard?
A shadow from the sky much too big to be a bird
A screaming crashing noise louder than I've ever heard
It looked like two big silver trees that somehow learned to soar
Suddenly a summer breeze and a mighty lion's roar
I killed the dinosaur, I killed the dinosaur
Open the door, get on the floor
Everybody kill the dinosaur
Open the door, get on the floor
Everybody kill the dinosaur
Open the door, get on the floor
Everybody kill the dinosaur
Open the door, get on the floor
Everybody kill the dinosaur
Repeat chorus 2 one time
Boom boom acka-lacka lacka boom
Boom boom acka-lacka boom boom
Boom boom acka-lacka boom boom
It was a night like this forty million years ago
I lit a cigarette, picked up a monkey skull to go
The sun was spitting fire, the sky was blue as ice
I felt a little tired, so I watched Miami Vice
And walked the dinosaur, I walked the dinosaur
Open the door, get on the floor
Everybody walk the dinosaur
Open the door, get on the floor
Everybody walk the dinosaur
Open the door, get on the floor
Everybody walk the dinosaur
Open the door, get on the floor
Everybody walk the dinosaur
I met you in a cave, you were painting buffalo
I said I'd be your slave, follow wherever you go
That night we split a rattlesnake and danced beneath the stars
You fell asleep, I stayed awake and watched the passing cars
And walked the dinosaur, I walked the dinosaur
Open the door, get on the floor
Everybody walk the dinosaur
Open the door, get on the floor
Everybody walk the dinosaur
Open the door, get on the floor
Everybody walk the dinosaur
Open the door, get on the floor
Everybody walk the dinosaur
One night I dreamed of New York
You and I roasting blue pork
In the Statue of Liberty's torch
Elvis landed in a rocket ship
Healed a couple of leapers and disappeared
But where was his beard?
A shadow from the sky much too big to be a bird
A screaming crashing noise louder than I've ever heard
It looked like two big silver trees that somehow learned to soar
Suddenly a summer breeze and a mighty lion's roar
I killed the dinosaur, I killed the dinosaur
Open the door, get on the floor
Everybody kill the dinosaur
Open the door, get on the floor
Everybody kill the dinosaur
Open the door, get on the floor
Everybody kill the dinosaur
Open the door, get on the floor
Everybody kill the dinosaur
Repeat chorus 2 one time
Boom boom acka-lacka lacka boom
Boom boom acka-lacka boom boom
Lyrics submitted by SurfingHobo
Walk the Dinosaur Lyrics as written by Donald E. Fagenson David Jay Weiss
Lyrics © Universal Music Publishing Group
Lyrics powered by LyricFind
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I think your first comment is closer to being accurate. The singer/song writers state "Millions of eyes can see, yet why am i so blind!? When the someone else is me, its unkind its unkind". I believe hes referring to the girl toying with him and using him. He wants something deeper with her, thats why he allows himself to be as a puppet (even though for her fun and games) as long as it makes her happy. But he knows deep down that she doesnt really want to be serious with him and thats what makes him.
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This song was originally written by a guy called Peter Gutteridge. He was one of the founders of the "Dunedin Sound" a musical scene in the south of New Zealand in the early 80s. From there it was covered by "The Clean" one of the early bands of that scene (he had originally been a member of in it's early days, writing a couple of their best early songs). The Dunedin sound, and the Clean became popular on american college radio in the mid to late 80s. I guess Yo La Tengo heard that version.
Great version of a great song,
No Surprises
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Same ideas expressed in Fitter, Happier are expressed in this song. We're told to strive for some sort of ideal life, which includes getting a good job, being kind to everyone, finding a partner, getting married, having a couple kids, living in a quiet neighborhood in a nice big house, etc. But in Fitter, Happier the narrator(?) realizes that it's incredibly robotic to live this life. People are being used by those in power "like a pig in a cage on antibiotics"--being pacified with things like new phones and cool gadgets and houses while being sucked dry. On No Surprises, the narrator is realizing how this life is killing him slowly. In the video, his helmet is slowly filling up with water, drowning him. But he's so complacent with it. This is a good summary of the song. This boring, "perfect" life foisted upon us by some higher powers (not spiritual, but political, economic, etc. politicians and businessmen, perhaps) is not the way to live. But there is seemingly no way out but death. He'd rather die peacefully right now than live in this cage. While our lives are often shielded, we're in our own protective bubbles, or protective helmets like the one Thom wears, if we look a little harder we can see all the corruption, lies, manipulation, etc. that is going on in the world, often run by huge yet nearly invisible organizations, corporations, and 'leaders'. It's a very hopeless song because it reflects real life.
I'm pretty confident that 'walk the dinosaur' is an old slang for choking the chicken. If you catch my meaning. Fits the rest of the lyrics - which are otherwise nonsensical - as well as the dancing in the music video.
My class in primary school had to dance to this song. :(
Is "Walk the Dinosaur" a euphemism for doing it?
I don't think so, because the singers are both male, and the lyrics seem to imply that the singer is "walking the dinosaur" by themselves.<br /> <br /> Also, the anachronisms seem to be intentionally put there.
@GromReaper Why the sad face? I mean, it's a wonderful song for kids, in my opinion.
(Bloody hell, why can't you edit your comments?)
I just noticed how many anachronisms there are in this song...
The beginning reminds me of being @ summer camp.
Another great 80's nuclear war tune
Walk the Dinosaur.” The latter was an infectious sing-along with a Flintstonesque video that probably got played on MTV way too much. But even that seemingly good-time anthem had a dark side.
“The song’s about nuclear Armageddon,” Jacobs says. “It became a dance because of the video. They connected it with the girls in the little Pebbles and Bam-Bam outfits. All the sudden it became, like, ‘do the mashed potato’ or ‘the twist.’”
So the song appears to be drawing a parallel between the extinction of the dinosaurs by the Chicxulub meteor and the potential extinction of humans by nuclear war (the "two big silver trees" being nuclear missiles). "Open the door, get on the floor" is a reference to the old civil defence advice to 'duck and cover' I think.
The earlier verses set up the narrator and his lady friend as living in a naive state of nature, like the dinosaurs or (anachronistically) cavemen. The final "kill the dinosaur" verse could be a plea for disarmament or it could be an ironic cheerleading of destruction.
Don't ask me what the Elvis verse is about though :-) Maybe "roasting blue pork" suggests eating a policeman post-apocalypse because there's no other food?
Compare & contrast with Captain Beefheart's "Smithsonian Institute Blues".
"Walk the Dinosaur" is a hit single recorded and released by the band Was (Not Was) in 1987, later featured on their hit 1988 album, What Up, Dog?
The song features a tight, funky sound, punctuated by horns and cowbell, along with what sounds like cavepeople chanting in the background, while the lyrics relate to life in prehistoric times. When released in the UK in 1987, the song reached #10 on the charts, becoming the group's first Top 10 hit there. After the music video to the song (which featured four scantily clad cavewomen dancing to the song, a Flintstones-style TV playing clips from Daffy Duck and the Dinosaur, and then modern people dancing to the song in the "Everybody kill the dinosaur" part) received heavy rotation on MTV, the song reached #7 on the U.S. charts in 1989, two years after its UK success. The song is the biggest hit single for the band in their home country.
George Clinton recorded a cover of "Walk the Dinosaur" which was the theme song for the 1993 film Super Mario Bros., with slightly modified lyrics to reference the film. This song appeared on the soundtrack of The Flintstones in 1994. "Walk the Dinosaur" featured in the soundtrack of 1989 comedy movie The Dream Team. Queen Latifah cut a cover version of the song for the Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs feature-length animated film (which also featured John Leguizamo, who previously appeared in Super Mario Bros., which the song appeared in). However, Queen Latifah's cover for the movie never made it onto the official soundtrack (also, the lyric "slave" was replaced with "friend" to make it more family-friendly). It was produced by Miami hitmakers Cool & Dre. Recently, samples of the song have been used at the end of commercial breaks on The Stephanie Miller Show, and also, a hint of the chorus was sampled by Tony Cha Cha and Sidney Samson for their 2009 song 'Get On The Floor'. Also, Matthew Wilkening of AOL Radio ranked the song at #61 on the list of the 100 Worst Songs Ever, warning the listeners to look out for a meteor, followed up with a "Boom! Boom! Aka-lacka-lacka-boom!" and the exaltation that the song "is knocked into extinction. Our ears are saved!" The song is used as background music in a shock site known as "Walk the Dinosaur" which depicts two dinosaurs in the 69 Position. In summer of 2011, a cover of Walk the Dinosaur was included in the animatronic show at Chuck E. Cheese's. The band members poked fun at the ambiguity of the name Was (Not Was). As of October 2011, the song can be heard in the prehistoric area of Disney's Animal Kingdom theme park. As well, a snippet of the tune can be heard during the Electrical Water Pageant float parade at Walt Disney World Resort in the Seven Seas Lagoon.