A Globe of Frogs Releases Gigs Lyrics Comments

Details

Author
Robyn Hitchcock
Versions
Electric
According to our records, Robyn has played this song 143 times, most recently at Knuckleheads on March 22, 2025. He first performed it at Maxwell's on July 13, 1987, 37 years and 8 months earlier.

Comments

A Globe of Frogs Revisited on Substack, January 2025.

From Robyn on Patreon in 2023:
I made this song up directly onto a cassette recorder in the summer of 1987 on a cloudy afternoon on the Isle of Wight. When I finished I wound back the tape and transcribed the words and chords into my note book: there it was, complete, like the globe itself. It’s a swarming hymn to fertility, the pulse of existence and the goddess of all things. Mrs Watson was a teacher at my children’s school, and I pictured her at the centre of a green glass terrarium, surrounded by vibrant life forms. Of course, quite a few of them become unhinged - stability is not a given. Some of them are hybrids too, like the sphinx, the angel and the manticore; Mrs Watson is at the epicentre of possibility. The bleak reality ahead is plastic chairs and fossilised breakfasts, most likely - but, being a mad old hippie, I prefer to believe in an accelerated green explosion that will carpet this globe - and other globes like it - with pure Being. The tadpole army slithers on.

Too much to ask? Perhaps, but it’s worth asking; you never know who or what is listening to your prayers. Artificial Intelligence may be our legacy, our salvation, our downfall or merely another option; if it cannot die it will never live. Think you’re way out of that one, Huertbise.

Some reviewers said this song reminded them of The Incredible String Band - a neat observation; the ISB were much possessed by the magic of existence. I’d love to think that ‘Globe of Frogs’ is descended from ISB incantations like ‘Three Is A Green Crown’ and ‘A Very Cellular Song’. The version on the A&M album has some of their sound, definitely. With the Egyptians and Peter Buck I also recorded a rock version which was on the B-side of “Balloon Man” - I keep meaning to listen to it on YouTube.

Soon afterwards, my own personal globe began to crack and America seeped into my life - it had always been lying in wait, and indeed was already bankrolling me. My mythology changed to absorb cities, airports, hotels and highways, and a different kind of goddess. Rock’n’roll had come out of the USA anyway, along with The Green Lantern, Bob Dylan, TS Eliot, Captain Beefheart and William Burroughs; there was no way I could avoid all that, and by the end of the 1980s I was extremely fuelled by Uncle Sam.

These days I’m quite fond of my old British songs - but I think this might have been the last of them…

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Excerpt from interview included on 4/4/88 gig page:
"It's a whole vision conceived in a courtyard where there's a homoerotic sculpted statue, like the Narcissus of legend. He has two red eyes that light up. There are leafy fronds and sensual looking shrubbery and little things in the water, frog images. The statue's fingers begin to drip, like wax, into the water."

Translation? "It's about a soul waiting to be made flesh. When two people are out there (making love), they really want to have a baby; the soul has the urge to incarnate. Now don't misunderstand. I'm not preaching; I'm a totally earthly person. I'm seeing it from the soul's point of view, like planes waiting to land."

Lyrics

And when she feeds the flowers
Up they rise their pretty little heads
And when she waters them
They glow and smirk and smile in their beds
And in a globe of frogs, they're making love and looking on
And in a globe of frogs, they're making love and moving on

And when she walks across the floorboards
How they creak and ooze and moan  (I want you)
And when she walks across the floorboards
They're so glad she's on her own
And in a globe of frogs, we lie on sack and moving on?
And in a globe of frogs, we lie on dark and saying

"Mrs. Watson, all your children have been certified insane,
And I want you."

And when the night comes down
The houses close their doors and dream of her
Their shuttered eyes are closed
Inside their curtains wrap around her form
And in a globe of frogs, we're linking tongues and moving on
And in a globe of frogs, you know what's right, you know it

"Mrs. Watson, you've been certified as good as gold,
And I want you
Yeah, I want you"

Ain't you never seen a disembodied soul before?
Ain't you never seen a soul seeking incarnation in formation?

And when she feeds the fish
They flip and jerk and wriggle in the pond (I want you)
And when she hands them things
They all perk up and nibble on her thumb
And in a globe of frogs, the moth unfurls its moistened wings
And in a globe of frogs, a soul appears, the word made flesh

<Notes>
"It could well be a reference to Syd Barrett's 'Wolfpack' which includes the line:  "Howling the wolfpack appear in formation, in formation"  Could be? I think the repetition might have put him in mind of this line." Mike Godwin on Line 25