Genetic engineering has been in the news, on and off, for a heck of a long time. e.g. 25 years ago at the time of writing (February 2018).
I wrote this very ambitious lyric for NewsRevue back then.
I mistakenly didn’t think it had been used – the show was chock full of my songs at that time anyhow and I wrote this early in a new run.
Normally a song needed to be spectacularly good to displace established material.
I don’t think this is spectacular, but there are some good lines in there, though I say so myself…
…and Mark Bowden and his cast seemed to like my stuff a lot. Anyway, you can judge for yourselves:
MATING A BULL WITH A HEFFER
(To the Tune of “Stairway to Heaven”)
VERSE 1
There are breeders who show X and Y Chromosomes,
And they’re mating a bull with a heffer;
The sperm’s sex they confirm just by dying the sperm,
And dividing a pair with electrons.
Ooohhh, ooohhh, and they’re finding a fair way to sex them.
VERSE 2
Now the ladys who know fertilise in vitro,
With a polymerase chain reaction;
The girls check on the sex of the sprog that’s due next,
But their fellows miss out on the action.
Ooohhh and it makes me wonder, whooohhh is going to fund ‘er?
MIDDLE BIT ONE
Once they have dyed and charged the sperm up, in a tea cup,
I’m gonna put my new blue genes on;
But this genetic engineering has me fearing,
If this world is still where I belong.
Ooohhh and it makes me wonder, ooohhh suppose they blunder:
MIDDLE BIT TWO
They’ll cross a mussel with a hedgehog, you’ll hear alarm bells,
Now Sonic plays DNA games;
Led Zeppelin’s lyrics are pretentious, and if you’re drunk,
You may imagine that their words rhyme.
CLIMAX
And once they’re further down the road,
Geneticists will write a tome,
Then buy and sell genetic code,
Cos they will know human genome,
And once the scheme of youth is sold,
We’ll live to be ten thousand old,
And once our aging process’ slowed,
We’ll spawn a twenty legg-ed toad,
French restaurants will buy a load.
And they’re breeding a pear with a head on.
(Lead singer holds up a grotesque effigy which is a talking doll covered with a large plastic pear. The doll says “Mama” and the lights blackout)
Here is a vid of Led Zeppelin performing Stairway To Heaven, with lyrics: