What will it profit a man if he gains the whole world and forfeits his soul? Or what shall a man give in return for his soul?
I find the second part quite interesting.
It's saying, Ok, so you did forfeit your soul to gain the whole world. And now you want your soul back? The 'whole world' that you gained isn't enough to purchase your soul back. So tell me, was it really worth it?
Who says they are parallel? In 3 dimensions, they might not intersect, even if they are not parallel. Now imagine the different directions in 100s of dimensions.
6) I have no idea what UPS is. Uninterrupted Pot Supply ?
4) is a butchered reference to Timothy Leary's LSD mantra, Turn On, Tune In and Drop Out
1) Code for time to go get stoned ? Hell if I know ...
2) and 3) are obvious and
5) we have figured out even if the Bircher's didn't. They probably thought it had something to do with getting high and adult men having sex with juvenile girls. I do remember that notion going around back then when the song first came out.
Yeah, it's weird how the wording is off; like the writer(s) heard the phrases mumbled from a distance or through a game of "telephone", (or translated from another language like those song comments from that guy "Calypsus"). We all heard and read "speed kills" but never "what does speed kill". I guess #1 could be a reference to a "promiscuous" woman?
No. (4) seems clearly related to No. (5), i.e. turn on the banana and let it vibrate. No?
No. (6) - U.P.S. musta been the Underground Press Syndicate, a network of alternative newspapers. They were all highly critical of US involvement in Vietnam, etc.
The Underground Press Syndicate (UPS), later known as the Alternative Press Syndicate (APS), was a network of countercultural newspapers and magazines formed in mid-1966 by the publishers of five early underground papers: the East Village Other, the Los Angeles Free Press, the Berkeley Barb, The Paper, and Fifth Estate. As it evolved, the Underground Press Syndicate created an Underground Press Service, and later its own magazine. For many years the Underground Press Syndicate was run by Tom Forcade, who later founded High Times magazine.
A UPS roster published in November 1966 listed 14 underground papers,<1> but within a few years the number had mushroomed. A 1971 roster, published in Abbie Hoffman's Steal This Book, listed 271 UPS-affiliated papers in the United States, Canada, and Europe.<2> According to historian John McMillian, writing in his 2010 book Smoking Typewriters, the underground press' combined readership eventually reached into the millions.<3>
The Rag was an underground newspaper published in Austin, Texas from 1966-1977. The weekly paper covered political and cultural topics that the conventional press ignored, such as the growing antiwar movement, the sexual revolution, gay liberation, and the drug culture. The Rag encouraged these political constituencies and countercultural communities to coalesce into a significant political force in Austin.
Space City! was an underground newspaper published in Houston, Texas from June 5, 1969 to August 3, 1972. The founders were Students for a Democratic Society veterans and former members of the staff of the Austin, Texas, underground newspaper, The Rag, one of the earliest and most influential of the Sixties underground papers. The original editorial collective was composed of Thorne Dreyer, who had been the founding "funnel" of The Rag in 1966; Victoria Smith, a former reporter for the St. Paul Dispatch; community organizers Cam Duncan and Sue Mithun Duncan; and radical journalists Dennis Fitzgerald and Judy Gitlin Fitzgerald.
...the rumour that one could get high from smoking dried banana skins was started by Country Joe McDonald in 1966, and Donovan heard the rumour three weeks before "Mellow Yellow" was released as a single. According to The Rolling Stone Illustrated Encyclopedia of Rock and Roll, he admitted later the song made reference to a vibrator; an "electrical banana" as mentioned in the lyrics.This definition was re-affirmed in an interview with NME magazine: "it's about being cool, laid-back, and also the electrical bananas that were appearing on the scene - which were ladies' vibrators." and Saffron is a mellow yellow seasoning ...
Yes, old Donovan liked citing color names in his songs - he even mispronounces "alizarin crimson" in "Where Your Love Like Heaven". Still, I wonder what the JBS were referring to.
6) I have no idea what UPS is. Uninterrupted Pot Supply ?
4) is a butchered reference to Timothy Leary's LSD mantra, Turn On, Tune In and Drop Out
1) Code for time to go get stoned ? Hell if I know ...
2) and 3) are obvious and
5) we have figured out even if the Bircher's didn't. They probably thought it had something to do with getting high and adult men having sex with juvenile girls. I do remember that notion going around back then when the song first came out.
...the rumour that one could get high from smoking dried banana skins was started by Country Joe McDonald in 1966, and Donovan heard the rumour three weeks before "Mellow Yellow" was released as a single. According to The Rolling Stone Illustrated Encyclopedia of Rock and Roll, he admitted later the song made reference to a vibrator; an "electrical banana" as mentioned in the lyrics.<8> This definition was re-affirmed in an interview with NME magazine: "it's about being cool, laid-back, and also the electrical bananas that were appearing on the scene - which were ladies' vibrators."<9>
and Saffron is a mellow yellow seasoning ...
Yes, old Donovan liked citing color names in his songs - he even mispronounces "alizarin crimson" in "Wear Your Love Like Heaven". Still, I wonder what the JBS were referring to, those terms could be of what they considered "deviant" sexual practices.
I don't know either - the minds of our children are doomed! Though I thought 'mellow yellow' was referring to the fruitless (pun intended) practice of smoking banana peels to get high.
the rumour that one could get high from smoking dried banana skins was started by Country Joe McDonald in 1966, and Donovan heard the rumour three weeks before "Mellow Yellow" was released as a single. According to The Rolling Stone Illustrated Encyclopedia of Rock and Roll, he admitted later the song made reference to a vibrator; an "electrical banana" as mentioned in the lyrics.[8] This definition was re-affirmed in an interview with NME magazine: "it's about being cool, laid-back, and also the electrical bananas that were appearing on the scene - which were ladies' vibrators."[9]
>> Urine that is left to settle in a toilet bowl. Comes from the energy saving saying that goes "if its yellow, let it mellow. if its brown, flush it down." << (Source)
In my youth days, there was a choice of doobage around, coming from Lebanon that was yellowish in color and somewhat mild. It was what I associated in my mind then with Donovan's song, not knowing people would actually venture to smoke banana peels!
Oh, well...
I don't think the toilet connotation was what the John Birch Society would have been referring to as an evil menace in 1967. I imagine the majority of those "code words" had some drug-related meanings, (or at least the ultraconservative, ultra-paranoid members of the JBS thought so), so maybe there was some LSD- or pot-related meaning to "mellow yellow",
