The Wrong Side of the Sky

Ok, this song is all Mad Magazine's fault. Really.

You see, they did a satirical piece once on television network programming executives. And one of the games that they played was "Turnabout", where you would take a concept and turn it inside out. Thus, "The Beverly Hillbillies" turned inside out becomes "Green Acres".

So if you've been writing songs about wanting to go to space, what's the turnabout on that? And here we are.

	D       C          G
	See the land of my fathers
	D       C         G            Em
	Hanging there overhead, oh, so high.
	C          D            G            Em
	Blue-green world that's beckoning to me,
	        C              D                 G
	But I'm trapped on the wrong side of the sky.

G                    D           C             D
My parents came from Terra about thirty years ago
       Em             Am                D         Em
With a thousand other colonists to make Luna City grow.
    F               G             F                G
And all of them had children, for they had come to stay,
    Em            Am        F         Em
And we grew up on Luna in a Luna City way.

Our parents spoke of Terra, of the world where they'd begun,
Of air and water flowing free beneath a golden sun.
We'd walk upon the pumice in our spacesuits full of air,
And they'd point to the heavens saying, "We came from there."

(chorus)

Luna City prospered, the colony did grow,
But we longed to visit Terra – then the Board said, "You may go.
You've earned the right to travel.  We'll pay your way to Earth."
But death's the price of passage for a child of Lunar birth.

(chorus)

All the things they told us of are things we'll never see,
For none of Luna's children can stand Terra's gravity.
So we stay here in exile beneath our Lunar dome
And curse the ones who taught us that sweet Terra was our home.

(chorus)

I'm trapped on the wrong side of the sky.