Rocks and Water
Songs & Lyrics

Children's music about Earth Science
by Chris Rawlings

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About the Album
Audio Clips
Reviews
Side One
1. Rock Cycle Rock (3:22)
   
lyrics | version française | audio clip
2. Saturated Zone (3:09)
   lyrics | version française | audio clip
3. Living on a Layer Cake (3:14)
   lyrics
4. Transformation (2:54)
   lyrics
5. Sweet and Sour Rain (3:14)
   lyrics
6. La Methode Scientifique (2:32)
   lyrics
7. Wetland Wonderland (3:10)
   lyrics | version française | audio clip
Side Two
1. Some Mountains (3:40)
   lyrics
2. Groundwater Song (3:05)
   lyrics | audio clip
3. I am a Raindrop (3:20)
   lyrics
4. By the Sea (3:24)
   lyrics
5. Les Planètes (3:03)
   lyrics
6. Earth Chant (3:20)
   lyrics
Lyrics
Words and music: Chris Rawlings

Copyright 1995-1997: Cooking fat music
Reproduction by any means with written permission only

Side One

Rock Cycle Rock
version française

I've been pounded and ground and smashed around in the cycle... rock cycle
I've been thrown and blown up to the ozone in the cycle...
I've been eroded, corroded and motherloded
Melted and pelted and ore smelted
I've been chipped and dipped and stripped and skipped in the cycle...

Been aerated and slated and conglomerated in the cycle...
Been seized and squeezed and wheezed and sneezed in the cycle...
Been pressed and stressed to form a mountain crest
Been torn down, worn down and reborn
Going round and round like wheels on the ground in the cycle...

Moving slowly, only way to go
Going round and round...

It's elementary to be sedimentary rock in the cycle...
It's très très chic to be a metamorphic rock in the cycle...
If you've been two kinds of rock, well you can't talk
Till the cycle's complete-now that's a feat!
Get serious - be an igneous rock in the cycle...
Well I was molten lava down in Java in the cycle...
I was a fossilised bean from the Pleistocene in the cycle...
I was a cobblestone in ancient Rome
A marble Budda in Calcutta
Been around the world in 3 billion years on my cycle...

Moving slowly, that's the way to go
Been around the world...

The Saturated Zone
version française

You got to dig down underground
To the saturated zone
You can't swim but you can ooze around
In the saturated zone
You won't find fish , you won't find turtles
You won't find frogs or snails
But you'll find lots of rocks and gravel
And groundwater for your pails

Chorus: Cause there's
Groundwater
In the saturated zone -- 2x

You percolate until you reach
The saturated zone
You seep on past the water table
To the saturated zone
You can't splash in it, you can't sail
You just slide about
The pebbles, the stones and the grains of sand
Till you find your way back out...

Chorus: Out of the ...

Also: how can you get groundwater...
From the saturated zone
A pail of clean water for your thirst...
You cite a well, you need a filter ,
You drill it away from harm
Then you pump it up electrically
Or simply use your arm

Chorus: And you'll get ...

Living on a Layer Cake

CHORUS:

Living on a layer cake
Way down under the ground
Living on a layer cake
Take a slice and look around

Well if you live in southern ontario
There's a fruitcake at the bottom i'm told
With precious gems like candied fruit
And swirls of minerals like silver and gold
It's all mixed into pre-cambrian rock
Two to three billion years old
The layer cake rocks show how the story of the earth unfolds

Chorus: Cause we're ...

Well you might find a mousse cake layer of silt
Left by a glacier's retreat
Or a wafer-like layer made out of shale
With a fossil of a coral reef
Trilobytes and brachiopods
Lived here in an ancient sea
And left a limestone poundcake for you to see

Chorus: Cause we're....

There's an angel cake layer of pomous rock
That tells about a volcano
And a marzipan strip up on the top
Where the earth's food supply does grow
Sand and silt form a sponge cake
Where the groundwater lies
And the cities stand tall like candles when you realize

Chorus: that we're...

Transformation

Le souffle commence dans les poumons
Transformation
Il traverse la pomme d'adam
Transformation
Maintenant c'est une voix sans parole
La langue et la bouche forme les mots
Et les mots dans l'air sont les ondes sonorés
Transformation

Refrain:
Plus ca change plus c'est pareille (3x)
Un souffle dans le vent

Les ondes sonorés entre dans l'émetteur
Transformation
Elles font vibrer une membrane
Transformation
En arrière de la membrane, les grenailles de graphites
Sont comprimés et liberent en suite
Un courrant éléctromagnetique
Transformation

Refrain:

Ces courrants traversent le fil jusqu'au récepteur
Transformation
Ils font vibrer la membrane de l'ecouteur
Transformation
Ce sont des mots encore: des ondes sonorés
Qui fait vibrer le tympan dans l'oreille
Ces messages sont transmis en éléctrochimie
Transformation

Sweet and Sour Rain

CHORUS:
Sweet and sour rain
Falling from the sky
The sour is the acid rain
The sweet is alkali

But when acid rain falls day after day
On the lakes and the rivers
And the soil and the clay
There's changes in the water and the forest...
Day after day, year after year
The lakes become acid
And the fish disappear
And we wonder how we got this acid rain...

BRIDGE:
Coming up the smokestack from your factory
Nickel smelting, steel producing factory
Coming from your car and truck emissions
Coal fired, nuclear plant emissions
Everything burning fossil fuel
Emits hot sulfur as a rule
The sulfur combines with the oxygen
Combines with the water vapour again
Makes sulphuric acid
Sulphuric acid, acid rain, rain, rain, rain, rain

CHORUS:

Sometimes the soil is like the sweet rain
Neutralizing the sour again
And helps prevent the damage to the forest...
Sometimes the lakes have sweet water too
Limestone or calcium buffers will do
They help to neutralize the acid rain...

BRIDGE:

La Méthode Scientifique

Refrain:

L'avidité de savoir
Avoir la curiosité
Posez, posez, posez les questions
Observez et classifiez

Comment, comment, comment ça marche
Pensez a des questions
Posez une hypothèse
Comment verifier si elle est bonne

Refrain: L'avidité...

Projetez une experience
Enregistrez les données
Si l'hypothèse est validé
On peut toujours le verifier

Refrain:

Observez, questionnez, tout les thèses
Pensez et poser l'hypothèse,
Experimentez, enregistrez toutes les données
Les conclusions doivent être verifier
Et c'est la méthode scientifique acceptée

Wetland Wonderland
version française

Between the land and the deep waters
Where the swamplands and the marshes lie
Where the water table meets the land
You'll find a wetland wonderland
A wetland wonderland, a wetland wonderland

Black bass and musky spawning close to shore
Wood duck and red-wing nesting in the marsh
Frog and Bog Turtle and insects by the ton
All this wetland wonderland, this wetland wonderland, this wetland wonderland.

Feeling the muck oozing through your toes
Smelling fumes like a rotten egg marsh gas
Would you believe that water is purified
By these wetland wonderlands?

Bridge:
Great Blue Heron sails across the marshland
At dusk a beaver mends his dam
Hyla-peeper's chorus and the bullfrog's base line
The coyote's killing song

A brook trout stuffed with cranberry wild rice
cooked on a peat fire from the bog
A harvest of food and fuel and fun
From this wetland wonderland, this wetland wonderland, this wetland wonderland.

Raging floods have died down in the swamps
Rainforest growth is rivaled by these lands
And yet we dredge and drain and fill
These amazing wetland wonderlands...

Between the deep water and the dry land
There's a wetland wonderland...

Side Two

Some Mountains

Hot enough to melt rock into magma,
The heat from the Earth's core
And the crust of the Earth is like a puzzle
Whose pieces don't fit anymore
Like a temper that's getting pushed out of control
When the magma finds a way out
You've got a volcano

Some mountains are wild
Some mountains are tame
Volcanoes are like people
Each one plays a different game

You 're get the picture, there's a snow capped mountain
And a tremor that could mean a quake
You head for shelter, nothing happens
That's when you make your worst mistake
Back out on the street there's a sound like a thousand bombs
It's raining ash and fire then the lava comes...but

Chorus:
Some mountains rest easy
Some mountains blow
Volcanoes have personality
Each one gives a different show

A steep sloped mountain; a wild explosion
A gentle slope means glowing lava flows
A volcano fed by magma, that's rich in silica
Will give a great fireworks show
You can walk 'round Kilaluao's crater while the lava fountains and flares
But climb up Popocatapetl only with great care

Chorus:
Some mountains are fickle
Some mountains rant and rave
Volcanoes have attitude
Got their own way to behave

Groundwater Song

I walked down by the ocean
The salt spray gave me thirst
But i could not drink the water
That would only make things worse

Groundwater, down under, in the aquafer
Your cool clean water
Gives life to me, you and me

Now the sun beats down till the sand is a furnace floor
You can see the heat waves shimmering on the shore
Water vapour rising high
Clouds form in the sky

I swam in the cold lake water
Fed by rivers, rains, and snows
But i could not drink the water
Pollution made it so

Chorus:

Now the rains falls on the mountains and the plains
Some of that water finds it's way down to the sea again
Some seeps into the ground
Between the rocks,the clay, and the sand

I walked upon the hillside
Where the spring runs cold and clean
I knelt to taste the water
And give thanks to the force unseen

Chorus:

I am a raindrop

I am a raindrop, at the edge of a building
About to fall off, but i don't care
Now the stories i could tell you, would take a lifetime
I've been through changes, i've been everywhere

Chorus:
Changing, keep on changing
And it's strange and wonderfull to be

Once i was in a glacier, next to a cave bear
Fifty thousand years imprisonned there
Cracked off on the iceberg, that sank the Titanic
In the heat off the impact, i sublimated into the air

Chorus:

I'm an oxygen atom, with two hydrogens
Inside a Pepsi can, on a movie set
Where Michael Jackson drank me, just before he caught fire
He got burned but i became evaporated sweat

Chorus:

Drifting in the atmosphere, way down low to the ground
Inside the Skydome, one October day
I condensed on a baseball, made Mitch Williams grip slip
Hello Joe Carter, victory Blue Jays

Chorus:

By the Sea

Chorus:
By the sea, by the sea, by the beautiful sea
What can you see by the seashore
By the sea,by the sea,by the beautiful sea
What can you see by the the sea

There's Irish Moss from P.E.I.
And dulce from Grand Manan
The Japanese don't need any help
When it comes to cooking a seaweed called__?__(kelp)

Chorus:

Bivalves and Mollusks have their shells
There's clams and oysters and mussells
A scallop seems to have eyes, but they're phony
and a 6 sided shell is an ___?___ (abalone)

Chorus:

A lobster feeds on the ocean floor
Shrimp feed neer the top
An octopus hides where it's dark
One fish never stops swimming, that's a ___?__(shark)

Chorus:

Baleen whales feed on tiny krill
Orkas feed on fish
A narwhale has a tusk that's long and strong
A humpback whale can sing you a __?___(song)

Chorus:

Phytoplankton are the smallest plants
The smallest animals are zooplankton
You could put millions of these in a pail
But the largest animal is the ___?___ (blue whale)

Chorus:

There's tankers, freighters and ocean liners
Sailboats and canoes
Dories, tugboats and fishing trawlers
But when I go fishing I bring _____? _____ (night crawlers) ....

Chorus:

Les Planètes

Mercure, vénus, terre
Mars, jupiter
Saturne, uranus, neptune
Et pluton

Ces planètes et leurs lunes,
Placées par la gravité
Dans notre système solaire
Elles tournent autour du soleil

Mercure c'est la plus proche
Elle est la plus petite
Vénus est tres nuageuse
Elles n'a pas de satellite
La terre, notre planète
Soutiens la vie
Notre voisin, mars, nous apparait
Tout rouge d'ici

Jupiter qui a sieze lunes
C'est la plus grande
Saturne a ses anneaux brillants
Nous envoyons des sondes
Vers l'uranus et ses cinq lunes
Vers neptune et pluton
Qui prennent leur tour, de temps en temps
A être la plus distante

Earth Chant

Here we are , you and I, once again
Under one sky,
Sharing one planet, what purpose,
Only God knows

Here's a land full of beauty and hope
Will it survive
To be shared by our sons and our daughters
And there's in turn?

Good intentions are easily thought
Not easily sold
Profit and greed are the permits
Most people hold

You and I are the ones who must do
All that we can
Starting at home with our families
That they understand

That the wild lands to wastelands will turn
The eagle no more
Dives for the fish in the ocean
As we watch from the shore

Here we are , you and I, once again
Under one sky,
Sharing one planet, what purpose,
Only God knows

Pays de marécages, pays des merveilles
Trad. Caroline Pageau
english version

Entre les eaux profondes et la terre ferme
Là où les marécages et les marais s'étendent
Là où la nappe d'eau s'marie au rivage
C'est là le plus beau des pays, pays de marécages, pays des merveilles

Achigans et maskinongés frayant tout près
Canards et grives se nichant dans le marais
Tortues d'eau douce, grenouilles et insectes à la tonne
Tout ça dans l'plus beau des pays, pays de marécages, pays des merveilles

La boue qui s'glisse entre les orteils
Ces émanations si fortes, c'est le gaz des marais
L'croirez-vous cette eau est pure plus qu'il n'y paraît
Ici dans l'plus beau des pays, pays de marécages, pays des merveilles

Refrain :
Le grand héron bleu survole ce monde palustre
Au crépuscule, le castor voit à son barrage
On entend le choeur des rainettes et des ouaouarons
Et la longue plainte du coyote

Une truite mouchetée farcie au riz sauvage
Cuite sur un feu d'tourbe, ça n'a pas son égal
Quelle abondance de plaisirs et de régals
Dans le plus beau des pays, pays de marécages, pays des merveilles

Les eaux déchaînées ici se sont apaisées
La forêt tropicale ici a son égal
Mais on drague, on draine et on remplit
Le plus beau des pays, pays de marécages, pays des merveilles

Entre les eaux profondes et la terre ferme
C'est là le plus beaux......merveilles

Le rock de la roche
english version

J'ai été concassée, broyée et pulvérisée dans le cycle... dans le cycle
On m'a fait sauter et projetée jusqu'à l'ozone dans le cycle...
J'ai été érodée, corrodée et veinée
Liquéfiée, criblée et fusionnée
J'ai croustillé, ricoché et j'ai été dépouillée dans le cycle...

J'ai été aérée, ardoisée et conglomérée dans le cycle...
J'ai été grippée et pressée, soufflée et crachée dans le cycle...
J'ai été compressée, étirée et j'me suis élevée
J'ai été renversée et usée et j'ai r'commencé
En tournant et tournant comme la roue du temps dans le cycle...

Bougeant lentement, la seule façon d'y arriver
En tournant et tournant comme la roue du temps dans le cycle...

C'est élémentaire d'être sédimentaire dans le cycle...
Ça fait très, très chic d'être métamorphique dans le cycle...
Deux sortes de roches déjà, quel exploit!
Mais le cycle n'est pas terminé, loin de là
Tant qu'on n'a pas été une roche ignée dans le cycle...

J'ai été une coulée d'magma à Java dans le cycle...
J'ai été un fossile de tique du mésolithique dans le cycle...
J'ai été un pavé rond à Avignon
Un beau grand Bouddha à Calcutta
J'ai fait le tour d'la terre en 3 millirads d'années sur mon cycle...

Bougeant lentement, c'est la façon d'y arriver
J'ai fait le tour d'la terre...

La zone saturée
english version

Il faut creuser un peu pour arriver
À la zone saturée
On peut pas nager, on peut juste se couler
Dans la zone saturée
Ya pas de poissons et y a pas de tortues
Y a pas de grenouilles ni d'escargots
Mais y a beaucoup de gravier et de p'tites roches pointues
Et de l'eau souterraine pour vos seaux

Parce qu'y a de
L'eau souterraine
Dans la zone saturée 2x (Je parle de...)

La percolation, moyen fantastique
D'se rendre en zone saturée
Passé la surface de la nappe phréatique
C'est la zone saturée
On peut pas y jouer, on peut pas naviguer
On peut juste s'y glisser
Entre les pierres, les cailloux et les grains de sable
Sensation incomparable

Incomparable
Eau souterraine
Dans la zone saturée 2x

Comment s'procurer de la bonne eau de source
De la zone saturée
La meilleure des eaux, c'est la ressource
Qu'offre la zone saturée
Faut creuser un puits, mettre un filtre aussi
À l'abri du danger présent
Puis la pompe fait le reste électriquement
Ou on peut prendre son bras, eh oui...

Pour avoir de
L'eau souterraine
De la zone saturée

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