REO Speedwagon / You Can Tune a Piano, But You Can't Tuna Fish / 1978
The Unidentified Flying Tuna Trot
playful, loose, tongue-in-cheek
This is an instrumental novelty piece whose entire personality is front-loaded into its pun of a title, part of an album whose own name is a joke built on a cliché. Without lyrics to anchor meaning, the track functions as a showcase for musicianship and a wink at the band's willingness not to take itself too seriously.
absurdist humor musicianship as spectacle genre pastiche self-aware silliness
Who's speaking
There is no narrator in the lyrical sense; the 'voice' is collective, carried by the interplay of instruments rather than a singer addressing a listener.
What happens
Lacking words, any narrative arc has to be inferred from musical structure rather than story: likely a build from a central riff or motif through instrumental solos or interplay, with some return to the opening idea, functioning more as a demonstration piece than a story.
How it's built
Almost certainly organized around a recurring instrumental hook or theme, with sections given over to different players, in the manner of a jam or novelty instrumental rather than a verse-chorus pop song.
Section by section
Overall structure
Since no lyric content exists, commentary has to treat the piece as a single musical gesture: an instrumental likely built to entertain through tight ensemble playing and perhaps a danceable or quirky rhythmic hook suggested by the 'trot' in the title, rather than through thematic development.
Craft
- pun
- The title itself is the song's primary 'lyric,' collapsing UFO mythology, a dance craze suffix, and canned tuna into one absurd phrase, setting listener expectations for comedy before a note plays.
- title as framing device
- With no words in the song, the title becomes the only textual signal, shaping how an audience is meant to hear the ensuing instrumental passages, possibly as mock-serious or mock-exotic.
Reading it
The most defensible reading is that this track is a deliberate throwaway or palate-cleanser, the kind of in-joke instrumental bands sometimes include to show range or to lighten an album's tone. An alternative reading, that it's a serious showcase of compositional ambition disguised by a silly title, is possible but harder to support without hearing the actual music or finding corroborating testimony from the band.
Context
The album title itself puns on the phrase 'you can't tune a fish,' establishing a record-wide tone of comic wordplay; this track's title extends that joke. REO Speedwagon in this era was still built around hard-touring arena rock with pop melodicism, and occasional novelty or instrumental tracks were not unusual as album filler or mood changers in 1970s rock records.
Listen for
- a recurring riff or motif that functions as the song's 'hook' in place of a chorus
- interplay between guitar, keyboards, and rhythm section suggesting a jam-based structure
- any shift in tempo or feel that might evoke the 'trot' rhythm implied by the title
- production choices (studio effects, odd instrumentation) that reinforce the 'unidentified flying' joke
About REO Speedwagon
REO Speedwagon, or simply REO, was an American rock band formed in Champaign, Illinois, in 1967. The band cultivated a following during the 1970s and achieved significant commercial success throughout the 1980s.
1967 - 2025 / United States
Full biography and catalogue