Ives' self-published collection 114 Songs contains examples of both the composer's most conventional and most radical styles. This is not just a function of the fact that the songs in it span about 35 years, beginning when he was 13. The fact was that he could and did use any degree of modernism and complexity (or conventionality and simplicity) in his music by 1921, often in the same piece.

The text of "The Side Show" is a bit of doggerel of Ives' own devising, perhaps hinting (as so many Ives works do) at his childhood world of band music, picnics, revival meetings, circuses, opera houses, and side shows.

Despite its late publication, the song is solidly tonal (in A flat Major). But its rhythm is unconventional, shifting measure by measure between 3/4 and 2/4 in a beat like a stumbling mazurka. At the end there is a joking reference to the 5/4 waltz from Tchaikovsky's Sixth Symphony.

The song is unusually brief, entertainingly lilting, and entertaining. It is not one of Ives' visionary childhood recollections, but it a worthy part of his song output.

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