submissions
| Mother Hips – Mission in Vain Lyrics
| 12 years ago
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"had my protectors and sisters"
I'm almost 100% sure this line is "at my protector's insistence."
Sorry for the double-post, but wanted to make sure it's noted as a correction. |
submissions
| Camper Van Beethoven – Sweethearts Lyrics
| 12 years ago
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Interesting, I've always associated the song with Dixon, CA, given CVB's NorCal roots and the fact that the song's concepts generally fit Dixon's post-war charm. But the Dixon, IL analysis probably makes more sense. |
submissions
| Grateful Dead – Box Of Rain Lyrics
| 12 years ago
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This should help, courtesy of the estimable David Dodd
From Classic Albums: American Beauty, a film by Jeremy Marre:
Lesh (On "Box of Rain"): The lyrics came about in an unusual way. This was the first time I had written a song in a long time, and I had worked out the melody and the chords, and in fact the whole song, from beginning to end–introduction, coda, and everything–and I put it on a tape and gave it to Hunter.
Hunter: He'd just written these lovely changes and put 'em on a tape on a tape for me, and he sang along (scat singing of melody)–so the phrasing was all there, I think I went through it two or three times, writing as fast as I could, and that song was written. I guess it was written for a young man whose father was dying.
Lesh: And at that time, my dad was dying of cancer, and I would drive out to visit with him, in the hospital, and also at the nursing home he spent his final days in, and after Bob gave me the lyrics, on the way out there I would practice singing the song. I sort of identified that song with my dad and his approaching death. The lyrics that he produced were so apt, so perfect. It was very moving, very moving for me to experience that during the period of my dad's passing. I felt like singing it in other situations similar to that since then. |
submissions
| Grateful Dead – Box Of Rain Lyrics
| 12 years ago
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Robert Hunter definitely wrote the words to this song. My recollection is that Hunter wrote it when Phil asked him to write a song for his dying father, so I think some aspects of what Fikus says are correct, but he doesn't have it quite right.
I can't say that I know where Phil was when he wrote the music. |
submissions
| Grateful Dead – Box Of Rain Lyrics
| 12 years ago
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I find it difficult to believe that they said this "exactly," since Robert Hunter, not Phil Lesh, wrote the lyrics. |
submissions
| Jefferson Airplane – White Rabbit Lyrics
| 14 years ago
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Not to advocate for drug use or anything, but it's generally now believed that Go Ask Alice is a work of fiction. Appeals to that book are essentially an appeal to accept propaganda. |
submissions
| Midlake – We Gathered In Spring Lyrics
| 15 years ago
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I see it as a nostalgia/regret/loneliness song. First, the narrator is nostalgic for a mythical time (when people lived to be 300 years and there were giants). Then, he's nostalgic for something in his own life (his old house, his wife, friends). That was a long time ago, when he was young (the spring). He's old now--I get to that in a second.
The loneliness is pretty clear: he's tired of being alone on the hill, where nothing grows. It's a bad place.
And the regret: he's old and he's going to die alone on the hill (it's where he's going to eat his last meal). Thus, he returns to the mythical nostalgia, when people lived 300 years, and perhaps he could have recaptured that which he lost, when he was young. |
submissions
| Paul Simon – Me and Julio Down by the Schoolyard Lyrics
| 15 years ago
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I've always interpreted the song to be about political activism, i.e., that the character in the song was involved in some sort of undefined frowned-upon radical activities. The song is on Paul Simon's eponymous solo debut, which was released in 1970, so it's a likely time to write a song summing up the entrenched opposition to late-'60s/early-'70s political radicalism. Simon's repeated insistence that he doesn't know what "me and Julio" were doing is consistent with the view that the precise activities were undefined.
I think that the other person in the song was "Julio" to reflect the era's changing racial makeup of Kew Gardens in Queens, where Simon grew up. |
submissions
| Billy Bragg – Waiting for the Great Leap Forwards Lyrics
| 15 years ago
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Those are among the lyrics Billy has sung for this song. He often replaces "Che Guevara Highway" and especially "Fidel Castro's brother" with a variety of different things depending on where he's playing and what's going on in the news. He also substitutes the "[former] soviet union] line sometimes. |
submissions
| Joan Baez – Joe Hill Lyrics
| 15 years ago
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The missing verse from the original song, which Joan Baez may not have sung, but others did:
"Joe Hill ain't dead," he says to me,
"Joe Hill ain't never died.
Where working men are out on strike
Joe Hill is at their side,
Joe Hill is at their side."
This verse goes after the one that ends "went on to organize." |
submissions
| Bright Eyes – If the Brakeman Turns My Way Lyrics
| 15 years ago
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I usually think people overestimate songs being about drugs, but this one is clearly a cocaine song and getting on and off of it. Brakeman is particularly relevant to the cocaine slang "c-train." |
submissions
| Bright Eyes – Classic Cars Lyrics
| 16 years ago
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No idea if this song is about Winnona Ryder, but it's not about a "girlfriend," it's about a patron. The lyrics reflect an older woman, offering to take in and support a talented artist in exchange for his companionship ("a real royal lady, a real patron of the arts...all the men her age were mean...gave me anything I wanted"). She had a jaded view on life, but he maintained the love affair ("lighting candles to the cynical saint"). While she was wealthy enough to be a patron, she wasn't really a part of the in crowd, or perhaps was only in because of her connection to an ex- or deceased husband ("she would lie about where she's from...life is how it is not how it was"). Also, although she was more wordly than the singer, she was a bit flaky in her knowledge, and the lyric is a bit sarcastic about that ("I learned to listen, felt like I was back at school, she'd talk forever about the phases of the moon...without even knowing I guess I took her advice"). Even still, he has fond, but somewhat dark memories of her ("it's not that often, but I think of her sometimes, just somethign quaint, a couple ships in the night"). |
submissions
| Grateful Dead – Friend of the Devil Lyrics
| 16 years ago
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Hedges almost as it right about omitting a verse. The song was written by Robert Hunter, although he did a workout of an early draft with David Nelson and John Dawson of the New Riders of the Purple Sage (Hunter was going to play bass with NRPS and they were going to play this song... never happened though). Anyway, for whatever reason, Hunter decided to omit this verse. Dawson wrote the original music at the NRPS house in Kentfield, and I guess Jerry reworked it with Hunter when Hunter brought it to the dead. |
submissions
| Camper Van Beethoven – Tania Lyrics
| 16 years ago
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That's a pretty accurate description. I would disagree somewhat that the song is "about" PH. The song is more about the media sensation surrounding PH and the effect it had on teenage Lowry following her story. |
submissions
| Camper Van Beethoven – Sad Lovers Waltz Lyrics
| 16 years ago
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I love this song, such a bittersweet idea. That you're with your partner, dancing this romantic dance, but it's a sad dance in this case. For the first two steps you're together, then, when you take the third step, you know it's over... also makes me think of Sad Song's & Waltzes by Cake. |
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