| Bob Dylan – Someday Baby Lyrics | 17 years ago |
| Note that this song is almost a cover of the Allman Brothers' "Trouble No More"; he takes the refrain and the opening verse, and then writes his own lyrics from there. | |
| Pink Floyd – Us and Them Lyrics | 18 years ago |
| Also, another way of looking at the line "Black and Blue/ and who knows which is which and who is who" is to remember that in many military conflicts up to the First World War, the chaos of battle was such that it became impossible to tell apart friend and enemy from a distance (as in some American Civil War battles, where the gray and blue uniforms were virtually indistingishable in the smoke). | |
| Pink Floyd – Us and Them Lyrics | 18 years ago |
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Someone asked about how the last lines fit into a war interpretation: out of the way, it's a busy day I've got things on my mind for want of the price of tea and a slice the old man died As in the first half of this verse, they speak of war as a facade for economics. Britain has in its colonial past gone to war for mercantilist reasons, lowering the price of tea and other commodities. Roger Waters is marveling that for such a consideration as the price of tea, men go and kill one another; and that the ordinary citizens can't be bothered to care about the wars at all ("Out of the way, it's a busy day/ I've got things on my mind..."). I think that the anti-war interpretation fits this song best of the ones offered here. |
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| Bob Dylan – Tombstone Blues Lyrics | 18 years ago |
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It's hard to tell how all the allusions fit together. Who are Gypsy Davey and Ma Raney? The Biblical references are a bit easier. Jezebel (corrupt queen of Israel) shows up in the first verse, John the Baptist in the second, but Samson (though unnamed) is the big allusion. He killed 1000 Philistines with a donkey's jawbone (see third verse), married and was betrayed by Delilah (fourth verse), and finally killed his captors by tearing down the pillars of the great house of the Philistines (fourth verse; note the reference to Cecil B. DeMille, who directed several major Biblical epics in the 1950s). As far as how Samson and the others fit into the larger context of the song, I have no idea. Any thoughts? |
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| Bob Dylan – Stuck Inside of Mobile with the Memphis Blues Again Lyrics | 18 years ago |
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The verses seem to have in common a sense of confusion or embarassment. I love the way he switches words to make an ordinary line surreal. Some of you picked up on the eyelids/cigarette switch, but what about the second verse with 'post office' and 'mailbox'? The line would make logical sense with the two switched, but a strange image with the post office itself stolen. |
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| Primitive Radio Gods – Standing Outside A Broken Phone Booth With Money In My Hand Lyrics | 18 years ago |
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Far be it from me to think I understand it as a whole, but I noticed that the song is a bit religion-haunted; there were a few lines that stood out to me. Of course, there's the line on arguing about God. Then the Mother Teresa reference. Then, "can humans do what prophets say?" The next line is very close to the standard, "if I should die before I wake" (note too that the following line talks about waking and sleeping) And finally, "a million years before the Fall". I'm not saying the song is all about Christianity. It seems that the artist is trying to figure out the meaning of life, and how he ought to live it, and his thoughts on religion keep factoring into that. |
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