submissions
| Patty Griffin – Tony Lyrics
| 12 years ago
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I like it. Defiant. Terrible story about a suicide presumably related to a gay guy feeling oppressed. She's obviously sympathetic. But in the end, Patty is challenging: what's so good about dying? |
submissions
| Patty Griffin – Long Ride Home Lyrics
| 12 years ago
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I think of this as from the perspective of the male, and (unlike lmac5) I think it's HE who is feeling bad and guilty on "the long ride home" about all the times when he was cruel, or indifferent, etc. "How hard would it have been to say some kinder words instead?" So they had a typically ordinary marriage, not deleriously happy, probably economically tough. Good days and bad days. But in the end, he wishes he'd been kinder, and when he arrives at home for teh first time without her, he finds the house "as empty as the inside of me." In the end, curiously, it is a beautiful, if sad, love song. |
submissions
| Patty Griffin – Making Pies Lyrics
| 12 years ago
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I agree with the assessments here about the meaning of the song, but I thought I'd add a bit of "inside information." The Table Talk bakery which she described operated for years in Worcester, Massachusetts (I gre up tehre and worked there.) Much of its work force was immigrant, and the majority, interestingly, Greek. Worcester also has a substantial Italian population, and the Italian neighborhood borders on where the bakery is located. I'd like to know more of how Patty came to write this song, because I'm almost positive it has to be based on a true story to some extent: I have no doubt that she knew someone, or was told by someone, of a "lost love" story such as "stevesomething" describes above. The story of "the Greek and his Italian girl" before the war (I'm guessing he died in WW2) had to be one she heard from friends or family. |
submissions
| Patty Griffin – Mary Lyrics
| 12 years ago
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Right. She has said repeatedly that she wrote this "about" her maternal grandmother, Mary O'Connor. I think it's fair to say she probably was well aware of the religious imagery, and found it evocative of her grandmotehr's life, as well, but in the final analysis I think we have to take her at her word. |
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