3/29/2024 0 Comments Grateful dead name font![]() I enjoy the lyric linkage to “What’s Become of the Baby?” because of the similar position occupied by the two songs on their respective albums-not attempting to sound like songs, really, but as experimental musical compositions with sung parts. It’s worth noting that the motif that opens the suite on the album is the “Under eternity” phrase. The mesmerizing “Under eternity, under eternity, under eternity blue,” refrain seems to go on for quite awhile (nine repetitions), and then the “Bird of paradise” section of “Blues for Allah” is reprised, followed by Garcia playing the melody once through. “Blues for Allah” is a suite that includes the subsequent “Sand Castles and Glass Camels” (attributed to the entire band) and “Unusual Occurrences in the Desert,” which is credited, as is “Blues for Allah,” to Hunter and Garcia. ![]() It’s a disciplined, planned, and rehearsed weirdness. Nothing unusual about breaking out of norms, for the Dead, but there is something unusual about “Blues for Allah,” musically speaking, that is unlike most of the other unusualness in which the band indulged. Never a staple of live performance, the song uses a freely-flowing, unmetered melodic line (no time signature is given in the printed music) that breaks out of western musical norms. ![]() The lyric includes a number of pointed references, including scriptural (“the needle’s eye is thin”), and literary (“the thousand stories have come round to one again”-a reference to Scheherazade, who also appears in “What’s Become of the Baby?”). It’s when people are sure of themselves, when they buy into a dogma, that they feel it is the right thing to kill someone who believes differently. When the truth lies “somewhere in between,” we are open to the state of ambiguity, and that alone can defuse conflict, I believe. I’ve made the case a number of times for the significance of taking a principled stand for not knowing, with the phrase “I don’t know” becoming a touch-point throughout so many of Hunter’s lyrics. It contains an appeal to reason in the face of opposed beliefs: “What good is spilling blood? It will not grow a thing.” It includes an overt acknowledgement of the conflict between Muslims and Jews: “Let’s meet as friends / The flower of Islam / The fruit of Abraham.” The lyric may be a requiem for a certain King, but it stands as a universal statement about war. The lyrics were printed in Arabic on the jacket of the Middle Eastern release of the album." Hunter wrote about the song, in A Box of Rain: "This lyric is a requiem for King Faisal of Saudi Arabia, a progressive and democratically inclined ruler (and, incidentally, a fan of the Grateful Dead) whose assassination in 1975 shocked us personally. ![]() Blues,” and indeed, several others) stand as the exception. “Standing on the Moon” “Ship of Fools” “My Brother Esau” “Throwing Stones”-those few songs (you might argue for “U.S. The Grateful Dead refrained fairly emphatically from overt political expression, but “Blues for Allah” stands with those very few songs that do make a statement. Once again, the United States is engaged in hostilities that include air strikes and now, boots on the ground, and there is a new enemy, the self-proclaimed Islamic State. It has been, what, 11 1/2 years? And despite a regime change here at home, we seem to find ourselves embroiled in an endless war in the Middle East. When the Bush regime invaded Iraq in search of the supposed hidden caches of weapons of mass destruction, I changed the kicker line on the “Annotated Lyrics” website to the line from “Blues for Allah”: “The ships of state sail on mirage and drown in sand.” (I’ll consider requests for particular songs-just private message me!) Therefore, the best part, I would hope, would not be anything in particular that I might have to say, but rather, the conversation that may happen via the comments over the course of time-and since all the posts will stay up, you can feel free to weigh in any time on any of the songs! With Grateful Dead lyrics, there’s always a new and different take on what they bring up for each listener, it seems. Here’s the plan-each week, I will blog about a different song, focusing, usually, on the lyrics, but also on some other aspects of the song, including its overall impact-a truly subjective thing.
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