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Post by tableinthecorner on Jan 27, 2021 11:55:13 GMT -5
Like the cosmetics metaphor, this one barely appears in THS (to date) outside "the fruited plain" and related allusions to "America the Beautiful" ( link). Would this also work for an interpretation of Citrus? The Lifter Puller references to oranges and lemons make me think that it's possible Craig was adding another layer there. I know it's a stretch, as the lyrics go on to mention ginger, which isn't a fruit, but that could be a reference to someone with read hair, giving the song a triple meaning. Also how about Bar fruit Blues? I'm not sure how much the application of this metaphor would change the meanings of these songs, but it seems general enough to work there without affecting continuity. Edit: Don't know how I missed Barfruit Blues in the table. I should read more closely.
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Post by skepticatfirst on Jan 28, 2021 8:49:48 GMT -5
Like the cosmetics metaphor, this one barely appears in THS (to date) outside "the fruited plain" and related allusions to "America the Beautiful" ( link). Would this also work for an interpretation of Citrus? The Lifter Puller references to oranges and lemons make me think that it's possible Craig was adding another layer there. I know it's a stretch, as the lyrics go on to mention ginger, which isn't a fruit, but that could be a reference to someone with read hair, giving the song a triple meaning. Also how about Bar fruit Blues? I'm not sure how much the application of this metaphor would change the meanings of these songs, but it seems general enough to work there without affecting continuity. I covered Barfruit Blues in the table; I did leave out "fruits in white suits" [PJ] deliberately, because there's more going on there, but we'll get back to it. In putting together these tables I'm mostly sticking with the examples that are easy to justify based on simple evidence or patterns; when we get to more tangled cases later on, we'll be able to point back to the tables and say, see: we already worked out that there's a drug reference here. Citrus I completely missed, but of course you're right! My immediate read on this would be to say that it looks like he's setting up another "crazy fruity drinks"=laced drinks reference: citrus : liquor :: salt : [margarita/sangre de cristo] where "citrus"=hard drugs, just like "salt"=meth. (Of course, roofies and meth are not the same thing, but as we'll see, they go together in the Lifter Puller story in a very specific way, and I am pretty sure I'm not overpromising when I say that this shorthand reference will soon make sense.) In Here Goes somewhere I too took "ginger" (of "ginger and jack" [Swish], a reference to Mary and Gideon, who are still a couple at that first party) along with the "claddagh ring" [YLHF] and the fact that Mary's Catholic (with presumably Irish implications), as evidence that she's a redhead. We'll come back to the "jack" nickname in Lifter Puller, too.
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Post by skepticatfirst on Jan 28, 2021 9:23:20 GMT -5
THE FOAMWe've already taken note (see SLIP AND TRIP above) of Craig's comments on Roaming The Foam in the 2004 Cloak and Dagger interview ( link): Like "soap," "foam" is a metaphor for drugs. The specific image in play here is that, when these drugs are rolled out to the kids in the "clubs," sex follows, and *vice versa* --- once the kids know there's drugs to be had, sex is used to elicit drugs, just as drugs are used to elicit sex, and so around in a vicious cycle: [*1] tiny bubbles are always leadin me knee deep into some sort of trouble these yayo hoes take off their clothes and try to get me to give them something chemical and are you dancin like you're staggering drunk or are you drinkin like you're tryin to dance [RtF] This idea of vicious-cycle "foam dancing" in clubs is closely related not just to "soap," but to a variety of other wave and cloud metaphors which we want to draw out explicitly. ***1) SoapCraig equates "foam" with "soap" not only in the Cloak and Dagger interview, but in the lyrics of Roaming The Foam itself: hey soap suds, you know you're way too quick to fall in love [RtF] We've already documented the immediate sense of "soap"=meth in the drugs-for-sex transaction (see LISTED, SLIP AND TRIP, and PHARMACY GOODS above). There's also a second metaphoric sense of "soap" that plays on the double meaning of "get clean" in a drug context. The kids resort to drugs to "wash away" the stain of the mercenary sex (note that "wash" is itself slang for "meth," see LISTED above); but of course this recourse to drugs is the *opposite* of "getting clean" in the drug sense, and leads them right back into the vicious cycle described above. A number of lines lean on the terms "soap," "wash," "clean," and "foam" to highlight this trap: entertaining the soldiers, makin eyes at the sailors and we walked between these velvet ropes, went straight for the bathroom soap tried to make ourselves clean [JBS] liquid soap won't get you completely clean [JBS] the wine tastes like propane, stains wash right out in the white rain [NN] the drinks taste like pantene, the visine wipes clean all the bad dreams [NN] The sheets stain but the sins wash away [SK] I'm getting tired Of all these styrofoam coffee cups She said, "It's hard to feel holy when you can't get clean" Now she's bumping up against the washing machines She said, "It's hard to slow down when you're picking up speed" [SK] ***2) WavesThe idea of foam/drugs "rolling in" to cover the kids in the clubs extends the analogy to ocean waves: [*2] and then the foam rolled in [RtF] We see this in Certain Songs, where "surf" is a recognizable specimen of LP "foam": Kids out on the west coast are taking off their clothes Screwing in the surf and going out to shows [CSongs] The most important of Craig's "waves" are the "amber waves of grain" from "America the Beautiful" ( link), which he regularly uses to allude to speed as a Midwestern phenomenon ("Baltimore has heroin. The Midwest has speed" [ link]; for "purple mountain" and "fruited plain," see CONVENTIONS and FRUIT above): That's the thing about Charlemagne. He got all washed up in the amber waves of grain [TMIT] I guess there's fields of speed where there's fields of grain [DLME] There were amber waves of grain, And hawks and rustle thrushes There were serotonin rushes. There were purple mountain majesties above the fruited plain There were diamonds in the drain [A&H] and i passed through the wheat on the way to the train and it felt kind of sweet the ambulances trampled the amber waves of grain and we laid on the seats the purple mountain majesty yielded the sugar mountain prophecy into the needle and the damage done [Brokerdealer MCIGOaCT] ***3) White cloudsThere are a few other white-cloud metaphors, "dust" and "snow," used in reference to the drugs that "cover" the kids who've gone to the clubs: now we live in domes and our dome's the dome that always snows down on me [SCity] you'll be covered up with powdered drugs by the end of the night if you're still at the nice nice [CRoom] Note that "cloud"=crack, "dust"=cocaine/PCP, and "snow"=cocaine are all drug references in their own right (see LISTED above). There's also "fog" in analogy to "smoke," which Solid Gold Sole analogizes back to foam ("the dancefloor looks like normandy, the smoke, the foam, the misery" [SGS]): we went down on the smoke machine [SdS] fucked with the fog machine [SdS] ***Foam=drugsterm | line | notes | foam | the dancefloor looks like normandy, the smoke, the foam, the misery [SGS] | "dancefloor"=sex place (see DANCING above) | foam | five deep in her foam dance thugs/ drippin wet with hair care, drowning in designer drugs [HDaD] | "five deep" (link) and "drowning" both allude to being covered by the waves; "dance"=sex (see DANCING above); "hair care"=drugs (see PHARMACY GOODS above) | foam | (and then the foam rolled in) i must admit it felt a little bit anonymous/ (and then the foam rolled in) i must admit it felt a little bit erogeneous [RtF] | anonymous sex, explicit in lyrics and Cloak and Dagger interview | foam | dwight likes the lights he likes roamin the foam [TFatBR] | "light"=meth (see LISTED above); "I like the lights" associated with sex [ILtL] | surf | Screwing in the surf and going out to shows [CSongs] | "screwing" explicit | dust | you'll be covered up with powdered drugs by the end of the night/ if you're still at the nice nice [CRoom] | "covered" explicit; specific to clubs (nice nice) | snow | now we live in domes/ and our dome's the dome that always snows/ down on me [SCity] | "snow"=cocaine (see LISTED above); specific to clubs (domes) | fog | fucked with the fog machine [SdS] | fog=smoke; analogy to foam [SdS, SGS] |
[*1] This prospect of drugs eliciting a sexual overture to the dealer is the explanation behind one pair of obscure lines in Sherman City: who's that guy tellin lies behind the junior high? he turns me on [SCity] a reading confirmed by the alternative lyrics to Let's Get Incredible, which specify that the guys telling "lies" are the dealers: All the guys with the lies that supplied us [LGI alt lyrics] [*2] "Waves" are a direct drug reference in their own right as well ("wave"=crack; see LISTED above).
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Post by skepticatfirst on Jan 29, 2021 9:38:46 GMT -5
RATS & CATSThe LP lyrics clear up another point of THS confusion (regarding "cats" in SShoes, SiM, and ASits; heregoes) by making plain that "cats" refer to gangsters, and "rats" to the kids who are their prey. The explicitly sexual aspect of this bjs-for-drugs predation accounts for the "hoodrats" of THS as well. Note that The Langelos describes the cats-rats relationship as a progression: at the beginning, the rats (kids) are only "hanging out" with the cats (gangsters); but things get sketchier from there (see opening rows of the table below). ***Cats and rats; predators and preyanimal | line | notes | house cats, street rats | street rats hanging out with the house cats [Langelos] | 1) hanging out with | house cats, street rats | house cats making moves on the street rats [Langelos] | 2) making moves on | house cats, street rats | street rats making out with the house cats [Langelos] | 3) making out with | house cats, street rats | house cats making love to the street rats [Langelos] | 4) making love to | cats | hey angel, remember that cat had the hat that said sharks/ his jacket said jets [Viceburgh] | Jets and Sharks are West Side Story gangs (see SHARKS & JETS below); compare "tiger" at the beginning of the song | cats | We went to some place where she cat-sits [SiM] | this locates them at the Ambassador, where Mary entertains the Skins | cats | The technician put on Cat and the Cobra\ The nurses laid down on the lawn [ASitS] | "Cobra" is the "snake in the shower" (see BATHROOM STALL above); "laid down" is sexual | alley cats | it was alley cats and they were feasting on the city pigeons [INFHP] | from Brokerdealer; note "city" reference | panthers | we were hangin around just kickin "walk like a panther" [Viceburgh] | like in the first Langelos reference, the kids are hanging out with the gangsters | panthers | Upstairs at some hesher's apartment/ Underneath some posters of panthers [SShoes] | In Gideon's apartment, assuming the role of Skins for the filmed fight (heregoes) | lions | i laid down with the lions but they're way too lame [Bears] | "laid down" is sexual (Biblical ref in there too: "lion lies down with the lamb" ultimately from Isaiah) | lions | she had a lion-like mane, she had the jaws like a skillcrane [CaAoC] | she's been hanging out with the gangsters, making money with her mouth and is "dripping wet with frosting"/has a "frosted mug" ("mug"=face: gdict) to show for it | tigers | i went down on the tigers but they're way too tame [Bears] | also explicitly sexual | tigers | tiger can't talk he's got shoes to shine, said it's pretty dry [Viceburgh] | gangster being asked for drugs; compare later 'cat' | tigers | these tiger-striped toughs are much bigger than us [LGI] | gangsters, who are bigger than the kids | ocelots | She texts from the exit says she's on her way over/ In an Ocelot coat with the epaulet shoulders [Epaulets] | "She"=Mary at the Ambassador, described elsewhere in military terms ("World War IV" and "bunker" [IHTWTDFY], etc.); the "same people" they know are the Skins ("militia" [Knuckles], "soldiers" [CSunrise, LA], etc.) | rats | i'm like a pied piper, lead the kids into rats, lead the rats to the water [Manpark] | Night Club Dwight speaking of his influence over the kids | street rats | it was bar sharks it was street rats [INFHP] | from Brokerdealer; sharks=gangsters, and note "alley cats" reference above | hoodrats | These hoodrat chicks are like razor blades [C&N] | "hoodrat"=explicitly sexual | hoodrats | With three skaters and some hoodrat chick [HH] | "hoodrat"=explicitly sexual | hoodrats | What makes you think I'm getting with your little hoodrat friend? [YLHF] | "hoodrat"=explicitly sexual | hoodrats | He was getting with her little hoodrat friend [MoC] | "hoodrat"=explicitly sexual | hoodrats | Holly was a hoodrat, and now you finally know that [HaRRF] | "hoodrat"=explicitly sexual | hoodrats | And I've been with the hoodrats [212M] | "hoodrat"=explicitly sexual |
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Post by kayfaberaven on Jan 29, 2021 13:48:03 GMT -5
Did you see Craig's tweet from yesterday? "This [another tweet indicating that using a rhyming dictionary was once considered 'cheating' in the rap community] just reminded me that for a few years in Lifter Puller I thought it was cheating to write down lyrics. You had to just keep them in yr head. Forgot some good ones I think. The 90s were so weird." He later tweeted that his belief was based on the views of Notorious BIG.
I haven't had a chance to catch up on your thread here, but that means that whatever Craig accomplished for at least some of his Lifter Puller days, he did it without writing down his lyrics (!!?!?!?).
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Post by skepticatfirst on Jan 30, 2021 9:27:48 GMT -5
Did you see Craig's tweet from yesterday? "This [another tweet indicating that using a rhyming dictionary was once considered 'cheating' in the rap community] just reminded me that for a few years in Lifter Puller I thought it was cheating to write down lyrics. You had to just keep them in yr head. Forgot some good ones I think. The 90s were so weird." He later tweeted that his belief was based on the views of Notorious BIG. I haven't had a chance to catch up on your thread here, but that means that whatever Craig accomplished for at least some of his Lifter Puller days, he did it without writing down his lyrics (!!?!?!?). Yeah! He's talked about this before a few times, but it's pretty amazing. The 2014 Rumpus interview has a lot of detail about how he puts lyrics together, and it starts with a similar remark ( link): Interestingly, the 2017 Magnet interview makes it sound like he still pretty much only writes things down as a practical concession, not because he really needs to ( link): I mostly stay pretty focused on Craig's stories, but sometimes I run into things that make me say "damn" and wonder how the guy is built. This is one of them.
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Post by skepticatfirst on Feb 1, 2021 9:47:13 GMT -5
SHARKS & JETSWe know the gangs of LP/THS best as the Crabs [MiM] and the Cityscape Skins [SPayne, C&N, etc.], respectively. But there are lots of ways of referring to gangs in both worlds that fall somewhere between these apparently formal names and loose characterization as "cats" (see RATS & CATS above). The most obvious of the informal handles are "sharks" and "jets," after the names of the rival gangs in the musical "West Side Story" ( wikipedia); the fact that both terms appear together [Viceburgh, TMS] makes this identification certain. ***The earliest appearance of either term is "jets" in Prescription Sunglasses: every time the jets fly over, pretty little overdoser [PSunglasses] This could as well be a drug reference as a gang reference: "Jet" and "Jet K" are slang for Ketamine, and "Jet Fuel" slang for PCP (see LISTED above; compare also "first it feels like a prick and then it hits you like a jumbo jet" [FB] and "jet fuel" [DHaircut]). But nothing in Craig's world of aggressive double meanings prevents it from being an allusion *both* to the drugs *and* to the gang from whom she gets them. The second appearance of one of these terms is "shark" in The Mezzanine Gypoff: took him down around the waterpark he had a red swimsuit and two eyes two miles apart looked just like a hammerhead shark with a hook in its mouth, he was dead in the yard [TMG] "Shark" here seems at first blush to involve a physical simile that doesn't leave a lot of room for a metaphor to operate; we have to fast-forward 20 years to the release of The Most Important Thing to be sure that we correctly understand "two eyes two miles apart" to mean "wide-eyed with surprise": Still seems to surprise us When they hook us by the mouth and pull us up And then they try to fry us [TMIT] That's enough of a twist in meaning to make it clear that Craig really wants the "shark" image in there, making it likely that it's a gang reference after all. By this reading, it must refer, not to a gang member per se, but to one of the clever kids who went down to hang with the gang and got killed --- the exact scenario described in "we were hangin around just kickin 'walk like a panther'" ("panther"=gangster, see RATS & CATS above) that then "turned into a drive-by" [Viceburgh]. ***The evidence, then, points to "sharks" and "jets" being gang references from the beginning (the next chronologically is "that cat had the hat that said sharks/ his jacket said jets" [Viceburgh] which, by using the two terms together, establishes their meaning beyond doubt). Once again, clarity on the LP end of things helps a great deal with THS interpretation, where I'd missed the gang allusions in lines like "they're jamming jetskis into the jetty now" [MPADJs] and "I only bow down to the jetset" [ABlues]. ***Sharks and Jets: gangstersgang | line | notes | sharks, jets | cat had the hat that said sharks/ his jacket said jets [Viceburgh] | paired reference | sharks, jets | i guess it starts with the sharks, i guess it gets to the jets [TMS] | paired reference | sharks | looked just like a hammerhead shark [TMG] | (see discussion above) | sharks | there's sharks out in the parking lot [RfLB] | gangsters with dogs [RfLB], per the crust punk gang model (see ORIGINS OF IMAGES above) | sharks | the sticky sharks and the steamy saunas [TCMaMG] | dealer gangsters; "stick"=joint laced with PCP (see LISTED above) | sharks | and the stark bar's filled with cardsharks and the carparks they get so dark [TFatBR] | gangsters in bars | sharks | it was bar sharks it was street rats [Brokerdealer INFHP] | gangsters in bars; parallel with "rats" (see RATS & CATS above) | sharks | When they say great white sharks [BCamp] | "they"=Skins (heregoes) | jets | every time the jets fly over, pretty little overdoser [PSunglasses] | ambiguous drug/gang reference (see discussion above) | jets | jettin off to the coast where the girls all taste like toast [MTape] | destination is the "land of the liquid tan" ("liquid"=GHB, "tan"=heroin; see LISTED above) with "the guys in the bathroom" (see BATHROOM STALL above) | jets | and when i get to pasadena, gonna jettison your ghost [MTape] | destination is the "land of the liquid tan" ("liquid"=GHB, "tan"=heroin; see LISTED above) with "the guys in the bathroom" (see BATHROOM STALL above) | jets | and when i get to sacramento, gonna jettison your facelift [MTape] | destination is the "land of the liquid tan" ("liquid"=GHB, "tan"=heroin; see LISTED above) with "the guys in the bathroom" (see BATHROOM STALL above) | jets | we're the jet lag [LDoL] | followed by "we're the dime bags/ we're the scumbags on the junk jags in the rock rags"=dealer gangsters (see SHOES AND SOCKS above) | jets | they did the VSS into "in love with jets" [4Dix] | The VSS and Antioch Arrow were 90's punk bands (and friends): The VSS had an EP with a shark on the cover (discogs); Antioch Arrow had an LP "In Love With Jetts" (discogs) | jets | They're jamming jetskis into the jetty now [MPADJs] | "they"=Skins (heregoes) | jets | It's poison, first it feels like a prick and then it hits you like a jumbo jet [FB] | ambiguous drug/gang ref (see discussion above) | jets | I only bow down to the jetset [ABlues] | "jetset" parallel with "Shepard," documented leader of the Skins [IHTWTDFY, SShoes, Feelers] | jets | Still couldn't get any jet fuel [DH] | "jet fuel"=PCP (see discussion above) |
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Post by tableinthecorner on Feb 1, 2021 13:54:38 GMT -5
"Sharks" has always made me think of loan sharks, particularly because of the The Flex And The Buff Result lyrics. That's how I always interpreted cash advances, ATMs, etc as well, but the post from a few days ago says otherwise, of course. Does your reading of those metaphors rule out any chance at a "loan shark" double meaning (or would it simply not make sense in the context of the story)?
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Post by muzzleofbees on Feb 1, 2021 17:03:36 GMT -5
This made me realize that one of my favourite THS lines is packed with even more layers than I thought:
«Your sister’s in Seattle, and she’s sleeping with the Sharps»
Sharps is a pretty obvious play on «sleeping with the sharks», and I still think there’s a pun in there on «Sleepless in Seattle». She’s not sleeping at all, she’s sleepless, cause she sleeps with them (them, being Sharps -> Skins). But then I started thinking about possible meanings of Seattle, when I remembered the Boeing thing. I googled it, and it turns out that one of Seattle’s nicknames is Jet City. So that’s both a link to sharks/jets, paired up within one line, and the continous references to airports.
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Post by skepticatfirst on Feb 2, 2021 7:24:58 GMT -5
"Sharks" has always made me think of loan sharks, particularly because of the The Flex And The Buff Result lyrics. That's how I always interpreted cash advances, ATMs, etc as well, but the post from a few days ago says otherwise, of course. Does your reading of those metaphors rule out any chance at a "loan shark" double meaning (or would it simply not make sense in the context of the story)? I'm super hesitant to use the term "rule out," since any reading is really about making the most complete and consistent use of the evidence, and there could always be improvements even if I'm not wrong (especially with Craig's aggressive double meanings in the mix). But to answer your question carefully and without spoilers, I'll say that, as I read the story, - no one is lending money to meth addicts at high rates of interest or otherwise ("i'm so strapped for cash, it goes through me so fast" [TCMamG]). - the only loan that's ever in question is the one you mention, alluded to by the Eyepatch Guy in TFatBR. - the Eyepatch Guy is a solo operator, not part of any loan-sharking gang. But we'll see if you think my account of these things holds up.
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Post by skepticatfirst on Feb 2, 2021 7:56:57 GMT -5
This made me realize that one of my favourite THS lines is packed with even more layers than I thought: «Your sister’s in Seattle, and she’s sleeping with the Sharps» Sharps is a pretty obvious play on «sleeping with the sharks», and I still think there’s a pun in there on «Sleepless in Seattle». She’s not sleeping at all, she’s sleepless, cause she sleeps with them (them, being Sharps -> Skins). But then I started thinking about possible meanings of Seattle, when I remembered the Boeing thing. I googled it, and it turns out that one of Seattle’s nicknames is Jet City. So that’s both a link to sharks/jets, paired up within one line, and the continous references to airports. This is good! When my eyes flashed over "Boeing" I thought, that's a reach, but then I looked at the wikipedia article on Seattle, and you're right that it's called Jet City. I think that sort of has to count as an extra on top of the sleeping/sleepless allusion, which is incredibly complex, and for which Seattle is already needed (via, as you say, "Sleepless in Seattle"). But it's solid. And yes to the rest, plus a few other things: - "sleeping with the sharps" -> "sleeping with the sharks" -> "sleeping with the fishes" -> she's dead (it'll be worth rereading this in the light of HALF DEAD below) - "sleeping with the sharps" -> "sleeping with the (drug) needles" -> sex for drugs - "sleep[less]" -> tweaking; "we sped through the seventh straight dawn" [LGI] ("sped" referring to speed) Note that this isn't the only recent combination of these images: Princess came to breakfast looking puffy from the prednisone : Princess on the payphone with an angle on some Western states [CitM] - "princess": compare "your sister" - "came to breakfast": compare both "sleeping" and "sleepless" - "puffy"=PCP (see LISTED above) - "puffy"=bj ( gdict) - "Western states": compare "Seattle" It's an incredibly complex way to tell a story, but the content is pretty focused and consistent. More about what's being referred to here coming up.
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Post by skepticatfirst on Feb 2, 2021 10:00:08 GMT -5
"Sharks" has always made me think of loan sharks, particularly because of the The Flex And The Buff Result lyrics. That's how I always interpreted cash advances, ATMs, etc as well, but the post from a few days ago says otherwise, of course. Does your reading of those metaphors rule out any chance at a "loan shark" double meaning (or would it simply not make sense in the context of the story)? - the only loan that's ever in question is the one you mention, alluded to by the Eyepatch Guy in TFatBR. I should have added that Juanita's "he's questin through investin" [Bloomington] refers to this aspect of what she knows about the Eyepatch Guy.
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Post by skepticatfirst on Feb 2, 2021 10:43:14 GMT -5
THE BEARS At the Triple Rock on June 6, 2003, Craig told the crowd, "Tom Roach ... told me to write a song called The Bears, and so I did" ( youtube; the sentence, a long one, ends at 44:44). "The Bears," then, can be added to the list of bizarre LP themes spun up by Craig out of a bandmate's offhand comments, which is interesting in its own right. But what prompted Tom to say this? The lyrics make obvious reference to Bear gay culture ( wikipedia), a fact confirmed by Steve in the amazing Back To The City podcast interview with Simon Calder ( youtube; quote begins at 12:35). But was that what Tom had in mind, or the only thing he had in mind, when he made the suggestion? Almost 25 years have passed since then, but there are enough clues still lying around for us to reconstruct the answer. ***We know that the THS guys, or Bobby and Craig at least, still watch Vikings games on Sundays at the Lake Street bar in Brooklyn ( link). That this tradition goes back to the LP days is both probable on its face, and confirmed by Dave Gerlach's prominent appearance in a Vikings t-shirt on the cover of the self-titled first album. What memorable events in Viking history took place in that early era? The 1996 season ( wikipedia) started off full of promise for Vikings fans. The team went 4-0 out of the gate with wins over all their major division rivals, and, despite a couple of away-game stumbles, went into week 9 (after a bye in week 8) with a 5-2 record, second-best in the conference after only the Packers, whom they had already defeated in week 4. The week 9 game was on Monday night, back in the day when Monday Night Football was still a national showcase and major event. The Vikings were well-rested from the off week; they were playing at home in the Metrodome; their opponent was 2-5 division rival the Bears, whom they had already beaten on the road in week 3. It was a huge game, with must-win stakes, and expectations of a dominant performance. The Vikings lost that game, 15-13. But it wasn't just a loss; what the 2-point spread conceals was an annihilation on the field. The Bears' defensive line not only sacked the QB 5 times, they limited the Vikings' run offense to *11 yards total* --- a record still standing as the worst run performance in 60 years of Viking franchise history ( link; link). ***The date of this game was 10/28/1996, about eight months before The Bears was produced in the summer of 1997 (see ORDERED CATALOG above). That this game was the motivation behind Tom's wish to stick it to "The Bears" is already plausible on the face of it, and consider in particular the central image of the song: his friends busted in screamin rodeo [Bears] his roommates came out, they came from under the couch and they jumped in [Bears] The comparison to the Bears rushing the Vikings' offense from the line of scrimmage is not hard to see. That this comparison is intentional is confirmed by the combination of the "tigers" [Bears] with a technical reference to the pass rush ( wikipedia) in Let's Get Incredible: first we got rushed, then we got crushed these tiger-striped toughs are much bigger than us [LGI] and again by the reference to "false starts" ( wikipedia) in The Flex And The Buff Result: and the stark bar's filled with cardsharks and the carparks they get so dark and the false starts make me jumpy and those chicks were just so dumpy [TFatBR] and again by the reference to pass "protection" against the pass rush ( link; note that "protection" as shorthand for "pass protection," and "test [the quarterback's] protection" are common football expressions: link) in Bloomington: [*1] he's testin his protection don't it all feel like one big game with the lights and the dust and the security [Bloomington] ***Knowing both the game (Bears-Vikings 10/28/1996) and the play call (pass rush) that Craig is referring to, we can take it one step further and identify the specific play he has in mind. The Bears begins with a reference to the fourth and fourteenth incident [Bears] The second "-th" frames this ambiguously as an intersection in Northeast Minneapolis (see NIGHTCLUBS below); but the football context identifies it as a 4th-and-14 down-and-distance situation. For the benefit of international readers: this means a play on 4th down, on which the offense needs a gain of 14 yards in order to reset the play count to 1st down, and so to continue the drive. In such a desperate situation, the offense will nearly always punt; but in the last play of a game, having nothing to lose, they may resort to a "Hail Mary" pass to try to escape ( wikipedia). I've checked the logs for the 10/28/1996 game ( link), and sure enough, the Vikings' final play in the 4th quarter was on *3rd*-and-14 (which in principle gave them two chances, one on 3rd down and one on 4th, to pull it out). But the attempt failed: Vikings QB Johnson was rushed and sacked (for the 5th and final sack of the game) by Bears LB Cox, leading to Cox's recovery of the fumble and the end of the game for Minnesota. Other than the poetically preferable adjustment of 3rd down to 4th (for heightened drama and alliteration), every detail of this play fits the scene in the song perfectly, from the yardage, to the pass rush, to the gay-sex combat of "Cox" ("cocks") and "Johnson" ("dick": gdict). We have in addition the parallel evidence of the solo song Jester And June, which frames a different barroom drug transaction in exactly the same terms, namely, a 4th quarter ("Fourth quarter") passing play ("Wide receiver") for desperate yardage ("Hail Mary"): Well the bartender's friend sold us something I think was probably coriander Fourth quarter Hail Mary Wide receiver Hail Caesar [J&J] ***In short, "the Bears" of The Bears make a twofold reference to Bear gay culture on the one hand, and the NFC Central football team on the other. The final confirmation of this is the literal Vikings reference in the song Hardware, where something described as a gay sex costume party ("took the handjob at the hardware store, made me feel just like a man/ it only took me eye contact to make him understand ... your costume party's awesome just some guys being anonymous") is attended by a girl "dressed like a viking" in football-pants-like "skintight biking shorts" ("skintight" because they're sexy, "biking" for the rhyme with "viking"), who's on the receiving end of the defensive linemen's rush and "hoping for a quick divorce" [Hardware]. This encounter between Hardware's "dorothy" and the gangsters' defensive line is recalled in Back In Blackbeard, in which the girl's reference to the Green Line 'D' train between Boston College and Lansdowne Street is charged with a football double meaning ("D-Line" is a common abbreviation for "defensive line," see for example: link): now i've done it on the d-line and bathed in all your bass lines [BiB] The "dorothy" reference also frames the "lions and tigers and bears" of the Bears as a Wizard of Oz reference ( link); but this is just another layer of metaphor piled on top of everything else. It's the football sense that we want to stay focused on here. [*1] The fact that Bloomington predates the Bears-Vikings game means that the pass rush metaphor had in fact occurred to Craig already; but as the opening lines attest, it's just there as one of multiple sports metaphors in the song, along with elite pitching in baseball versus the grand slam. The explosive elaboration of the metaphor, and all of the developments which follow it, first appear with The Bears on Half Dead And Dynamite.
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Post by muzzleofbees on Feb 3, 2021 3:58:20 GMT -5
Haha, this The Bears thing is preeeetty amazing. I remember hearing Jester & June for the first time, and getting chills frome those exact lines. I couldn't quite connect them to anything else, but they seemed significant. It's baffling how Craig can create this full image way back in the 90s, and then casually pick it up again in the intro of his third solo album, well into the 2010s.
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Post by skepticatfirst on Feb 3, 2021 8:37:53 GMT -5
Haha, this The Bears thing is preeeetty amazing. I remember hearing Jester & June for the first time, and getting chills frome those exact lines. I couldn't quite connect them to anything else, but they seemed significant. It's baffling how Craig can create this full image way back in the 90s, and then casually pick it up again in the intro of his third solo album, well into the 2010s. kayfaberaven said something in the other thread about Craig being "very aware of the world in which THS songs occur," which I thought was a nice framing; I might put some of the boundaries in different places, but it's clear that Craig can be in a different story and still be in the same world. And I can see why he keeps coming back to parts of it; it's a hell of a world. The Bears thing has a pretty cool consequence, which I'll post later today.
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Post by skepticatfirst on Feb 3, 2021 13:33:11 GMT -5
HESHERS Like several of Steve's "ideas" ( youtube), Tom's offhand suggestion about the Bears here ends up snowballing into something much bigger: the "Bears" turn out to be just the first in a series of references to LP/THS gangsters as --- from the perspective of a Vikings fan --- enemy football teams. ***Enemy football teams=gangsteam | city | notes | the Bears | Chicago | (see THE BEARS above) | the Lions | Detroit | (see RATS & CATS above) | the Bengals | Cincinnati | "tiger-striped toughs" [LGI] (see RATS & CATS above); note that the Detroit Tigers of baseball didn't join the Twins in the AL Central until 1998; this is the football team. | the Panthers | Carolina | (see RATS & CATS above) | the Jets | New York | (see SHARKS & JETS above) | the Pack | Green Bay | "in the back mackin pack after pack" [KoolNYC] (see BATHROOM STALL above); "Pack"=established nickname for Packers (see Team Nicknames, wikipedia) | the Cowboys | Dallas | "cowboys kissing cowboys" [SSC]; much more extensive in THS, see Here Goes discussion (heregoes) | the Skins | Washington | "Skins"=established nickname for Redskins (see Team Nicknames, wikipedia) |
***I had picked up on the Cowboys refs in Here Goes, and really should have noticed that "Skins" too was a football reference. But in any case, this is important new information, and leads to several interesting conclusions. First: "Crabs" was already looking like a name of dubious formality (mentioned in only one LP song, late [MiM], then apparently alluded to in an informal way outside of the LP world [Knuckles], as if to say that it wasn't a real fixture of that world after all). This information about the "Skins" cements that intuition: *none* of the gang names, in any of the songs, is the "real" name of the gang. They are *all* metaphors, handles playing off one characteristic or another, attached for one-off or repeated use. Second: upthread, speaking of the evolution of Craig's metaphors, I wrote (see CONVENTIONS above): Now we know the answer: *the gangsters are not, at a literal level, skinheads*; that's an illusion created by the use of the "Skins" metaphor. The reality is the one that appears consistently throughout both LP and THS; the gangsters are Gangstersdescription | song(s) | notes | hippie(s) | NC | compare "did you sleep with that hippie?" to "every hippie that goes home bloody" [NC] | longhairs | NC | "dude looks like jesus but sleeveless" [LGI] | headbanger(s) | Viceburgh | with long hair: "headbanger let down your hair" [Viceburgh] | greasers | BBender, JaJ | compare "greasers are creeps" [BBender] with "roll around with such tweaky creeps" [LDoL] | heshers | Viceburgh, TCMamG, SShoes | also implies long hair, interest in heavy metal/thrash (gdict); "guys that looked like Alice Cooper" [SM] | hicks | SH | | townies | SH, FB, OftC, OWL | A Boston-area term (wikipedia) with sense of "a working-class citizen in a metropolitan area" (wiktionary); literally, someone from the suburban underclass | drifters | CatCT, YDGK, Feelers | Craig describes as "weird cowboy dudes ... like drifters. Maybe homeless or maybe not" (Cloak and Dagger 2004: link) | crust punks | BBlues | presence of dogs (see ORIGINS OF IMAGES above) identifies crust punks in BCamp and Eureka also |
The essential characteristics of the gangsters are that: - they come from the suburban underclass (hicks, townies, greasers, heshers);
- they have long hair (hippies, longhairs, headbangers, heshers, crust punks);[*1]
- they're into heavy metal/thrash music (headbangers, heshers, crust punks);
- they move around, "maybe homeless or maybe not" (drifters, crust punks; heshers, if the 2010 film Hesher is true to stereotype).
The "hesher" tag is the one that covers all of these. The word comes from 90's slang, "hesh," for 'heavy metal + thrash' ( gdict); the image is brought to life in the 2010 film Hesher ( wikipedia), whose title character looks like this: ***With this, we can pierce the veil of another of Craig's deliberate real-life indirections. From the 2012 Good Times interview ( link): This is a carefully constructed statement (see "jump cuts" in CONVENTIONS above): we're meant to infer that Gideon is a skinhead with a racist ideology, but we know now that *that's not true.* Gideon's head was shaved as an act of hazing when he got jumped into the gang ( heregoes); apart from Charlemagne, who much later had his hair cut in order to look like Gideon ( heregoes), Gideon is the *only* literally shaved head in the THS story. His ideology, which is completely unrelated to his hair, is the ideology of non-violence (see BBreathing, etc.; heregoes). [*1] Upthread we have documentation from @skywaywalker ( link) and eyepatchgary ( link) connecting crust punks with hippie elements and rasta/dreads, as well as drifting, drinking, and dogs. See also this interview with John John Jesse of Nausea on the origins of the crust punk movement in the US; Jesse describes the band living with Roger Miret of the Agnostic Front, a thrash metal band actually referenced in the lyrics of TGatSD, near the crust punk ground zero of Tompkins Square Park in NYC ( link). There is a real scene being described here; we'll come back to it in some detail as we get into the story.
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Post by skepticatfirst on Feb 4, 2021 11:36:14 GMT -5
OK, so now we get to the last semi-tedious part of this whole thing: the geography (actually there's some good stuff in here, and it's very important, but it's also a lot). Bear with me for the next 9 chapters and we'll get to the good stuff.
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Post by skepticatfirst on Feb 4, 2021 11:52:54 GMT -5
GEOGRAPHY: FIRST PASSIn the Here Goes thread, we worked out early on ( heregoes) that many THS place names like "Hostile, Massachusetts" are not just metaphorical, but basically allegorical: - Boston/Massachusetts is the state of Hostility
- Denver/Colorado is the state of Being High
- Ybor City/Florida is the state of Wild Partying
- Los Angeles/California is the state of Making It Big
et cetera. There are THS place names that are metaphorical in a non-allegorical way, too: - Las Cruces [TS&tT]: literally, "the crosses," and like Dos Cruces in Both Crosses, evidently a reference to the place of Charlemagne's crucifixion.
- La Quinta [TS&tT]: a reference to the La Quinta motel chain, to go along with all the other motel references in the songs: Residence Inn [DH], Comfort Inn [Star18], Thunderbird [SN], and Motel 6 [212M]. (The pun has precedent: Residence Inn is a "living in" [Ambassador] metaphor; Comfort Inn is a sex metaphor, compare "girls/ Who'll come to you with comfort in the night" [HSL]; Thunderbird and Motel 6 are drug metaphors ["Thunder"=cocaine/heroin, "6"=TR-6=amphetamine, see LISTED above]. Compare The Ambassador, the hotel where Kennedy was killed).
We could list others. The crucial point is that *these THS place names are not literal*; they don't affect the real-world setting of the THS story, virtually all of which unfolds in the Twin Cities. At first blush, it's *not at all* clear that the LP world works the same way. ***Florida, ColoradoFlorida and Colorado in LP look nothing like their THS versions. Despite an abundance of wild parties, there's no Florida in the songs at all, except for Miami in the NC list. The only reference to Denver or Colorado is "these denver slums they look so good in text" [SBackwards], which, coming immediately after mention of the Dharma Bums, is an obviously metaphorical reference to Kerouac's On The Road --- but, precisely because it's so straightforward, seems very different from the crazy use of names in THS. ***MassachusettsThe evidence for Massachusetts points in different directions. There are only two LP references to Boston, both in simple lists of place names [NC, LGI]; neither appears to be anything like Hostile, Mass. There is one reference to Massachusetts [Rental], but because it's in a purely negative statement, it's hard to use it to draw conclusions. References to Springfield, Massachusetts and New Bedford, Massachusetts [MiM] give us a little more to work with. The Springfield lines: peter panned out here from springfield, mass ... peter panned back into springfield, mass [MiM] seem to be something other than literal: "Peter Pan" is a drug reference (to PCP; see LISTED above), and Springfield is where the headquarters of the Peter Pan Bus Lines are located ( wikipedia), suggesting a doubling-down on the drug reference, rather than a realistic destination. The New Bedford line: well hello, new bedford, mass won't you hit me with a little bit of amnesty [MiM] is also interesting: by escaping to New Bedford, the narrator of the song can be presumed to be getting a "new bed," but it's hard to make a strict connection between that and the "amnesty" he's looking for. Again, it looks like there's something metaphorical happening here, but it's not allegory. ***CaliforniaThere are, on the other hand, a number of LP references to California that begin to sound more THS-like. There's an innuendo-laden road trip to the west coast in Mick's Tape that closely resembles Holly's trip in Star 18, C&N, etc. We've already noted that "orange grove" [Langelos], like "strawberry stand" [TPatP], is a place where drugs are for sale, i.e. a trap house (see FRUIT above). But as the immediately preceding reference to "dust bowl" confirms ( wikipedia), "orange grove" is also a reference to John Steinbeck's The Grapes Of Wrath, the story of the Depression-era Okies who went to California to work as crop pickers ("a grove of yella oranges" appears in chapter 18 of the novel, p. 281 in the Modern Library edition). So that's a California-as-drug-house metaphor, which, while not the allegorical California of THS, is certainly not literal, either. ***Long Beach IslandFinally, there's the LBI (Long Beach Island, in New Jersey) and the other East Coast shore locations, which do sound a lot like the Ybor City of THS. ***ViceburghA final case that's easy to assess is Viceburgh, the story of a group of kids meandering on foot between several locations: - "1st and 59th": Google Maps confirms that there's only one such intersection in America, and that's the one in Manhattan at the end of the Queensboro Bridge, also known as the 59th Street Bridge. (Possibly a reference to the "59th Street Bridge Song" by Simon and Garfunkel, another song about wandering around on foot; compare "Just kicking down the cobblestones" [ link] to "just kickin walk like a panther" [Viceburgh]; the Paul Simon connection found by muzzleofbees makes this more likely [ link].) - "the fens": this is definitely a reference to "the Back Bay fens" [HM] of Boston. - "dogtown": this is a reference to either the abandoned settlement in Massachusetts ( wikipedia) or else the Beltrami neighborhood in Northeast Minneapolis ( link), or else the SoCal skate punk mecca ( link). It is self-evident that these places cannot all be meant literally, not all at the same time. ***So already there's no question but that some of the use of place names in the LP story is metaphoric, even if it doesn't seem to be extended to allegory in the THS style. But it's also noticeable that the more clearly non-literal uses mentioned above (California, LBI, New Bedford) don't show up until later in the catalog (the documented lyric "the shore's a bore" in Double Straps was evidently changed after the album was released; what's actually sung is "you're sure a bore"). Since we're looking for clues to the real location of the story, we still want to consider whether the early LP geography may be literal, even if the later geography isn't. Could it be that place names on the first album, or at a minimum in the early five tracks, are still descriptive in the ordinary sense, rather than metaphoric?
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Post by skepticatfirst on Feb 5, 2021 9:33:24 GMT -5
GEOGRAPHY: SELF-TITLED ALBUMThere are a few interesting place references on the first album, but the ones that most stand out are "India" in Jeep Beep Suite, and "Europe," "Greece," and "Coney Island" in Sublet. ***At first glance, the India reference appears *very* un-THS-like. What's going on here? If we take the entire verse for context: entertaining the soldiers, makin eyes at the sailors and we walked between these velvet ropes, went straight for the bathroom soap tried to make ourselves clean tried to make ourselves sparkle, i mean india seems just like a dream i left with five bucks and i lived for five months like a queen and these nightclub scenes aren't ever what they seem liquid soap won't get you completely clean ... [JBS] we see that we've already worked out the keys to most of the interpretation upthread: - "ropes"=roofies, "soap"=meth (see LISTED above).
- "bathroom"=back room at the party where sex happens (see BATHROOM STALL above).
- "nightclub scenes" with "velvet ropes" and "bathroom soap" mean they're going to the "clubs" (see THE FOAM above).
- "entertaining the soldiers, making eyes at the sailors" with ropes/soap/bathroom mean servicing gangsters for drugs.
There's more to "liquid soap" than meets the eye, though. As it turns out, the pump-dispensed household liquid soap with which we're all familiar was invented in the late 70's by the Minneapolis-based Minnetonka Corporation ( wikipedia). This Minneapolis origin is the key to "India," too: it's an allusion to the Aveda brand of beauty products ("shiny shiny hair"), which was founded in Minneapolis in the late 70's after founder Horst Rechelbacher returned from a trip to India (hence the Sanskrit name; wikipedia). [*1]Note that Steve refers to Aveda (and to fellow Minneapolis institution Famous Dave's, maker of "those pickle chips" [BBlues]) in The Hawaii Show's legendary Babysitter ( youtube): Dissed! Fuck! Confirming my worst fears About my hair It was so fucked up beyond belief I headed to Aveda for some scalp relief So "India" and "liquid soap" are references to two Minneapolis pharmacy-goods brands, just as "Stop-n-Shop" and "CVS" a little earlier in the song are references to two New England pharmacy chains. We understand already that the pharmacy-goods and pharmacy references are to drugs and drug houses, respectively (see PHARMACY GOODS above). The fact that these drug house references are described as "nightclub scenes" is a strong indication that the drug houses and "clubs" are actually the same thing, but more on this later (see NIGHTCLUBS below). ***The Minneapolis vs. New England contrast being drawn here is elaborate enough that we can be absolutely certain it's not imagined, even if we don't know what it means. In fact, now that we see it, we can recognize the same contrast being drawn in three different songs: - "India" and "liquid soap" (Minneapolis) vs. "Stop-n-Shop" and "CVS" (New England) [JBS]
- "Rainbow" (Minneapolis) vs. "Friendly's" (New England), "eagle" (Minneapolis) vs. "seagull" (New England) [SCity]
- "Midwest" (Minneapolis) vs. "East" (New England) [BBender].
We'll come back to the significance of this opposition later (see EAST VS MIDWEST below). In the meantime, we've established that "India" is a stand-in for Minneapolis. ***What about "Europe," "Greece," and "Coney Island" in Sublet? The one to start with is Greece; the full text is and i got your postcard, it was from the pantheon it was the first peek at greece that i'd had in weeks [Sublet] There's an obvious problem with this, namely that the Pantheon is in Rome, not in Greece. Craig has been accused before of geographic illiteracy --- of intending "the Sonora" when he wrote "the Sonoma" [MoC], some Southern California city when he wrote "Modesto" [MINTS], etc. --- and here too the obvious thing is to suggest that he meant the Parthenon, not the Pantheon (see for example the genius.com comment: link). But no; as in those other cases, Craig knows exactly what he's doing. That he does mean the Pantheon here is confirmed by the characterization of the clubs as "domes" in Sherman City, and by the other ongoing references to Rome that we've catalogued upthread (see THE FIRST FIVE TRACKS above). The Pantheon is, and for almost 2000 years has been, the largest unreinforced concrete dome in the world: In short, the Pantheon = dome = club = Nice Nice. If "the Pantheon" is deliberate, the next question is, why "Greece"? That had me stumped for some time, until, in an offline message, muzzleofbees suggested to me that it's a pun: "Greece," pronounced "grease," is the home of the "greasers" of Bruce Bender (like the cosmetics metaphor, this is a riddle whose solution is deliberately provided in the context of the same album; see PHARMACY GOODS above). [*2] Like THS' Mary, who "was pretty much living in/ A 3.2 bars a stretch to call a club" [Ambassador], the girl in Sublet has pretty much left to take up living at the Nice Nice. Much more discussion of this, with evidence, to come; for now, the point is that "Greece" serves a metaphoric function, and "Europe" too is a metaphor, serving to blur the distinction between "Greece" and the "Pantheon," which are in fact the same place. ***Now that we have clear evidence of exotic geographic handles standing in for prosaic locations in LP as well as in THS, we can feel pretty confident that "Coney Island" is just another of the coastal party spots whose names litter the lyrics in both worlds: "LBI" [TLaDiLBI, Manpark], "Jones Beach" [Sherman City], "Jersey Shore" [LSifL], "Pensacola" [KP], "Tampa" [SA], "Ybor City" [MPADJs, CatCT, etc.]. ***It doesn't yet rise to the level of solid evidence, but there's a lot of information here pointing to the Twin Cities as the real locale underneath the various place names. [*1] I can't prove, but am willing to bet, that "like a dream" was part of an advertising slogan for Aveda products back in the 80's or early 90's. [*2] Recognizing that "rocks" [BBender] is a drug reference ("rocks"=meth, see LISTED above), we understand that BBender is describing the "greasers" as dealers, aggressively offering their wares from outside the Narrator's car. By the same token, it seems probable that with "greece" [JBS] Craig is making a secondary allusion to "Greek," defined by the ONDCP document as marijuana laced with cocaine ( ondcp).
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Post by muzzleofbees on Feb 8, 2021 6:20:42 GMT -5
I've been mostly offline for a few days, but I really dig this geography stuff. It just makes so much sense that a skilled writer as Craig use these references both for colour, context and scenery, but at the same time filling them with relevance and meaning. Also, how this on another level is weaved together with other ongoiing metaphors or topics.
I remember stumbling upon that Greece/grease parallell, and still think its pretty cool.
I know it's a little bit on the side of the Lifter Puller story, but talking about Europe, what do you make of "Her parents are in Paris/ it's the best place we can access, yeah/ it's not exactly sanctioned, man, but she still god a key"? Or have you actually written something about that, and I just don't remember it? I'll ctrl + f my way through the other pages when this is posted.
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Post by skepticatfirst on Feb 8, 2021 13:10:19 GMT -5
Thanks! yeah, that was a big aha-moment for me, for sure. The fact that there are a number of these things on the first album --- obscurities that turn out to have an explanation tucked into another song on the same album --- is pretty cool, too.
About "her parents are in Paris": I'm going to get to this in XXXXXXX XXXX XXX XXXXXXX :-) ... we need story context before we can open up what's being referred to in the verse as a whole. But about "Paris" itself, I can say a few things.
Regardless of who "she" is, "her parents" aren't really part of the story (apart from being inclined to blame their daughter's downfall on her dancing, providing lawyers, having her because they had to, etc.). In this sense, "Paris" just means "offstage"; they're not actively parenting.
Why "Paris," then, and not another offstage location? Again, ignoring for a moment the question of who "she" is, the fact that her parents are in Paris (like credit card chicks, Brooklyn Heights, turtleneck sweater, etc.) says she's a rich girl. And it's "Paris," rather than some other place that says "rich girl," for lyrical reasons (par-is/par-ents).
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Post by muzzleofbees on Feb 8, 2021 16:13:59 GMT -5
I see That money will come in handy if they ever need to fund a blockbuster summer.
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Post by skepticatfirst on Feb 8, 2021 21:15:38 GMT -5
Sorry I'm running so late today, got crushed at work. Upside is that this is probably as bad as it gets for the methodical boring stuff, should be mostly more interesting from here, starting tomorrow AM.
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Post by skepticatfirst on Feb 8, 2021 21:37:40 GMT -5
GEOGRAPHY: FIRST FIVE TRACKSSo place names on the first album, while not allegorical, are in any case not the names of literal locations. But what about the five tracks that came before the first album? It's still possible that these songs, with lots of evidence of geographic distribution, use place names literally. ***1) Prescription SunglassesWe've already noted that the "three day rave" of PSunglasses has a lot in common with the three-day crucifixion weekend in THS (see THE FIRST FIVE TRACKS above), which at least suggests a connection with the Twin Cities. A stronger link is provided by "swimming pool" [PSunglasses]. This reference to a meth den (see DRUG SLANG above) is repeated in "swimming pool" [HDaD], and HDaD in turn mentions crossing a river: run across the river liquor lasts a little later [HDaD] This "run" closely resembles the one described in LPvtEotE: it's too late for liquor but we could get some 3.2 [LPvtEotE] which, besides alluding to Minnesota liquor laws concerning 3.2 beer ( clicksandhisses), explicitly describes the solution to the narrator's quest to satisfy his "lake street vice" [LPvtEotE], meaning Lake Street in Minneapolis. This reference to Lake Street, one of only a handful of streets that actually runs over a bridge across the river to St. Paul, makes "the river" [HDaD] the Mississippi River, and puts the "swimming pool" [PSunglasses, HDaD, RfLB] in the Twin Cities too. ***EmperorEmperor mentions a ride "back to Connecticut" that's currently "on the freeway/ at the exit by the campus" and is soon to head back "down the turnpike." All of these details suggest a setting at Boston College, where Craig went to school; "the turnpike" in this context would be the Massachusetts Turnpike, putting Connecticut within easy driving distance. So far this is plausible. But then the narrator of the song invites the girl to rejoin him "here among the windmills" [Emperor]. There are no windmills near the BC campus, and there certainly weren't any back in the 90's; on the contrary, the farm-country stereotype associated with windmills would suggest that he's locating himself in the non-urban Midwest. If literal, then, these locations are hard to reconcile. Note too that we've already documented Craig's use of "connect" as a special term at the intersection of sex and drugs (see SEX FOR DRUGS IN METAPHORS above); we can't fail to entertain the possibility that "Connecticut" doesn't refer to the State of Connecticut at all, but rather to the place where the "kids connect" [Brokerdealer MCIGOaCT, DMN]. ***RentalRental tells us that the narrator and his girl companion are driving around "up in New Hampshire"; the references to midterms, and the base orientation with respect to NH ("up"), again suggest a Boston College setting. The final lines of the song: massachusetts valleys and the new york city east side 20's are not what I remember that whole september seems so blurry [Rental] could be consistent with this; but September is early for midterms, and the detailed reference to NYC is hard to account for. There's also mention of an airplane in apparent connection with the rental car, but that doesn't fit the suggested geography, either. We have the evidence of the drug slang documents and LiaL to suggest that "airplane" may be a drug reference (see LISTED above), but this too tends to undermine the literality of the described scenario. It is, finally, extremely improbable that someone on a drive through New Hampshire, even back in the 90's, would happen on a radio station playing Dinosaur Jr. ("In A Jar"). You *could*, on the other hand, hear it on Radio K in the Twin Cities. ***Slips BackwardsSlips Backwards has the "denver slums" reference which, again, is definitely metaphor in allusion to Kerouac (see GEOGRAPHY: FIRST PASS above). The song further describes a girl, whom the narrator met "down on lake street" in Minneapolis, who's living at some point on West Coast. The West Coast reference seems far-fetched, if literal: he "heard" that she was living there but then "had to call twice" to make sure? None of this is strictly internally inconsistent; it's just hard to put together in a story. ***Nassau ColiseumMuch of the action of the song appears to take place on Long Island, at a show at Nassau Coliseum ( link). There's no particular reason to imagine that this isn't literal. There's also a reference to a picture of the narrator and his girlfriend as sophomores (Craig was a college sophomore in 1991, when the show on which the song is supposed to be based took place), which again suggests a college setting. The list of places at the end don't seem to need integrating into the story. ***In short, it's a mix. One song looks like it's based in the Twin Cities, one's got a mix of Twin Cities and West Coast (and metaphorical Denver), and the other three are on the East Coast. Little in the place names themselves, apart possibly from Connecticut in Emperor, suggests anything beyond that. But in looking closely at these songs we notice some interesting commonalities: All five songs are about a narrator and a girl. Three of them are framed around the narrator's plea to get intimate again with the girl after a breakup ("we could all be friends again" [Emperor], "you told your boyfriend ... make me feel special" [Rental], and "you had just left me ... I wanna fuck you" [NC]). And four of the five describe fragments of the same bizarre episode that's familiar from I Like the Lights and other songs in the canon --- namely, the one in which the girl wears a sexy dress to a trap house, gets high, takes it off, fucks, and wakes up messily afterwards: she's creepin out of the east end ... jenny looks a little jonesy she said i don't quite know what happened woke up with my dress wide open [ILtL] Compare this with NC, PSunglasses, Emperor, SBackwards: song | lines | factors | notes | NC | you're in a stupor ... you fell out your dress/ you fell off of the porch swing, we were kind of a mess ... did you sleep with that hippie? | trap house, high, takes off dress, fucks, mess afterwards | "porch swing" is a trap house ref: "you can buy it off the porch" [SSC] | PSunglasses | swimming pool had purple lights ... woke up ... i hope you don't remember pretty soon/ think it was a three day rave ... we were naked on a sunday afternoon | trap house, high, takes off dress, fucks, wakes up, mess afterwards | "pool" is slang for meth den (see DRUG SLANG above) | Emperor | you came in without your makeup wearing your new junk store dress/ your face covered in curls and tears ... you said your head was finally clear | trap house, sexy dress, high, mess afterwards | "without your makeup" means "sobered up" (see PHARMACY GOODS above); "junk store" (alternative lyric "drugstore") is a trap house | SBackwards | then i heard that you were hanging out at pawn shops/ you always get a good price, you sure get some good junk/ then i heard that you were dressin kinda hip-hop
| trap house, sexy dress, high | "pawn shops"="junk stores," i.e. trap houses |
This similarity isn't coincidence: we have what is apparently the same story being set in apparently different locales --- a fact that should lead us to regard *all* of those locales with a skeptical eye. But if we have to choose one, the resemblance of these events to the events of the THS story, and the accumulation of Twin Cities allusions along the way, suggests that we may be looking at the Twin Cities here too. We'll see how this hypothesis holds up as the analysis progresses.
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Post by skepticatfirst on Feb 9, 2021 10:13:31 GMT -5
NICE NICEIn short, no matter how far back we rewind through the evolution of Craig's style, we *never* find a use of place names that is reliably and plainly descriptive. The LP experiments with metaphor are tentative, and stop short of the radical allegories of THS. But at no point are place names necessarily to be taken at face value. ***Which brings us around to the decades-old questions about the Nice Nice. Is it in Minneapolis? Is it in Boston, on Landsdowne Street? Is it, as Steve joked, in Atlantis ( link)? Craig's answer, "it doesn't have a physical location," is true as far as it goes. But like so many of his interview responses, it elides the essential truth. Let's start with a couple of facts about the Nice Nice. ***The first (and, prior to Fiestas & Fiascos, the only) use of "nice nice" is in an exclamation in Slips Backwards: thought you said that you were gonna get some zest soap and i thought baby nice, nice, that stuff gets your skin slick [SBackwards] We've already looked at this line upthread (see SLIP AND TRIP above); it suggests that the essential characteristic of the Nice Nice is the sex-for-drugs exchange, which for the rest is exactly what we learn from Candy's Room --- the girl makes propositions, gets covered up with drugs, and gets her tights stained: baby ain't you heard about the night club called the nice nice they got the dry ice and the knife fights on every other wednesday night i can see all the stains in your white tights when you stand in the black lights down at the nice nice and we were born in these night clubs and you make those propositions with your sexy little shoulder shrugs you'll be covered up with powdered drugs by the end of the night if you're still at the nice nice [CRoom] We learn a few more things from this passage: 1) What's happening here is the full cruising-for-drugs vicious cycle described in Roaming The Foam, which is also linked to the clubs (see THE FOAM above). 2) The action at the Nice Nice, with "ice"=meth (see LISTED above) on offer, happens "every other wednesday night." ***The Wednesday night parties, alluded to only in passing in the THS story [CF], are *the* fundamental institution of the Lifter Puller world. References to Wednesday as a regularly recurring party day occur in SGS, RfLB, and CRoom. The reference in Rock For Lite Brite reveals the purpose of the parties: waiting on the wednesday shipment [RfLB] What's being described here is a commercial enterprise of regular drug shipments, delivered from someplace offstage to wherever it is that the songs take place. We already have reason to suspect that the real environment beneath the place-name metaphors is the Twin Cities. Per Craig, the great plague of the Twin Cities is speed (see DRUG LANDSCAPE above). It's very likely, then, that the Brokerdealer song If Not For Hipster Pictures --- which, under the mantle of a "vision"/"fever dream" [INFHP], describes a number of recognizable aspects of the Lifter Puller world --- is talking about the Wednesday shipments when it says: it was St Paul bars and St Cloud speed [INFHP] We can't fail to note that this squares with everything we know about the figure of Shepard, leader of the Cityscape Skins, in the THS story. He too comes from St. Cloud: [*1] Shepard came out of St. Cloud with a little ideology [IHTWTDFY] and is the "Maestro" [Feelers] running the wholesale trade of drugs into the city: [*2] The vibrations were impatient, city's sick of running out But first we set the prices, and then we talk about amounts ... Shepard [Feelers] (We have to take care applying THS evidence to the LP story; but this kind of background information is very straightforward, and it won't be the last time we use the lamp of one of Craig's worlds to illuminate the other.) So the Wednesday night parties are commercial-scale speed distribution events that, by definition, operate on a predictable schedule. How is it that they're not shut down by law enforcement? The answer is that the gangsters running the parties do the same thing the organizers of raves do: they change locations every time, and only put out address information through hard-to-trace chains of flyers and word-of-mouth ("think it was a three-day rave/ think I got the flyer saved" [PSunglasses]). *The Wednesday night parties move around.* ***It's important to note that, while these Wednesday night get-togethers are the foundation on which the LP world is built, they're not the only bashes in the picture. Sometimes, when the Scene wants to do something a little bigger, something with a little more room to run, they'll throw a special party as a one-off. Those special parties aren't classified by name in Lifter Puller; but as a matter of factual description, they're the "weekenders." ***There's one more important thing we know about the Nice Nice that has a bearing on the question of its location. There is no doubt at all that 15th and Franklin is an intersection in Minneapolis. From the Right Moves interview ( link): The song Nice Nice explicitly describes Jenny taking a taxi from the Nice Nice "up" (that is, uptown, in the direction from Lowertown to Uptown), to 15th and Franklin, and then "back to the east end": now jenny missed her ride and she's takin off her tights in the back seat of some taxi we went from upstairs at the nice nice up to franklin up by 15th ... it's the end of the night and now jenny's creepin back to the east end shot through with the sunlight [NN] This locates the Nice Nice in the "east end," i.e. the "East Side" [SPayne] of St. Paul. The East Side of St. Paul is of course also where THS's Ambassador/metal bar is located, in the Rathskeller bar in the old Hamm's brewery (this was a major result of the Here Goes investigation: heregoes). Recall that the Ambassador too is described as a "club" [Ambassador] like the Nice Nice, and as a "3.2 bar" like the final party destination in LPvtEotE, which is itself linked to the "club" "across the river" in HDaD (i.e. across the Mississippi, in St. Paul; see GEOGRAPHY: FIRST FIVE TRACKS above). These reports all point to the same place; the "east end" episode of Jenny waking up with her dress wide open, reflected in NC, PSunglasses, Emperor, and SBackwards (see GEOGRAPHY: FIRST FIVE TRACKS above), takes place there too. But the Nice Nice "doesn't have a physical location." So how can it be identified with the brewery bar in St. Paul? The Nice Nice doesn't have *a* physical location. It moves from place to place with the parties, wherever the Scene can get together, including, notably, in the "east end" of St. Paul. The LP story, like the THS story, is set in the Twin Cities. [*1] With "some are getting sprung" appearing prominently in the first verse, IHTWTDFY encourages us to imagine that Shepard "came out of St. Cloud" in the sense of getting out of prison, and that St. Cloud is being referred to specifically as the location of the Minnesota Correctional Facility ( wikipedia). But this is a setup, a case of Craig setting a strong expectation on the way in order to put us on the wrong track later. The ones getting sprung from and going back into the gang are the kids themselves ( heregoes). [*2] Now that ODP is officially released with a lyric sheet, a few comments about Shepard's appearance in the Feelers. There is no doubt that the Maestro is Shepard: "the mansion up the mountain" [Feelers] is "Shepard's mansion" [ABlues]; he's the leader of the gang that sells the merchandise and counts the money in the "motels" ("counting up" [SShoes]), etc. But after the Massive Nights V live version, which was clearly delivered with the following lyrics, with no "The" in front of the first line, and no "s" between "cowboys" and "trying": Shepard started spinning out The cowboy trying to dismount St. Francis with the pigeons on his shoulder ... The Scene [Feelers] the lyric sheet now has: The shepherds started spinning out The cowboys trying to dismount St. Francis with the pigeons on his shoulder ... This scene [Feelers] Having heard the first version, whose lyrics were vetted and corrected by multiple people here on the boards ( link), it's hard to believe that the second one is the "original." We already know Shepard as the "cowboy" who's "ready to snap" from Saddle Shoes and Look Alive; surely, that's him. The singular subject that's preserved in "St. Francis" fits much better with a singular subject in the first two lines as well. Another retrofitted plural makes the awkwardness of these changes even more evident. The Massive Nights V live version was delivered with The pirate with the party mouth [Feelers] but the lyric sheet now has: The pirates with the party mouth [Feelers] The fact that singular "party mouth" straight-up doesn't work with plural "pirates" shows that something strange is being done here. It seems unlikely to be coincidence that "pirate," like "Shepard," is the identifier of a well-known character in Craig's stories, even if we're not yet in a position to explain what he's doing in the THS universe (see THS CHARACTERS below). To me, it appears that Craig is going out of his way here to paper over black-and-white evidence of the continued presence of old characters, and of The Scene, on the new album. We know that his commitment to the written lyrical record is secondary in any case ( link); it's not surprising that he would alter it to avoid being pinned down on this point ( link).
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