Dead Songs in Depth

    
Exactly, that is where I was heading with the dialogue earlier.
However, I forgot to do the necessary research.
  

    


Bryan Miller writes:


> Yeah, the whole Jack straw = Shannon thing is one os those revisions to my
> theory i have changed my mind about. I think they are two different people
> with very similar circumstances and ways of thinking. However, it does seem
> to me that Jack is the more moral of the two. And this creates a realistic
> contrast.
  

    
Back in '72 Weir sang the whole thing, with Phil and sometimes Phil
and Jerry harmonising.
  

    
(Copied from another thread) A Bob Weir interview in Uncut magazine of
May 2007 gives more on the "Of Mice And Men" theme:

"I don’t watch much TV, but one night I was home, it was late, and an
old version of Steinbeck’s Of Mice And Men came on. I was mesmerised
[sic]. We were coming out of the Workingman’s Dead phase, and Hunter
had this lyric. I grabbed it, and we came with a little sketch of
heartland Americana, a balled about two ne’er-do-wells. It was
patterned on Of Mice And Men, but we tried to put a twist or two on it.
Same story, different context."

[Incidentally, I now work for Jack Straw at the (British) Ministry of
Justice]
  

    
Watch yer back :^)
  

    
That gets back to that "cut his buddy down" line, with its ambiguity.
But yes, watch yer back at all times!
  

    
Posted on behalf of Peter Johnson:

An Historical observation.

There ain't a place a man can hide, Shannon, will keep him from the
sun 


I do not remember the exact text of the reference but you can find it
in the Time/Life book series on the old west.  In the volume about "The
Gunfoghters".  Butch Cassidy and the Hole in the wall gang robbed a
train that had money belonging to an eastern newspaper magnate,
possibly the Boston sun or the Chicago sun, I am  not really sure
which.. The "paper" then put up a substantial reward for the capture of
the hole in the wall gang and then hired the Pinkerton detective
agency to track them down and capture them.  The published exploits of
the Pinkertons and the hole in the wall gang increased the circulation
of the paper so much that he may have hired the pinkertons to track
down other outlaws to further increase or maintain circulation of the
paper. The Pinkertons were kept on the payroll of the Sun for at least
two years until Butch and Sundance went to Bolivia.  So I think that
the above line is in reference to either the Chicago Sun 0r The Boston
Sun.

Peter Johnson
  

    
That's a bit of a stretch, but interesting to contemplate.
  

    
"keep him from the sun" is an odd construction, possibly a cryptical
envelopment.
  

    
Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar. According to Hunter the story is
actually about two down and outers in the depression era.
  

    
And yet, Hunter himself has repeatedly weighed in on the idea that
regardless of what HE thinks (knows) the song to "be about," there are
as many other potential meanings as there are listeners, and that is
kind of the point of this entire deadsongs.vue conference! I personally
love the wildest of interpretations or perceived references, because
it shows up the whole idea of how we create or assign meaning, not just
to Dead lyrics, but to all art, and, ultimately, to everything in our
lives. 
  

    
"there are as many other potential meanings as there are listeners"

Word...That's one of my favorite things about dead lyrics: they are so
open to interpretation.  It's been really interesting to me to have
the songs evolve in my own mind over the years.
  

    
And that's why music videos are problematic.  They tend to delimit our
imagination about songs.
  

    
Does anyone still watch music videos?
  

    
GD Comix can probably limit imagination more than music vids. Or maybe
they become the definitive texts?

From Jack Kerouac's On the Road:

"'It's just that I love boxcars and I love to read the names on them
like Missouri Pacific, Great Northern, Rock Island Line. By Gad, Major,
if I could tell you everything that happened to me hitching here.'"
(Sal expounding on the joys of the road compared to those of sipping
vintage French wine at p. 42 Penguin paperback edition)
  

    
I just saw a reference to Jack Straw on an edition of The Antiques
Roadshow, the BBC TV show. This edition was filmed in Ireland, and
there was a Mummers performance at the top of the show. One of the
characters was Jack Straw. 

The Strawman, aka Jack Straw, is a fundamental character. So Jack
Straw dates back to medieval times at least, and probably way before
then. Mummers plays have their origins in the second millennium BC.

See https://www.sligoheritage.com/archmummers.htm
  

    
Very cool!
  

    
Correction: Should be Antiques Roadshow, no "the".