Dead Songs in Depth

    
283/366 From 'When You Say When', recorded by Rob Barraco with the
Dragonflys:

Got a card in the mail, here's what it read
Keep your dead ass out of jail and keep the baby fed

www.whitegum.com/songfile/WHENYOUS.HTM
  

    
284/366 From 'Paint And Glass', on Jim Lauderdale's album Headed For
The Hills:

Be kind to all your friends for you know not the hour
Of beginnings nor of ends, you do not have that power

www.whitegum.com/songfile/PAINTAND.HTM
  

    
285/366 From 'Pickle Wine':

Talk to him in Cantonese, old demotic Greek
Or Grateful Dead ebonics, just smile when you speak

www.whitegum.com/songfile/PICKLEWI.HTM
  

    
Well now!
  

    
286/366 From 'Back Shamrock', on RH's album Liberty:

Full speed power dive, kick it into overdrive
If anyone gets out alive it might as well be you

www.whitegum.com/songfile/BLACKSHA.HTM
  

    
Re <353>--this reminds me so much of the Mason Williams "Them"
poems:

http://digicoll.library.wisc.edu/cgi-bin/Literature/Literature-idx?type=header
&id=Literature.Williams&isize=text&pview=hide

Hunter's verse begins: 

Wanta fix your pickle squeezer?
Tell you how to do it
Find yourself a Bozo, pal
Let him get into it

Here's a typical closing from a "Them" poem--"Them Duck Pluckers":

How to be a Duck Plucker?
No wayda duck it.
Rustle up a duck,
Shoo-boy! Jist pluck it!
  

    
Thanks for posting this, David. Fascinating.
  

    
287/366 From 'Comes A Time' (early verse as the song was being
developed into the familiar version):

When the words come out like an angry stream
You hear yourself say things you could never mean

www.whitegum.com/songfile/COMESTIM.HTM
  

    
I love that one!
  

    
288/366 From 'End Of The World Blues', another lyric written for
Zero:

Well it's dog eat cat and it's cat eat mouse
And it's termites eating the whole damn house

www.whitegum.com/songfile/ENDOFWOR.HTM
  

    
289/366 From 'I Didn’t Know You', a lyric in Box Of Rain:

The places you could rise light as thistledown
Places you could fall unnoticed to the ground

www.whitegum.com/songfile/I1DIDNTK.HTM
  

    
290/366 From 'Blue Moon Junction', music by Jim Lauderdale:

Once it's gone, it's truly gone, only lesser worlds to know
Far behind or on beyond Blue Moon Junction and falling snow

www.whitegum.com/songfile/BLUEMOOJ.HTM
  

    
291/266 From 'Built To Last':

A wind held by the collar, a cloud held by the breeze
You can walk on coals of fire but sometimes you must freeze

www.whitegum.com/songfile/BUILTLST.HTM
  

    
292/366 From 'Valerie', on Jerry Garcia's Run For The Roses:

You got me down on the knees of my shakin' feet
Can't play the blues, 'cause of you I drop the beat

www.whitegum.com/songfile/VALERIE.HTM
  

    
293/366 From 'Next Dimension', a Rhythm Devils song:

Things are cool in the next dimension, everything rocking from side
to side
Past and future in suspension, love is the ocean and time's the tide

www.whitegum.com/songfile/NEXTDIME.HTM
  

    
Hunter was a pretty dab hand at illuminating the ineffable. 
  

    
294/366 From 'So Blue', music by John Kadlecik. Seemed sort of
relevant to current circumstances:

They got a special on soap, you buy a couple of bars and try to wash
away your fears
They got a special on shoes, you buy a pair or two and you try to
run away from here

www.whitegum.com/songfile/SOBLUE.HTM
  

    
295/366 From 'Crooked Judge', on the NRPS album Brujo:

If by now we stop to sleep we can't make no midnight creep
Only time can ever say pack my cat and haul away

www.whitegum.com/songfile/CROOKEDJ.HTM
  

    
295/366 From 'Again And Again', music by Jimmy Herring, on Phil
Lesh's album There And Back Again:

A jammed up highway no time to lose, an endless red light
In the houses of night where the bulldogs purr and the alley cats
bite

www.whitegum.com/songfile/AGAINAND.HTM
  

    
297/366 From 'Land Of My Dreams', on Jim Lauderdale's album Blue
Moon Junction:

My dreams are as real as my heartbeat to me, as true as the clouds
in my sky
That drift overhead as the clouds hurry by and the one I'll love
till I die

www.whitegum.com/songfile/LANDOFMY.HTM
  

    
298/366 From 'The Boxes of Dr. Spasmodious', written by Robert
Hunter to be read over the air at a Grateful Dead NYE concert
broadcast:

You, frail and fair as a lily, held my hand by light of the moon,
Pale beams brightly spilling on boxes all over the room

www.whitegum.com/songfile/BOXESDRS.HTM
  

    
299/366 From 'Raging', written for the soundtrack of Armageddon Rag:

Don't ask me to compromise what I've done before
Maybe that's the way it was but it ain't that way no more

www.whitegum.com/songfile/RAGING.HTM
  

    
300/366 From 'Whisperin’ Jones', music by Vince Welnick:

You told another, they came and told me, what can the source of this
scandal be
Someone talking like they know their stuff, not enough facts to call
anyone's bluff

www.whitegum.com/songfile/WHISPJON.HTM
  

    
301/366 From 'When A Man Loves A Woman', on RH's album Liberty.
Hunter says in Box Of Rain "Unbelievable as it sounds, the existence
of the classic, 1966 Calvin Lewis-Andrew Wright song of the same
title was unknown to me when I wrote this piece":

When you cross the sea of emotion in a boat with no passenger side
Throwing all sense of precaution to the waves to be lapped with the
tide

www.whitegum.com/songfile/WHENMAN2.HTM
  

    
302/366 From 'Self Defence', a Hart/Hunter song:

I can't tell you nothing except for what I've said
Shut down by exhaustion, just want to go to bed

www.whitegum.com/songfile/SELFDEFE.HTM