Dead Songs in Depth

    
Brokedown Palace 
w: Hunter m: Garcia
AGDL: http://arts.ucsc.edu/gdead/agdl/brok.html
LASF: http://www.whitegum.com/songfile/BROKEDWN.HTM
  

    
Brokedown Palace 
Lyrics: Robert Hunter
Music: Jerry Garcia

Copyright Ice Nine Publishing; used by permission.

Fare you well, my honey
Fare you well, my only true one
All the birds that were singing
Are flown, except you alone

Gonna leave this brokedown palace
On my hands and my knees, I will roll, roll, roll
Make myself a bed by the waterside
In my time, in my time, I will roll, roll, roll

In a bed, in a bed
By the waterside I will lay my head
Listen to the river sing sweet songs
To rock my soul

River gonna take me, sing me sweet and sleepy
Sing me sweet and sleepy all the way back home
It's a far gone lullaby sung many years ago
Mama, Mama, many worlds I've come since I first left home

Going home, going home
By the waterside I will rest my bones
Listen to the river sing sweet songs
To rock my soul

Going to plant a weeping willow
On the bank's green edge it will grow, grow, grow
Singing a lullaby beside the water
Lovers come and go, the river will roll, roll, roll

Fare you well, fare you well
I love you more than words can tell
Listen to the river sing sweet songs
To rock my soul
  

    <scribbled by noah Fri 12 Sep 03 12:44>
  

    
Another song that got me hooked early on.

It's a beautiful requiem.
  

    
So beautiful, in fact, that when I made up a booklet pf photos for the 
family of my best friend, Mark, who passed away 9/4/02, I put Brokedown on 
page one inside the cover. It says it all so beautifully. 
  

    
Brokedown is on my list of songs that will be played after I'm gone.
  

    
Let's not hurry there ;-)
  

    
No plans, but you know how unscheduled that sort of thing can be! :-)
  

    
i remind a friend every year or two.. "ya know, just in case.." 
brokedown and black muddy river.  :)
  

    
My wife has instructions that this is the song to be played as they
either bury me or scatter my ashes.

I can't listen to it without getting chills and some tears.  Extremely
sad, but incredibly sweet.

This is definitely another one on the short list of songs that
irrevocably converted me to deadhead status.
  

    
Sadly, it was the last song I heard them play.
  

    
I often thought it might be.
  

    
This song also has a sense of an ending of a more general sort. Being
done with a long standing association of a personal sort, a town, or
indeed with a beloved institution come to mind. 

Of course I'm of the "write my own words" school of Hunter lyrical
interpretation.
  

    
Most times I here this song, I cry a little.  It's part of my soul.
  

    

I remember long-ago talk of this being a song about reincarnation.
  

    
Mama Mama many worlds I've come since I first left home.
Yeah.
  

    

it was one of my son's two lullabies that I could sing.  at 2, he'd ask for
The Jerry Song.

I never saw it as being so sad.
  

    
when they get together to cry over me, i want it played FOR THEM.  
  

    
Re; >16< ... Sad, Sunny-side-up, lookin' over the Horizon.
  

    
i used to have the "keep your sunny side up" comic/postcard on my
fridge.  no idea where's it's gone..
  

    


Jeff Fermon writes:


it's hard to listen to the studio ripple on the radio and not have it take
you into this gem like it does on american beauty. the harmony "listen to the
river sing sweet songs to rock my soul" is nourishing. there's lazy afternoon
sunshineflakes drifting all over this song. kind of blurry, kind of wistful.
like a late summer's day seen through the hazy memory of a distant childhood.
"goin home, goin home..."
  

    
>Sunshineflakes< Indeed.
  

    

This song will forever remind me of <dhawk>'s memorial service, where
<tnf> played a tape of it being performed by the Persuasions, which a
little later was part of the album he put together of the Persuasions
doing Dead songs.
  

    
Another "oops." It should be "By the waterside I will rest my bones"
not "...rest my head." Thanks to Dan Franzen for spotting this.
  

    

Maybe I can arrange to have the original posts edited.
  

    
Thanks David. There are a few others errors scattered around that I've
noted when I or someone else has spotted.