Dead Songs in Depth

    
Here Comes Sunshine
w: Hunter m: Garcia
AGDL: http://arts.ucsc.edu/gdead/agdl/hcsu.html
LASF: http://www.whitegum.com/songfile/HERECOME.HTM
  

    
Here Comes Sunshine 
Lyrics: Robert Hunter
Music: Jerry Garcia

Copyright Ice Nine Publishing; used by permission.

Wake of the flood, laughing water, forty nine
Get out the pans, don't just stand there dreaming, get out the way
Get out the way

Chorus
Here comes sunshine
Here comes sunshine

Line up a long shot, maybe try it two times, maybe more
Good to know you got shoes to wear, when you find the floor
Why hold out for more

[chorus]

Asking you nice now, keep the mother rolling, one more time
Been down before, you just don't have to go no more
No more

[chorus]
  

    
I was listening to an early version of this in the last day or two, and I 
swear Garcia sang lapping water instead of laughing water.......
  

    
I always thought it was "get out the of paths/don't just stand there
dreaming." "Pans" makes much better sense for the gold diggin'
implications. I pictured people standing there amazed and mesmerized at
the coming, flooding sunshine all around, and Jerry saying "Get out of
the way, don't just stand there dreaming. DANCE!" Funny how we get
those words "wrong" but can still come up wiht meanings that make good
sense.

"Lapping water" would make sense too, in certain aspects. "Here, hold
this but whatever you do, for God's sake don't drink it!" ;-)
  

    
I think the pans refers to having to bail water.
  

    
I thought so too, which is why lapping water actually made more sense to 
me than laughing water....
  

    
bail water, or sift gold out of water from the '49 gold rush?
  

    
it's a nice double entendre, sure.

i think hunter was talking about a flood in 19 49, but he'd be the
last to limit anyone's interpretation of his words.
  

    
Oh, a flood! taht would explain the "wake of the flood" thing. Ha!
where was this flood? And now I'm trying to fit the 2nd and 3rd stanzas
into a flood scenerio, keeping in mind, of course, that most likely a
literal flood is not the only thing in mind here.
  

    
Actually the flood happened in 48.

http://freepages.history.rootsweb.com/~cchouk/vanport/
  

    
Could this be a reference to WH Auden's The Enchafed Flood published
in 1949? In the Amazon listing for this book, reviewer emble@aol.com
claims it is "a dead-on key to the lyrics of They Might Be Giants".
Where giants go, might not Hunter?

Enchafed means furious, excited, irritated (OED). 1604 Shakespeare,
Othello, II. i. 16, "I neuer did like mollestation view On the enchafed
flood." 
  

    
If this is a ref. to a flood the second and third stanzas have not
yielded a thing to me toward understanding their place in the story. I
guess if I wrote it I'd understand exactly what I meant, maybe.

Have you read Auden's book?

In my twisted mind I thought this song was a ref. to the "flood" of
entheogens (or whatever you like to call them) in the 60s (Oh, for a
walk in that Orange Sunshine!). The "wake" being the rippling movements
of that onslaught of mind-benders taht this album was celebrating.

In this interp., the "laughing water" is that full body, gushing,
swirling, watery high. The ref. to "49" gold rush and "sunshine" is the
golden feeling and notion of being "on top of the world." "Don't just
stand there dreaming" (obvious reference there), "get out the way":
make room for those who are risking all to plunge into the depths of
this experience. Don't become wall-flower too easily. There's a lot to
explore here and we need to link up and go together, you and I while we
still can.

The second stanze would be something like trying to get to the point
of this deep exploration. "OK, let's try this again. See if we can get
this "long shot" to pay off. Once your shoes are on the floor, once
you've found your "sea legs" why ask for anything "more." You've got
everything you need dissolving on your tongue. "Here comes Sunshine!"

third stanza would be a plea to keep the thing going, keep it rolling,
keep it moving. Allow it to have it's own life on its own terms. You
don't have to come back you know, "You just don't have to go no more."
It's a voluntary thing. Now that you're here, let's move with it. "It's
too late to stop now!"

"Here comes Sunshine!"

However, Box of Rain (94): "(Remembering the great Vanport, Washington
flood of 1949, living in other people's homes, a family abandoned by
father; second grade)".
  

    
I have ordered the Auden book, will report back in due course. A
reviewer on Amazon UK called it "an indispensible [sic] sourcebook for
understanding Frank Black's first album."

However, the Box of Rain notes certainly point in a different
direction.
  

    
Yeah, Hunter, when he was in the 2nd grade, remembers these fragmented
thoughts and feelings about living with other families during that
flood, and one that was abdoned by their father? Whoa. Early childhood
memories are tricky to say the least. Why was Hunter living with that
other family? Was their hourse destroyed in the flood?

I'll google the Vanport, WA flood and see what comes up.

BTW, who is Frank Black?
  

    
Oh, wait, duh. <Masonskids> already provided a link in #9. I've got to
be more observant. Thanks Tim.
  

    
NOw, Tim's link calls for Oregon, not WA, as the location of Vanport.
  

    
Just a few quotes from that article from Tim:

"Because of extraordinary heavy spring runoffs, Vanport was fifteen
feet below Columbia River water level by the end of May 1948. On
Memorial day the dike broke. A wall of water wiped out the town,
leavning almost 20,000 without homes and an estimated fifteen people
dead.... [Vanport was] the largest public housing project ever built in
the United States."

Wake of the Flood came out in '73 only 25 years after this flood (I
don't know when Hutner actually penned the words for Here Comes
Sunshine). That flood was a pretty recent event for '73, a very vivid
memory for those that did escape.
  

    
"public officials led the population to believe that the damage would
be slight, and in both cases the government response to the disaster
was harshly criticized. Many have attributed the poor response, in both
cases, to racist attitudes on the part of officials, who allegedly
neglected to respond appropriately to the destruction of heavily-black
communities." 

"On the morning of Memorial Day on Sunday, May 30, 1948, the Housing
Authority of Portland issued the following statement:

REMEMBER:

DIKES ARE SAFE AT PRESENT. 
YOU WILL BE WARNED IF NECESSARY. 
YOU WILL HAVE TIME TO LEAVE. 
DON'T GET EXCITED.
 
At about 4:17 PM the western (railroad) dike burst, sending a ten foot
tall wall of water into the area of Vanport College. Because of the
numerous sloughs and backwaters in the area, the progress of the flood
was delayed about 30 minutes, giving residents more time to escape.

An emergency siren began to sound shortly after the initial breach,
and residents began to head up Denver Avenue to higher ground.

At the time of the flood, the population of Vanport was down to about
18,500 people. Because of the holiday, many residents were away from
their homes for the day. These factors contributed to the low loss of
life: there were only sixteen deaths. Nonetheless, the city was a
complete loss."

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vanport,_Oregon>
  

    
Something else I was thinking about: "laughing water"--this phrase is
certainly not the townspeople's perspective, but the perspective of the
flood, happily crashing through every un-natural barrier (the dam)to
live out its watery being.
  

    
It don't mean no harm.
  

    
Frank Black is the lead singer and protagonist of The Pixes, one of
the greatest bands of the '90s, recently re-formed. They are probably
too harsh / acerbic / noisy for a lot of old-school Deadheads but their
music yields up many rewards once it becomes familiar enough for the
initial gloss of noise to become listenable-through.
  

    
Pixies, not Pixes
  

    
"Doolittle" is a cool Pixie CD with uplifting tunes such as "Wave of
Mutilation" and "Gouge Away."  "This Monkey's Gone to Heaven"is my
favorite.  When they came to Phoenix, we bought tickets from some guy
on the street out front. Though there was no moshing, we were directed
to the mosh pit. With a full house there was no moving back. Ouch. Both
of us left TTF deaf for a few days.  Xian's right, they're definitely
both harsh and listenable with interesting lyrics and compelling tunes.
  

    
Indeed.  The Pixies were great.
  

    

<https://www.dead.net/deadcast/wake-flood-50-here-comes-sunshine>
  

    
David, are you going to link the Workingman's and AB tunes as well?