It’s popular to write generational warfare posts, but as a Gen X member I’m neutral in those. However, I would like some of you who are Boomers to explain this to me.
I kinda like it; but it doesn’t make any kind of sense.
I suppose I qualify as a boomer by age. Perhaps it's a more melodious version of Alice's Restaurant?
Three things might contribute to explain it: a fashion for trying to sound profound and oppressed, a fashion for trying to make lyrics have a nice sound without worrying much about the meaning, and a fashion for trying under the table pharmaceuticals.
I remember the Talbot brothers well. They became Jesus people about the time I did, and John Michael went on to become a Franciscan monk. I liked him quite a bit in the 80s. He did an album with Michael Card.
I admit I find this one a rather shallow anti-Vietnam, anti-establishment piece, with what used to be the common assertion that The Man was going to kill you for saying things that couldn't be said, like that maybe they weren't right. I notice all those people are still alive and expressing their opinions. A miracle.
It reminds me of Tom Wolfe's famous "the dark night of fascism is always descending on the United States yet only lands on Europe." Interesting background here: https://assistantvillageidiot.blogspot.com/2013/01/revel-to-wolfe-to-volokh.html
So is Vietnam what the hangman symbolism is about? I was mystified as to why these truth-telling freaks would go into the state executioner business; but as an allegory for the draft I can see it.
Probably that, though it might have been more general, also about the violence of the CIA or the Klan or whatever. It all just rolled together in the imagination of those days.
The song (to me) is about irony, from a pacifist's point of view. But the real pacifist irony is, that two humans were killed...even though they were hangmen...and it doesn't bother the song writers psyche at all ;-) nmewn
I suspect that the first line that was written was "two hangmen hangin from a tree". "That don't bother me" rhymes and has a little fillip; and the rest was written around those two lines to try to give the chorus some approximation of meaning.
I suppose I qualify as a boomer by age. Perhaps it's a more melodious version of Alice's Restaurant?
ReplyDeleteThree things might contribute to explain it: a fashion for trying to sound profound and oppressed, a fashion for trying to make lyrics have a nice sound without worrying much about the meaning, and a fashion for trying under the table pharmaceuticals.
I remember the Talbot brothers well. They became Jesus people about the time I did, and John Michael went on to become a Franciscan monk. I liked him quite a bit in the 80s. He did an album with Michael Card.
ReplyDeleteI admit I find this one a rather shallow anti-Vietnam, anti-establishment piece, with what used to be the common assertion that The Man was going to kill you for saying things that couldn't be said, like that maybe they weren't right. I notice all those people are still alive and expressing their opinions. A miracle.
It reminds me of Tom Wolfe's famous "the dark night of fascism is always descending on the United States yet only lands on Europe." Interesting background here: https://assistantvillageidiot.blogspot.com/2013/01/revel-to-wolfe-to-volokh.html
So is Vietnam what the hangman symbolism is about? I was mystified as to why these truth-telling freaks would go into the state executioner business; but as an allegory for the draft I can see it.
ReplyDeleteProbably that, though it might have been more general, also about the violence of the CIA or the Klan or whatever. It all just rolled together in the imagination of those days.
ReplyDeleteThe song (to me) is about irony, from a pacifist's point of view. But the real pacifist irony is, that two humans were killed...even though they were hangmen...and it doesn't bother the song writers psyche at all ;-)
ReplyDeletenmewn
I suspect that the first line that was written was "two hangmen hangin from a tree". "That don't bother me" rhymes and has a little fillip; and the rest was written around those two lines to try to give the chorus some approximation of meaning.
ReplyDelete