| The Band – The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down Lyrics | 8 years ago |
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It's an old song, but very much timely in 2017, too. There are some good interpretations here, but maybe I can add a bit to them. Virgil Caine is a railroad engineer--a good job because it's more stable than farming (like his father) and it gets him exempted from conscription. He supports the Confederacy because he lives and works there and because even in the middle of a war, his life looks pretty good. He might even become a railroad conductor some day. In late March 1865, Union Major General George Stoneman leads a cavalry division through northwestern North Carolina, southern Virginia, and Tennessee, tearing up railroad tracks at every opportunity to cut the lifeline between Virginia and the states further south. It's not in the song, but Virgil is no fool. He knows what his trains have been carrying to Richmond. Realizing that the war is almost over, he packs up his wife and they move to Tennesee Lee's surrender. By May 10th, one month and one day after the surrender, Virgil has given up all hope. Apparently he holds out in Virginia until Jefferson Davis passes through Danville after the surrender, but knowing all is lost, he and his wife move to Tennessee. Railroads aren't running. and Virgil has to cut wood for his livelihood. His customers, some of whom are probably Union occupation troops, take the best of his wood and they don't pay well. It's not in the song, but all around he sees the economic, social, and political system of the south in ruins. One day, his wife calls to him to point out the steamboat Robert E. Lee on the Mississippi. The Lee was (and might still be) the fastest commercial vessel on the river. The boat, however, was built in Indiana. It's decor is majestic, but it has nothing to do with what Virgil's life is like now. When Virgil says "Like my father before me, I will work the land," he is expressing his determination to get back something of what he has lost. It would have been much easier if his brother had survived the war to work with him, but as it is, Virgil is alone. "You can't raise a Caine back up when it's in defeat." What about the chorus? On the night the war ended, bells undoubtedly rang to celebrate the return of peace. "na na na na na na na na na"? That could have been any of a number of syllables. For me, at least, "Na na na" conjures schoolyard taunting: "You can't catch me. Na na-na na na." |
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| Eagles – Saturday Night Lyrics | 10 years ago |
| There are some interesting interpretations here, and I think they've got some real merit. I'm wondering, however, whether context comes in. This was from the Desperado album, and the band was very much into a western outlaws theme. | |
| The Band – The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down Lyrics | 10 years ago |
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Virgin Caine was a railroad man, a good job in the pre-war south. By the early months of 1865, though, Union troops had burned their way through the Shenandoah Valley, "the breadbasket of the south." In other areas, so many men were away in the army that it was impossible to conduct any agriculture, so people (especially those between Richmond and Danville) were hungry. Stoneman;s cavalry ripped up the tracks again, and Caine was out of work. Very likely he sent his wife to Tennessee, far from where the fighting was taking place, and went into the army. He may not have heard about the fall of Richmond until May 10, perhaps because he had been captured and sent to a prison camp (where prisoners weren't released until they signed the oath of allegiance--sometimes as late as the end of June. He went to Tennessee, where he and his wife were able to settle, apparently on family land. They were near the Mississippi River and saw the steamboat Robert E. Lee, which many southerners regarded as a symbol of hope. But Union troops were now occupying the south, and the reconstruction policies were rough at best. To make any money at all, Caine had to sell wood from his property, probably not getting what it was worth and concerned that the best wood was being taken. He mourns his brother, who was killed during the war, but he is determined that he will stay alive by working the land and survive the occupation, even though he realizes that southern independence and the south in which he grew up are gone forever. |
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| The Rolling Stones – Sympathy for the Devil Lyrics | 11 years ago |
| If you're up on your Hawthorne, particularly "Young Goodman Brown," you may well recall that there is a section in which Goodman Brown's fellow traveler (the devil) explains that he has been very well known in Puritan New England and in Brown's family, too. That is, thematically, it follows the same track as the second through seventh stanzas here, where the speaker is saying where he's been. It would be very tough to convince me that Jagger isn't up on his Hawthorne. The point in Hawthorne is that all of these good, godly Puritans who think they're such moral people are really bound to each other by a propensity to do evil--and it's that bond that connects everyone. This is the opposite of the Transcendentalism, which held that people and all of nature were bound through an infinite store of goodness, the Oversoul. | |
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