Red Oyster Cult

Does Anybody have any thought on this song? Let's analyze what this song is saying for two seconds: Your mom wants you to change the world (don't all our mothers), "If you want to be free, take a sip of this tea" ? Tell your mom you're coming home, looking back to your youth "when you were 14, you'd paint every picture so green" what is the red oyster cult? someone do some research on this please, i payed my dues on come downstairs and say hello...

Guster7 I think you're a little young to fully understand this song. Althought I'm not much older than you, this song has become very meaningful to me (as has the entire album).

First a little background. I had a very successful career in a small public high school in a small city. Not to sound conceited but I think I was pretty well like by almost everyone. Basically the whole "big fish in a small pond" cliche. Now I go to school at a large, high-level college. and am a "small fish in a large pond."

Anyways the way I interperet this song is like this: When you're young you have all these dreams about these wonderful things you can do. You think you're on top of the world and nothing can bring you down. Then, as you grow up, you begin to realize that everyone as has these big dreams as well. And some of them really will acheive these goals but most won't. Your dreams have been crushed.

I guess you could say the theme of the song is "ignorance is bliss." The speaker/writer wants to return to a time when he had all these dreams. The Red Oyster Cult is a fanastic group that drink an elixir to make them remain young forever. I think the song has a sarcastic tone, because there is no such group or elixir. Hopes to remain young and "green" to the real world forever are mere fantasy.

By the way life isn't as bad as I make it seem here. There are many great things about going to college/growing up. This is just one of the downsides that hits some people pretty hard.

I've taken this as yet another drug-related Guster song, with "this tea" as a metaphor for the drugs. Basically, they let you just drop out, and therefore let go of all the pressures to achieve, ie "change the world." "If you want to be free, take a sip of this tea." You get to put off adulthood, and be free from all the pressures that come with it. Also notice that at the end the lyrics change from "...you're never GONNA change..." to "...you'll never HAVE to change the world." I think that sense of obligation--and the idea that you can get rid of it--is really significant.

I think Brian has a fetish with writing songs about drugs

I was curious about the title so I did a little Internet researching, then said "of course!"

"The Red Oyster Cult" is fictional, but it definitely is a reference to the band The Blue Oyster Cult. They are a band that was big in the 70s and apparently is still around and making albums. They were one of those very influential pre-metal bands - two songs which are well-known (and very good) and still played on classic rock radio are "Don't Fear the Reaper" and "Burning for You." They got started as a college band just like Guster did at Tufts University in Medford, Mass. - for the Blue Oyster Cult it was at Stony Brook college in Long Island, NY. The members who started the band dropped out of college and hit it big by playing to the college crowds.

I think Guster uses the "Red Oyster Cult" because the person the song is about thinks they can be successful big by giving up all their dreams and living the college life eternally, drugs and all, just like the Blue Oyster Cult did. People who are on drugs often talk about how they plan to do lots of grandiose things but rarely do they every actually get the motivation to do any of these things, and often end up idle and pathetic. That's my best guess as to what the song and the title mean.

Another one of my favourite Guster songs. I used it on a soundtrack for The Picture of Dorian Gray that I used in my English class.

The ending bit has a very Blue Oyster Cult feel to it actually.

As for the meaning, I think it's about a cult... one of those suicide cults. One of the cults in memory poisoned the punch at their gathering... Heaven's Gate, I think. Anyway, my point is that as you get older and you realize that you're never going to change the world (in many cases), you might start looking for a way out.

"Never grow up, never grow old" is certainly something that would happen if you were dead. Nor would you want to change the world anymore. I think the cult leader is saying it's the ultimate escape. No worries, ever again. Freedom, and all that.

It's the obligatory cult song. Along with Airport Song from Goldfly and All the Way Up to Heaven from Lost and Gone Forever.

To me, it seems that influential tone desperation is used throughout the lyrics...the "you'll never have to change" as well as "there's not a chance you're ever going to change the world" specifically I think it's about someone committing suicide. Or about to anyway. After all, if you're dead, you can't grow up nor old.

Yes, what prayingmantis84 said, sorry about that