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Tania Lyrics

Oh, my beloved Tania
How I long to see your face
Photographed in fifteen second intervals
In a bank in San Leandro
A Polaroid of you, Cinque
With a seven-headed dragon
In a house in Daly City
Don't be sad, my beloved Tania
They say your father never liked Stephen Weed anyway
Hired a detective
To follow him around

Oh, my beloved revolutionary sweetheart
I can see your newsprint face turn yellow in the gutter
It makes me sad
How I long for the days when you came to liberate us from boredom
From driving around from the hours between five and seven in the evening
My beloved Tania,
We carry your gun deep within our hearts
For no better reason than our lives have no meaning
And we want to be on television
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Cover art for Tania lyrics by Camper Van Beethoven

Well, I'll just state the obvious for those who don't know. This song is about Patty Hearst and her abduction by the radical nutjobs who called themselves the Symbionese Liberation Army (SLA) in the 1970s. (Or was it the '60s? I wasn't around.) They brainwashed her and she took the name "Tania" as her new SLA identity, and she actually participated in a bank robbery with them. I think a lot of the place name references in here are about things the SLA did, such as San Leandro and Daly City. And Cinque was the leader of the SLA. The seven-headed dragon was the SLA's symbol. Then, of course, most of the SLA people died in a shootout with the police. I'm no expert on the SLA but those are the facts as far as I know them.

Cover art for Tania lyrics by Camper Van Beethoven

That's a pretty accurate description. I would disagree somewhat that the song is "about" PH. The song is more about the media sensation surrounding PH and the effect it had on teenage Lowry following her story.

Agree. These are the key lines: My beloved Tania, We carry your gun deep within our hearts For no better reason than our lives have no meaning And we want to be on television

 
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