Valerie Plame

Great addition to the excellent Decemberists catalog. I think its funny what Colin Meloy said about this song, that he was watching the news and a bit came out about the CIA exposing Valerie Plame, and he just thought hey thats a great name to put in a song! And he does it and its bloody genius.

Parts of this song remind me so much of Bagman's Gambit. I think it's about a guy who falls hard for a woman that turns out to be a spy. Even though she just uses him, he's still so smitten that no matter what she really is, he'll always remember her as Valerie Plame, the girl he fell in love with.

shouldn't it be "code-name" instead of "code-named"?

Sorry guys, if anything's wrong feel free to make corrections cause I wrote this from a live version. Decided not to listen to the real tracks before they're released...

na na na na na na na na na na na Hey Jude

...well, that's the first thing that came into my mind when I heard this.

Well see the thing is, what happened is, the vice president of the united states, mr.cheney got mad at Valerie's husband because he said there is no yellow cake uranium in Nigeria, something like that, which messed up plans for flim flamming the country into going to war on Iraq. So what this very loathsome old man did, he blew the cover of the guy's wife, who was an undercover cia agent named Valerie Plame. That's why I came her, cause i could not quite get what the song is saying.

So if it's true the guy thought it was a good name to put in a song, well, that's kind of a problem. Because what we have here is the vice president of the u.s. committed treason, for which he would have faced a firing squad not that long ago. And probably should have anyway- not just for this but many other things too.

The other thing though is it hurt Valerie very bad- really ended her career in fact. While cheney gets off, allowing this guy scooter to take the fall for him.

I like the song too. It's just i'd like it more if it did not seem to be mocking the real Valerie, which makes it sound kinda mean. I hope cheney don't hear it- he'd just laugh at poor Valerie again

You all can watch many youtubes of her testifying to a congressional committee, and talikg to reporters and stuff.

Dick Cheney is a bad man, we get it gritona. But The Decemberists aren't The Rx Bandits or Anti-Flag, they aren't going to write songs to call out political officials. I personally think it's a neat song and I like that the idea came from something as commonplace as watching t.v. and hearing an interesting name.

I think the tone of this song is more empathetic towards Valerie Plame rather than mocking. It's sung from the point of view of someone who saw her picture on TV, found her story fascinating and tragic, and becomes so smitten he imagines hanging out with her during some of her exploits.

A great tune musically as well. All of the Decemberists get involved and it builds and builds until it all drops out for the vox-only, Beatles-nodding ending.

"But I was just some stupid boy on a bus When your nom de guerre was code-name Caroline So my vespa became your chariot From the green zone Marriott To be etched upon my mind"

"And when they flashed your picture across the screen How my heart seemed to leap out of me And they attached a list of your identities But the one you'll always be

To me

Is Valerie Plame"

Seems to me be fairly easy to understand. He met a girl, fell in love with her. She disappears. When Plame gets exposed by Cheney they show her on TV and the guy sees it.

Just my interpretation.

Interesting song, very high quality considering it is a B side. It is the Decemberists though and half of my favourite songs of theres are B sides.

Kind of like a Bagman's Gambit lite which is all good in my books. I just hope that the new album isn't all new songs, there need to be a few historic pieces.