Baby Boomer

I must first say I really love this song and the great lesson behind it.

I also enjoyed everyones opinions on the what the songs meant to them and I would love to contribute my own perception of this piece of artwork.

The song starts of with "We've got to stand a little closer to what it is we're leaning on, Who was it that first said it? Could it be he could be wrong about the pilgrims and the natives having dinner on the lawn?" My though about We got to stand a little closer to what it is we are leaning on, is "our ideals and beliefs and how we need to maybe take a second look at what we identify ourselves with etc.. our beliefs and why we believe the things we believe. they go on to question "Who was it that first said it? this person could have added his bias, now I don't think they are directly talking about american history or any one person but they are talking about humanity in general.

Now I think the second part really solidifies my opinion and I had to think about this for a while and finally realized the none of this is literal. When they say - "I think if I was ever king I'd buy a censorship where the only books upon the shelves were the ones that I had read.( this tells it all now he says If i was ever king by king they mean person in power to influence culture or people,nations etc.. so if he was ever in that power he would by a "censorship" where the only books were the only ones that he had read. by this he means the only beliefs would be his own ideals and beliefs. Books have and always will be great tools of inspiration and power they provide knowledge and can be dangerous in cases hence in past histories there have been many cases of large book burnings etc.. The metaphor here is by book he means beliefs books provide knowledge and points of views so if he was in power he would implement his own point of views and force it on the people (in a sense.)

Open 'em up at borders, send my photo down the spine to tell the story of the living without forgetting those who died." ( this part is more comical and pretty obvious basically glorifying in my opinion past history etc... the victor gets to right history type of deal)

The rest of the lyrics are easily interpreted and go with my opinions above about censorship and control and controlling the information/knowledge that people can attain. There are also pointers to religion but the another important section in my opinion was

"And I would die a happy man 'cause I did the best that I could do to find a better way of leavin' should we leave that up to you." ( This resonates allot in history we can look back in many cases were groups of people or just one man with a passion for his ideals and inconsiderate of everyone else's opinions would impose a lifestyle that he/or them would consider "best" but finishing up with to find a better way of leavin' should we leave that up to you basically says that is your perception of life and death really any better than the next persons?

I know it's long but if your read through all of it and maybe understood it than thank you and I hope you enjoyed this song as much as I did.

This is rivaling Map of the World/Temazcal as my favorite track on the album.. So good

The name of the song is "Baby Boomer"

I think this song is the best at using their voices, it's the perfect fit

Anyone catch the 911/War on Terrorism reference?

"I've been sent here on a mission to find what we agreed upon- we don't agree about September, can we agree on Vietnam?"

-could we really get ourselves [both burned]

-mission at each position is to shoot and to [click]

And yeah, turnmyhead, I picked up on that. I like this a lot.

I can't figure this one out. It makes lots of references to the pilgrims, the founding of the nation, and borders. Charge them for the overhead of 1492 (Columbus).

"We've got to stand a little closer to what it is we're leaning on, Who was it that first said it? Could it be he could be wrong about the pilgrims and the natives having dinner on the lawn?"

I think it is safe to say that the "We" in this song is the American population. This verse deals with the colonialistic and imperialistic ideals that the country was founded on and in many ways still continues because of our lack of historical pretense and understanding, as a population as a whole. What it means when it says;“What we are leaning on,” in my understanding, is this lack of historical accuracy of what actually took place in many of the things that we have bought into about our country’s first contact with the Natives of America. The song states that we “got to stand a little closer” and examine and better understand what actually took place, “could it be he could be wrong about the pilgrims and the natives having dinner on the lawn?” It is well documented but hardly known that Columbus was a gold-hungry man who enslaved Natives to mine and whose men beat, mistreated, and killed Indians and even raped women. But the irony is that he is idolized and spoken of as a hero to our school children. (these are the issues I believe this song touches)

I haven't quite listened to the song enough to try to decipher the mention of “borders” but I have concluded that the store “Borders” could be the reference because it mentions books and shelves but not sure. The censorship part of the verse is also interesting because it is what the government does for a lot of our Country's past, but I havent been able to tie it all together yet. Interested to hear what everyone else thinks.

goosecha - totally agree - it's about how historical events can be interpreted differently - from the Pilgrims, to Vietnam, to Sept. 11th etc. And it's Borders the store. I think the lyrics are "put em up at Borders.."

The overarching theme of the song is not dismay about traditions and textbooks. The overarching theme is disgust at war, and America's glorification/proliferation of it. They would like to point out that America is a country (just like many other countries, sadly), that built its foundation over the dead bodies of hundreds of thousands of soldiers. Since america has been debating the justice of war on terror, can we at least agree that the vietnam war was wrong? Why can't we "L-O-V-E" our neighbors across the border? America is a country just like every other. God doesn't like us more because we were supposedly founded on Christian principles. Nationalism is a deadly concept.