Purina Hall Of Fame

I'm pretty sure this song is pretty much saying that animals are quite often a lot better creatures than their human "masters".

Musically it's Propagandhi's best song and one of the better ones I've heard ever (and I listen to lots of Zep, and Cream and Hendrix too) with its blasting, haunting riffs and that heartbeat part. Whew! Lyrically, though, it doesn't let you down either. It's about animal rights, the way we treat them like...for lack of a better word, like animals. We keep them confined in our houses as pets and in slaughterhouses to be killed. When they happen to do something that saves our lives then they get commemorated with some petty honour (the origin of the title). It's also about violent 'animal liberationists'...('a package under a terminal bench and a short fuse to scatter) why Propagandhi chose to sing about bombing things mystifies me. I guess they think some causes are worth bombing for? Either way it's a great song. Dig it! Just hope you aren't as disturbed by te intro as some people are.

Here's my interpretation:

------ The song starts with the audio of a heartbeat of an animal symbolizing life. Then we get the audio of those cockfags beating the life out of the pig. Symbolizing death.

Sleeping masters roused to burning homes from beds. Steeping toddlers plucked from their watery deaths: ribbons, plaques and soft-soap are the ephemeral rewards paid to the slaves whose selfless acts accord a higher value to their masters, while parting gifts (bolt pistols) console the rest. The remainder.------ Animals have an odd knack for alerting their masters about coming disasters or saving them when their lives are endangered. These animals are rewarded with stupid ribbons and other fleeting rewards IE: The song title is tongue in cheek and coupled with this stanza. Like the link posted up above, Purina posts cute little articles about pets that save their masters which are "ephemeral" and fleeting and meaningless in comparison to what happens to the rest. He's saying that only by saving your life can an animal be saved from our inevitable cruelty. I guess in short, the life savers, the minority get meaningless rewards and ALL the rest get the bolt pistol to the brain.

Too bad the tributes paid to lives that relegate these thrones to lives spent valuing the runners-up, are known to be neither fleeting nor desirable. ----- I'm actually kind of confused with his wording here. Someone help me out.

But nothing surprises me these days. I just sit and watch the box-cars roll by and wait. Patient. Unattended. -------- He's fed up to the point of action. He's playing out a scenario. He's watching a train with box-cars stocked with livestock rolling by.

A package under a terminal bench. A short fuse to scatter steady hands if I forget to remember that better lives have been lived in the margins, locked in the prisons and lost on the gallows than have ever been enshrined in palaces. ---- This is the bombing. A man scared, reminding himself that he is doing the right thing by bombing his target. An animal processing plant, livestock farm, the people at the train depot or whatever you think it is. He's doing what he thinks is right, taking out the people or business of people that take the away so many lives daily, the ones in the margins that no one cares about, the ones that have been locked in prisons/cages their whole lives and then lost on the gallows/slaughtered after living a prisoners life.

This is where the song says that there's nothing we can do as the bombing is merely theoretical. "Theres nothing we can do, it's just the way it is. It's not your fault. There's nothing we can do." I almost thought he was serious, then the solo comes in. I don't usually read music like this but the solo at the end is him saying that is bullshit we can do something. The way it sounds is so powerful, it explodes right when you think the song is ending on such a depressing defeatist note. I take the solo as him saying "fuck that, we can do something about this and this is what I do. I play fucking music for people that trys to inspire them to do their own part. I fucking spell it out for people,"

See the thing is is that with other bands you might be right. Propagandhi is usually fairly "in your face" with their lyrics, meaning that when they make a song about animal exploitation it's about animal exploitation.

I'll leave this here to show the actual intent in the song:

SBV: Can you tell me about the actual song meaning of ‘Purina Hall Of Fame’ and did Purina hear that song and if so what was their reaction? CH: When an animal saves a human life (like a dog saving a drowning baby for example), Purina adds them to their Hall of Fame. When a human saves an animal life (like a member of the ALF freeing a beagle from a vivisector) they are thrown in prison for the rest of their lives. It's a interesting difference. I doubt the animal exploitation industry cares that a band wrote a song about it. TK: Purina is a company that feed animal parts to other animals. But they have an award for heroic animals that save humans. I'm not sure if people at Purina heard it or not. I'm sure the money they make off their company eclipses any humane thoughts that might occasionally flitter through their minds.

This song is about a man witnessing a holocaust and deciding he has a moral obligation to intervene. At the To borrow from Albright Monument, Bagdhad, he stops being part of a human death machine, by hurling himself into the gears. He plants a bomb where he watches these boxcars of victims roll by.

The victims of this holocaust he is witnessing happen to be animals, used to make pet food.

check this out: saveascream.com/propagandhi.htm

"SBV: Can you tell me about the actual song meaning of ‘Purina Hall Of Fame’ and did Purina hear that song and if so what was their reaction? CH: When an animal saves a human life (like a dog saving a drowning baby for example), Purina adds them to their Hall of Fame. When a human saves an animal life (like a member of the ALF freeing a beagle from a vivisector) they are thrown in prison for the rest of their lives. It's a interesting difference. I doubt the animal exploitation industry cares that a band wrote a song about it. TK: Purina is a company that feed animal parts to other animals. But they have an award for heroic animals that save humans. I'm not sure if people at Purina heard it or not. I'm sure the money they make off their company eclipses any humane thoughts that might occasionally flitter through their minds. SBV: What were your thoughts going into the writing of that song — knowing that you were going to use a company name for the title? CH: I don't think it really crossed my mind! Should it have?

I am very impressed by the discussion here! I have learned a lot about this song from reading. I will here just attempt a synthesis of some of the more salient points below, and add a few ideas of my own.

It seems as though there are at least three ways to read this song: first, based on the interview Whitey666 posted; second, based on the explicit meaning of the lyrics; and third, as an analogy for human society.

First, based on the interview, it seems as though Propagadhi is highlighting the disparity between how society treats animals who save humans (from fires, drowning, etc.) and how society treats humans who try to save animals (from factory farming, slaughter, etc.). The animals are "rewarded" for their acts while the humans are seen as terrorists who should be punished. While these treatments are different, they are both produced by the needs of the status quo: animals saving humans reaffirms humans' superior status (or at least perpetuates the survival of the human species) while the animal liberator must be punished for disrupting business, destroying property, and causing disorder.

Second, based on the lyrics: I generally agree with Whitey666 on this one. I even agree with the interpretation of the solo, except I would like to add one thing. Guitar solos, as they made their way into rock from blues/jazz, worked as an expressions of spontaneity - unpredictable, free, and in a sense, chaotic. This particular rippin' solo, I think, expresses the chaos caused by the bomb going off (or to widen the reading, the disorder caused by radical social action). [The ending to this song is the ending of the album, and it seems somewhat optimistic. Propagandhi ends their next album, Potemkin City Limits, with the song "Iteration", which seems to be a much more pessimistic ending. For my interpretation of that ending, see songmeanings.net/songs/view/3530822107858565166/].

Third, reading the song as a metaphor for human society (at least North American/European society). Much of what has already been said can be imported here, but one difference is how Purina as a corporation works: it doles out trivial prizes to obedient, loyal subjects (the pets who save humans), while at the same time mass producing animals in factory farms purely for the purpose of slaughter. Purina praises with one hand and murders with the other, just like the capitalists/the state/colonial power/insert your preferred oppressor. Furthermore, honoring pets creates the illusion that Purina is a "good company" and distracts from their true business model - slaughter.And Todd points out in that interview that "Purina is a company that feed animal parts to other animals." I think the same can be said of the US government (and probably others), that its acts of praise masks its acts of cruelty, and that those in power use people against others to maintain the system (war, wage labor, racism, sexism, neocolonialism, homophobia, etc.). So it is not necessarily the song that is a metaphor for human society, but the description of Purina in the song that is the metaphor (on this reading).

This is by far my favorite Propagandhi song. It gets your attention from the intro all the way to the ripping guitar solo. It's preaching against veal markets and other animal cruelty.

i dont think this song is entirely to do with animals just any kind of inethical treatment of life

Isn't Purina one of those companies that makes like dog food and shit? Well, the word may actually have a meaning I don't know.