Pueblo

meaning irrelevant. instead, just bathe in that beautiful chorus guitar part - the one thing that elevates it from middling to throat-lump forming.

Firstly, a m drones, you MUST listen to the early version of this ( subtitled Beach Boys) on CRCR: LAs Desert Origins. The hook which defines the Wowee Zowee version is still but an extension of the verses muted blues-lullaby guitarwork, comprising perhaps the most soulful song in Pavements repertoire

(Please note that my apostrophe key is broken, so Ill be omitting those, and Ill use brackets in place of quotation marks when citing lyrics)

I hold two theories as to the songs gist. The first, and more likely, is that Pueblo seems an impressionistic account of a hanging, most likely in the old west. [Spanos county] just sounds like the perfect setting for a good ol fashioned lynching, and the music itself reinforces this western atmosphere with a pained country languor far too slow to come from anywhere but out on the range. The [fall] so eagerly anticipated here, given SMs penchant for linguistic tomfoolery, could very well be literal, and would make for a far more likely spectacle than a trial alone. [Hands that bind you] could pretty easily refer to being restrained by a executioner, especially since he does it [like you want to be broken,] --at the neck, that is. [Land coming up] is the upward rush of the ground you would perceive as you fell to your death from a gallows. To [hit sand] is perhaps a malkmusism for burial. After all, one certainly cannot (he says cant in the chorus, not can) buy land while resting beneath it. If this is true, the triumphantly fluorescent burst of guitar in the chorus becomes to interpret. Maybe the death witneesed causes the speaker to exult in life, despite its sometime grossness, and to reject fear.

The other is some sort of real estate struggle. The title evokes southwest native Americans, and, while I can call to mind no examples, I feel pretty sure that some of them have had their land seized by U.S. courts at some point in history (which SM majored in in college.) Ive researched a bit, and can find no county as named in the song, (if you can, please post) but it might reference Alex G. Spanos, a real-estate tycoon and philanthropist from Pavements home town of Stockton. [Gold and silver streaks] would make land worth a legal dispute, although this could refer to some hallucination induced by low oxygen in the brain. (see above) I think this is pretty unlikely, unless the first is also true..

Good song. Hard to find a meaning. A clear one that is.

i agree. possibly the most emotive song on this album, which is a masterpiece.

Hey hey u missed something, in the 2nd chorus there are some other lyrics that are hard to hear, any idea? Would love to know what it's about but i'm not even gonna guess! What a song!

I really couldn't say how this notion got into my head, but a week ago listening to it, I saw the hanging going on being for some guy being gay and then Jacob's trying to arouse him, and someone's saying "don't say what you made 'em feel" and then of course gold factors into it. oh right: I thought the line was "Jacob, when you move, it don't move, it don't moooooveeeeeeee!"

well anyway. as for being constructive, I think the line is, "then it hits them, you can't buy sand". as for the later parts, my hearing cannot be trusted.

hey eleventy. your last quote made me laugh out loud. "as for the later parts...my hearing cannot be trusted." this quote totally sums up why i listen to music. sometimes songs may have meant one thing to the author but at a certain point, we all hear what we need to hear when we need to hear it. as for that last part, my hearing cannot be trusted either. it conveyed the thought i needed at that moment. great song!

It sounds like the last verses go:

Alright, I want a cigarette

All them trials and things they tried to be

While wondering if we weren't insane

Damn, land ho - won't you be (leave?)

Now, having said that, I haven't the foggiest clue what that means...