Cavern

The rape-y elements of this song creep me out. "Suzie then removed her mask and caused a mighty stir

The angry mob responded taking turns at grabbing her

...

The crowd meanwhile had taken Sue and used her like a rag

To mop the slime from where the slug had slithered with the bag"

dont get me wrong, i love this song and i love phish. but it seems pretty clear that this song is made up of random nonsequiturs, and as whole its completely nonsensical. but isn't that the point? that's part of why I love phish. they (usually) don't take the lyrical part of music seriously at all. they're just dicking around and having fun. maybe bits and pieces of the song have meaning, but if you find coherent meaning in the song as a whole, you're overanalyzing.

Everything in this song refers to sex or to condoms.

Example: a serpent deflector is a condom. The "cavern" itself probably refers to the vagina. The "grime" comes off on the narrator's hand.

I read somewhere that these lyrics are the result of a series of phone conversations between Tom Marshall, the lyricist, and Trey.

No, this is another song to add onto Gamehenge's saga. I heard it's abbout a spy into Wilson's governmen: Your time is near, the mission's clear, it's later than we think

Before you slip into the night, you'll want something to drink

Steal away before the dawn, and bring us back good news

But if you've tread in primal soup, please wipe it from your shoes

Either way, I love the song

Such a funky first note on bass.

Such a funky first note on bass.

"A dust arose and clogged my nose before I could blink twice" - coke?

wouldn't you think suzie was suspected of bieng a witch?

"Suzie then removed her mask And caused a mighty stir The angry mob responded Taking turns at grabbing her"

I wanted to paste my comment on "Guelah Papyrus" here as I think it relates. I especially love how a "picture of Nectar" (proprietor of a music venue- "Nectar's") is enough to act as a prophylactic!

Cavern is indeed a vagina image, and there is unsettling sexual imagery in the song as others have commented, both of rape and of disease.

Quote from my GP entry:

I think this song [Guelah Papyrus} is about expecting to catch a cheating girlfriend in the act, with undertones of fears of venereal disease as a running theme? Why? Well, when you listen to the other lyrics on the album, STD's are something of a running theme-- it's a public health announcement to jam band types everywhere. "Whatever you do, take care of your shoe" (Cavern) lest you get a "Crab" in your "Shoemouth" (Manteca)

"In summing up, the moral seems A little bit obscure...

Give the director a serpent deflector A mudrat detector, a ribbon reflector A cushion convector, a pitcher of nectar * A viral dissector,a hormone collector"

(Cavern) - this entire list is a collection of synonyms for condoms. With the exception of a "picture of Nectar." Nectar's was a club that Phish played in and while I haven't seen the proprietor myself, it would presumably be enough of a turn off to prevent any activity that might result in catching anything!!! And I think bacteria can come in the shape of little serpents, ribbons, rods, or tiny spheres. Yuck.

This album came out during the AIDS epidemic when I was a teenager-- I think the message was pretty clear at the time. The remainder of "Cavern's" lyrics contain a lot of disease imagery, and other earlier tunes like Golgi Apparatus suggest that microbiology tends to come up in Phish lyrics.

So the singer imagines himself paralyzed by a spider, a "fly on the wall" to witness the tryst of his lover, and then imagines walking in, causing frowns all around-- and noticing that his photo frame on the nightstand has been turned flat on the table.