The overall meaning to this song seems to me to be someone learning how to profit from a past, shamful action, something that person may not be responsible for, yet still carrys guilt/shame from. I say this because Clutch, especially on the Elephant Riders album, but also on the S/T, play extensivly on North/South dynamics. This is effective because, as marylanders, they reside on the border of America's traditional divide ("in the north they call us rebels, in the south they call us yankees"). I think the fisherman finding Booth's body and selling it symbolizes the south taking a hold of it's greatest shame (in the person of Booth, America's most famous assasian) and saying 'fuck it, I'm not going to keep saying sorry for the past.' It also seems fairly typical of neil that Booth was found on the Susquehanna, part of the traditional south, but not part of the old confederacy.
The overall meaning to this song seems to me to be someone learning how to profit from a past, shamful action, something that person may not be responsible for, yet still carrys guilt/shame from. I say this because Clutch, especially on the Elephant Riders album, but also on the S/T, play extensivly on North/South dynamics. This is effective because, as marylanders, they reside on the border of America's traditional divide ("in the north they call us rebels, in the south they call us yankees"). I think the fisherman finding Booth's body and selling it symbolizes the south taking a hold of it's greatest shame (in the person of Booth, America's most famous assasian) and saying 'fuck it, I'm not going to keep saying sorry for the past.' It also seems fairly typical of neil that Booth was found on the Susquehanna, part of the traditional south, but not part of the old confederacy.