This is a Jerry Garcia Band song and not a Grateful Dead song, per se.
It was the last song on "Cats Down Under the Stars," released in 1978, and described by Jerry in his final years as his favorite album.
"Blew the city off the man" should be "Blew the city off the map."
"To justify the ways of God to man," was John Milton's self-stated purpose for "Paradise Lost," an epic poem based on the mythology of the Bible. With "Gomorrah," Robert Hunter is doing something very similar, if on a much smaller and more colloquial level. We get the story from Genesis told as a casual musing and also get a description from Lot himself, one of the only survivors of the destruction of "the cities of Plain" at the hands of God. The song mentions nothing of Lot's daughters, which is probably for the best (hard enough to write a good song about the destruction of a city and a wife turning to a pillar of salt without trying to work in incest...shudder). I appreciate the mournful treatment Jerry gives the song while changing the tempo several times. Hunter's lyrics are exemplary, as well, giving us a vignette from the Old Testament told in Steinbeckesque vernacular, with several different literary voices chiming in their two cents on the story.
Dark Star Orchestra does a very good "Gomorrah," with 04/06/2006 being a particularly stellar example (available on the internet archive (archive.org) for free).
This is a Jerry Garcia Band song and not a Grateful Dead song, per se.
It was the last song on "Cats Down Under the Stars," released in 1978, and described by Jerry in his final years as his favorite album.
"Blew the city off the man" should be "Blew the city off the map."
"To justify the ways of God to man," was John Milton's self-stated purpose for "Paradise Lost," an epic poem based on the mythology of the Bible. With "Gomorrah," Robert Hunter is doing something very similar, if on a much smaller and more colloquial level. We get the story from Genesis told as a casual musing and also get a description from Lot himself, one of the only survivors of the destruction of "the cities of Plain" at the hands of God. The song mentions nothing of Lot's daughters, which is probably for the best (hard enough to write a good song about the destruction of a city and a wife turning to a pillar of salt without trying to work in incest...shudder). I appreciate the mournful treatment Jerry gives the song while changing the tempo several times. Hunter's lyrics are exemplary, as well, giving us a vignette from the Old Testament told in Steinbeckesque vernacular, with several different literary voices chiming in their two cents on the story.
Dark Star Orchestra does a very good "Gomorrah," with 04/06/2006 being a particularly stellar example (available on the internet archive (archive.org) for free).