![]() ![]() I found myself laughing at the lyrics for the first time. ![]() The version on the new Dave’s Picks seems to feature Garcia singing the song as if to elicit laughter at the sheer pitifulness of the song’s narrator. ![]() And the synergy between Garcia’s setting of this bridge, the lyrics themselves, and the harmonies that developed over the years of performance make it a spine-tingling piece of music. There is so much packed into that simple set of lines, so much that a listener can unpack over a lifetime of listening, that you have to wonder how Hunter, at a relatively young age, could have come up with something so profound. But there is the matter of what I believe to be the very best bridge in a repertoire filled with amazing bridges: It would be easy if that’s all there was to the song. Interesting to think about the alternative, though!) So now he admonishes them, accusing them of only coming to have fun at his expense-“Take a look at poor Peter / he’s lyin’ in pain / now let’s go run and see.” (Some listeners have proposed that the narrative view changes in the final verse, from first to third person, but I still hear it as the same voice, mimicking what others are saying. But he doesn’t die-he finds himself alive one more day. The narrator’s friends gather around because he is dying, supposedly. There’s an element of the boy who cried wolf in the song. “Black Peter.” Is that the narrator’s name? Or is it a reference to the characters who bring bundles of switches to beat ill-behaved children? Indeed, we don’t even know if they are legitimate troubles, or if they are the self-pitying rantings of a hypochondriac. It’s a partial, fragmentary short story - we don’t know all the circumstances of the narrator’s troubles. The song is enigmatic in the way of many Hunter lyrics. ![]() Its final performance was on Jat the Knickerbocker Arena in Albany, New York. They played it 342 times thereafter, and it was never out of the rotation for very long. The Robert Hunter/Jerry Garcia tune was first performed on December 4, 1969, at the Fillmore in San Francisco. (There’s a similarity to the effect of “He’s Gone,” which was certainly not originally intended to be a tender farewell of any kind, but which has taken on that role over the years.)Īnd listening to it on the newly-released Dave’s Picks 6, when it was not too far removed from its debut, and prior to its release on Workingman’s Dead, has made me think about it in a different way still. If someone I love has just passed away, or is in the process of going through a serious illness, then it becomes poignant-I’m sure that’s true for many listeners. I have gone back and forth and back again, and maybe forth again, over the years in my conception of how to hear “Black Peter” - whether as a dire piece, or a philosophical piece, or what.īut I love the song no matter how it strikes me at any given point in my life. (I’ll consider requests for particular songs-just private message me!) Therefore, the best part, I would hope, would not be anything in particular that I might have to say, but rather, the conversation that may happen via the comments over the course of time-and since all the posts will stay up, you can feel free to weigh in any time on any of the songs! With Grateful Dead lyrics, there’s always a new and different take on what they bring up for each listener, it seems. Here’s the plan-each week, I will blog about a different song, focusing, usually, on the lyrics, but also on some other aspects of the song, including its overall impact-a truly subjective thing. ![]()
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