DEADHEADS: Barlow Wrote "Throwing Stones" About Cheney!

[Tace]

snip

AD: What is the story behind “Throwing Stones”? You wrote that in Cora as well, right?

JPB: Yeah. That’s the only explicitly political song we ever wrote. And the story behind that was that I was having a serious argument with Dick Cheney at that point, who I’d help get elected and been a pretty good congressman for the stuff that I was interested in, which was environmental stuff. We’d helped stop acid rain in the Wind River Mountains and passed the Wyoming Wilderness Act together and worked out a lot of the necessary compromises. He fished on my ranch and…we were co-conspirators.

But then he got into this obsession with the Russians and this conviction that we had a clash of cultures that had to be resolved by whatever means, and so he helped base the MX Missile in Wyoming. The original idea of the MX Missile was that it was a second-strike, retaliatory weapon that could not be taken out by a first strike because it would be running around on a vast railroad system kind of like a gigantic shell game, so the Russians wouldn’t know where the MX’s were. And the MX itself is an extremely destructive instrument. It has ten warheads, each one of which delivers 550 kilotons of explosive energy. And just for purposes of comparison, the bomb that completely leveled Hiroshima and took out half a million people in a second had only seventeen kilotons to give you some idea. So you can to the math. That’s just one missile. And the plan was to base 100 of them. And Dick was instrumental in seeing to it that they were not based in the original basing formula, which made them explicitly second strike, but that they were basically first strike weapons. They were completely naked and stationary and they were all put on launch on warning. And had all of those missiles gone, because some cloud of geese flew over a radar in Greenland, that would’ve been the end of all like on the planet. And I got so freaked out that somebody was so determined to win a political battle that he was literally willing to endanger all the life on planet Earth, that I felt like I had to say something…so I wrote that song. And like I say, I owe Dick a lot for that song.

snip

http://www.planetjh.com/davis/davis_2005_07_27.html

[ET Awful]

1. Well I'll be dipped in shit . . . . ya learn something new every day.

I won't fault Barlow for haveing worked with Cheney in the past (His work in founding and funding the Electronic Frontier Foundation absolves him in my view)

I mean . . . I'd heard that he was a Republican before, but I didn't know he had gone to that length with it.

Ah well, at least he's not a Bushbot.

[fishwax]

15. Wyoming Republicans are a different breed (or at least, they used to be)

JPB was even county chairman of the party at one time. He wanted to be able to effect change, and thought it would be easier to do from within the repub party, since they were so dominant (and particularly so in his county). JPB may still be a repub, I don't know, but definitely no bushbot :)

Anyway, WY repubs used to be stricty of the "keep your laws off my land/body/spirit" variety, though that may have changed in the years since I left. WY was always fiercely anti-censorship, even repubs, for the most part :)

[charlie]

18. He once called Cheney the smartest man he knew

He was speculating a few years ago that Cheney's sinister Strangelovian persona was possibly an act for the international stage. Make them think the US was a deranged beast that needed to be appeased or holy hell would be unloosed. I doubt he thinks Cheney's pretending anymore.

[Scout1071]

2. So, the kids they dance and shake their bones and the politicians

throwing stones singing ashes, ashes all fall down.

Man, I do love that song.

[Bush_Eats_Beef]

4. Yep...it's one of those Dead songs that "has teeth"...

I've got a list of songs that I generally will throw on a CD for friends who aren't into The Dead...stuff like "Stella Blue" and "Wharf Rat" and such...and "Throwing Stones" is one of the latter-day tracks that made the list.

Picture a bright blue ball just spinning, spinning free
Dizzy with eternity.
Paint it with a skin of sky, brush in some clouds and sea
Call it home for you and me.
A peaceful place or so it looks from space
A closer look reveals the human race.
Full of hope, full of grace, is the human face.
But afraid, we may our home to waste.
There’s a fear down here we can’t forget hasn’t got a name just yet
Always awake, always around singing ashes to ashes all fall down.
Now watch as the ball revolves and the nighttime calls
And again the hunt begins and again the bloodwind calls
By and by again, the morning sun will rise
But the darkness never goes from some men’s eyes.
It strolls the sidewalks and it rolls the streets
Stalking turf, dividing up meat.
Nightmare spook, piece of heat, you and me, you and me.
Click, flashblade in ghetto night. rudie’s looking for a fight.
Rat cat alley roll them bones. need that cash to feed that jones
And the politicians throwing stones
Singing ashes, ashes all fall down.
Commissars and pin-striped bosses role the dice
Any way they fall guess who gets to pay the price.
Money green or proletarian gray, selling guns instead of food today.
So the kids they dance, they shake their bones
While the politicians throwing stones
Singing ashes, ashes all fall down.
Heartless powers try to tell us what to think
If the spirit’s sleeping, then the flesh is ink.
History’s page, it is thusly carved in stone
The future’s here, we are it, we are on our own.
If the game is lost then we’re all the same
No one left to place or take the blame.
We will leave this place an empty stone
Or this shinning ball of blue we can call our home
So the kids they dance, they shake their bones
While the politicians are throwing stones
Singing ashes, ashes all fall down.
Shipping powders back and forth
Singing black goes south while white comes north
And the whole world full of petty wars
Singing I got mine and you got yours.
And the current fashions set the pace.
Lose your step, fall out of grace.
And the radical he rant and rage, singing someone got to turn the page
And the rich man in his summer home,
Singing just leave well enough alone
But his pants are down, his cover’s blown
And the politicians are throwing stones
So the kids they dance they shake their bones
Cause it’s all too clear we’re on our own
Picture a bright blue ball just spinning, spinning free
It’s dizzying, the possibilities. ashes, ashes all fall down.

[CountAllVotes]

3. I got mine and you got yours ...

ashes ashes, all fall down.

:thumbsup: Barlow.

Peace

[Kingshakabobo]

5. Sounds about right.

The video of the bush cabal and uncle dick runs through my head when I close my eyes and listen to this song.


need that cash to feed that jones

[mcscajun]

6. Well, I'll Be...

You learn somethin' every day.

I'm a Deadhead and I didn't know that.

Will give a whole new twist on the tune next time I hear it.

Teeth? This tune's got a chainsaw.

[shadowknows69]

8. ditto on the formerly ignorant dead head

knew it was a politically charged song but didn't realize CHeney was scaring the shit out of people as early as 86.

[mcscajun]

12. I like it.

"Dick Cheney: Scaring The Shit Out Of You Since 1986."

[5thGenDemocrat]

7. Deadhead here too (if you count nine shows a "Deadhead")

And Throwing Stones has probably always been my favorite Dead tune.
John
Boy, you surely do learn something new every day. Thanks for passing that along.

[shadowknows69]

9. being a dead head was never about how many shows

it was about love of the music.

[Must_B_Free]

10. I've heard that Jerry Garcia was a CIA asset

whose job it was to lead the hippies in unproductive directions.

[shadowknows69]

11. could be

they kept me pretty unproductive for about 5 years. Came late in the game first show July 4 1986.

[Must_B_Free]

19. Where was that? RFK stadium in Southeast DC?

that might have been my first show. Mine mayt have been July 7 though. Was that when Jerry fainted and was out of commission for a while?

[shadowknows69]

20. Buffalo NY

The Dead opened for Bob Dylan and Tom Petty i thinkit was days before he went into the coma.

[DoYouEverWonder]

23. I was at RFK stadium

for the weekend that had the Dead and the Allman Brothers for two days. The 2nd day was my 21st birthday. Needless to say, it was a kick ass day.

[Kingshakabobo]

13. LOL. They kept me un-productive for 12 years.

My boss finally figured it out after 10 years. Why I had a "wedding" to attend every time they were in town and I couldn't work the week-end.

[Tace]

16. It's Commonly Understood That The CIA Was Behind LSD Distribution...

at least in the 60's. It's a rich and fascinating story. See "Storming Heaven." They weren't trying to screw people up. To the contrary, they were literally turning on the nation to unleash our creativity.


Storming Heaven: LSD & the American Dream by Jay Stevens is a social history of America from the Forties through the Sixties that weaves an astonishing tapestry of Science, Psychology, Politics, the Arts, and the Counterculture. Brilliant, witty, and exhaustively researched, Storming Heaven is the definitive account of the turmoil of the middle years of this century. Whatever you think you know about this confluence of drugs, culture, and history in America is necessarily incomplete and very likely incorrect until you read Storming Heaven.

http://www.stormingheaven.com/

[ripple]

14. Blues for Allah was written in response to

The assassination of King Faisal of Saudi Arabia in 1975. According to Robert Hunter, Faisal was a progressive and democratically inclined ruler.

Thanks for the information about Throwing Stones. I never knew the origin of that, just thought about the lyrics in general terms.

"Picture a bright blue ball just spinning, spinning free..." :)

[Qibing Zero]

17. That's two top bushites that went crazy because of the red scare.

Who else?

..not that any of this is surprising.

[meganmonkey]

21. Whaaaa?

:wow:

That's crazy! Great find! That song will never be the same again for me!

[Tace]

22. .

Microdot

[Tace]

24. Bang -- Again

Bang, bang, bang