• https://www.dead.net/features/greatest-stories-ever-told/greatest-stories-ever-told-help-wayslipknot
    Greatest Stories Ever Told - "Help on the Way"/"Slipknot"

    By David Dodd

    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. 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. (I’ll consider requests for particular songs—just private message me!)

    “Help On The Way”

    “Slipknot”

    A couple of summers ago, I was visiting New York City with my family. We were at the wonderful Natural History Museum, taking the elevator to an upper floor, and I noticed a message on the brass plate with all the buttons for floors, etc: “Help is on the way,” it said. There it was—reassuring us that, should the button be pushed, we could expect help to appear. Aha! I thought—it’s a stock phrase from the world of east coast elevators—that must be where Robert Hunter got it.

    Accounts of the Blues for Allah recording session indicate that the songwriting team of Robert Hunter and Jerry Garcia took an unusual approach to the process—with the music preceding the lyrics, and the lyrics written to spec in the studio in the process of making the album.

    Blues for Allah was released on September 1, 1975. The 1975 hiatus in the Dead’s performance schedule was broken only by a brief set in March at Kezar Stadium (which featured one of only three performances, all in 1975, of the song “Blues for Allah”), another show in June at Winterland (The Bob Fried Memorial Boogie), and two other shows, one the famed Great American Music Hall performance captured on One From the Vault, and the last a show at Lindley Meadows in Golden Gate Park, which, like the GAMH show, opened with “Help on the Way.”

    The song’s performance at the Great American (captured in days long ago on a bootleg vinyl release I actually owned called Make-Believe Ballroom) included an introduction of the band by Bill Graham in which each member’s sound was layered into the song as he was announced (Donna Jean Godchaux’s name was pronounced, but she didn’t start singing right away), culminating in Garcia striking the opening chords of “Help on the Way,” opening a stunning performance of the piece, which moved into “Slipknot” and then “Franklin’s Tower.”

    Someone out there will know for sure — DeadBase X indicates that an earlier performance of “Help on the Way,” on June 17, was without lyrics. If so, then the performance debut of the song, as a song, was at that Great American Music Hall show, and most of those present were likely hearing the song for the first time.

    I can find no performances of “Help on the Way” not followed immediately by “Slipknot.” So, let’s talk about both of them in this post, ok?

    “Slipknot” actually appeared quite a bit earlier in performance. DeadBase shows the piece appearing on June 20, 1974, sandwiched between “Eyes of the World” and “China Doll.” After that, it appeared once more before 1975, with nearly a year (but only 20 shows) separating the second and third performances of the piece.

    “Slipknot” was mostly, but not always in the early days, followed by “Franklin’s Tower.” So the three titles were, from 1977 onwards, performed as a tryptich. (I’ll leave “Franklin’s” for another day, though.)

    “Help on the Way,” lyrically, is a series of aphorisms linked by visionary imagery. There are angels in flame, sure, but without love in the dream…

    Trying to parse the lyrics and imagery, we might find Hunter depicting Paradise as a winged female, surrounded by flaming angels, descending on a wave. But from there, the metaphor is subsumed by the lyrics themselves, as Hunter paints a picture that might resonate in a thousand brains differently.

    Hunter posted a manuscript version of the lyrics:

    Given the circumstances of composition, on the fly, in the studio, there are remarkably few false starts, corrections, etc. There is one entire verse not present in the finished song, marked out with a large “x.” This is the lyric linked on Dead.net under the “browse songs” link to “Slipknot.”

    Beautiful lie / you can pray / you can pay
    till you’re buried alive
    Blackmailer Blues
    everyone – in the room – owns a part of the noose
    Slip Knot Jig – Slip Knot jig – Slipknot jig
    Did someone say – Help on the way
    Well I know / Yeah I do
    that there’s help on the way

    So, here we have the “Slipknot” reference folded into the “Help on the Way” lyrics.

    An email exchange I had with Hunter in the early days of the Annotated Lyrics project shed some light on the whole process and interrelationship:

    Date: Mon, 3 Jun 1996 23:59:21 -0400

    David,

    most of the Blues for Allah material was written on the spot on the fly, while engineers stood by waiting to record the vocals. Those lyrics are my style and seem familiar - there were lots of throw-aways and I doubt not those were among them. There's always a taker for throw away pages, and I believe someone was collecting them, possibly Ramrod.

    rh

    However, on the next day, Hunter wrote:

    Date: Tue, 4 Jun 1996 21:04:29 -0400

    David,

    the lines are, of course, rejects from "Help on the way" - do as you will with them. Slipknot Gig would be in the space of: I will stay/one more day

    There's no cutting it out. But it's neither permanent nor serious.

    rh

    What’s referred to as “Slipknot Gig” is clearly written as “Slip Knot Jig” (though, interestingly, and as transcribed above, in three different manners one right after the other….)

    What I had not realized until I started to work on this piece is that a slipknot is more than the simple knot you might learn in scouting while working towards a merit badge. It’s usually the term applied to a hangman’s noose, and the reference is utterly clear in the excised verse.

    OK—I will heed Hunter’s admonition that “it’s neither permanent nor serious,” and let go of the thrown-away lyric, but still! I like these small unexpected insights into the songwriting process. I still wonder whether the instrumental “Slipknot” was titled prior to or after Hunter wrote the discarded verse. Another of those questions that will likely never be answered.

    Most important, and clearly paramount from the method of composition and from the fact that “Slipknot” was and remained an instrumental piece, is the musical virtuosity of the pair of pieces. The unison or parallel harmony playing of complex rhythmic and melodic figures is astounding to me, still, after many hundreds of hearings. The tricks of time signature throughout, with dropped beats and quick turnarounds, leaves me pretty much breathless. The words are literally secondary, in Hunter’s own words: “written on the spot on the fly, while engineers stood by waiting to record the vocals…”

    And yet, still, there are phrases that ring loud and clear. In particular, the phrase on a decal I stuck on my car way back when, and which still rings true: “without love in the dream, it’ll never come true.”

    (For those wishing to explore the music, I’ve recently discovered the wonderful resource “Dark’s Tabs” which includes this link for detailed work on “Help/Slip”.

    “Help / Slip” was last performed on June 22, 1995, at the Knickerbocker Arena in Albany, NY.

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  • jbxpro
    10 years 1 month ago
    Help To Love
    Wow, share-the-light, great point about this song relating to the historical "grateful dead" story of (to be abstract) the intervention of someone outside ourselves being necessary at times to help us achieve the next step on the path ... whether the path be to true love or true death.
  • Default Avatar
    share-the-light
    10 years 1 month ago
    Pure Paradise
    Well Said Jbxpro:"Hunter often wrote with an angel on one shoulder and a devil on the other. He managed magnificently to blend the two inputs, to be the arbiter, but in this hurried lyric it may have sufficed to divide their input into two songs." Yup..."Winds both Foul and Fair all Swarm" and like the Lady with a Fan...Paradise Waits to see who will risk the uncertain pains of hell to gain her. and We are left to Decide what is Wise and What is Not The Book of Genesis tells about the removal of the defiled Adam and Eve from the Garden which is now kept under guard by the Angelic Cherubim with Flaming Swords...Its quite an Amazing Image which Hunter takes to a Cosmic level by putting it on "the Crest of a Wave". -WoW- "She Is Pure, She is not to Blame" There is something Unimpeachable and Untainted about this Paradise. There's quite a paradox in the line ... "Like a Lie...she Can't be Undone" A Lie can never be True and the Truth can never be a Lie. Does that mean Once a Liar, always a Liar? I mean, if Someone True can become a Liar then why can't a Liar return to being True and thus return to Paradise? well...I am just wondering out loud as I ponder Hunter's words here. Especially his penned statement "Which of Us can Come True" It also strikes me how this is a real Grateful Dead Song Considering the fable of the Dead Soul trapped and unable to move on to "Paradise" until Someone Helps by bringing about a resolution and the Dead Soul can now Gratefully Move On.
  • mark_mumper
    10 years 1 month ago
    Help on the Way
    “Help on the Way” (followed by “Slipknot!,” and then the first “Franklin’s Tower”) debuted, instrumentally, at that June 17 1975 Bob Fried Memorial Boogie multi-act concert at Winterland. No lyrics were sung to it. (Nor were there any lyrics sung to “Blues for Allah” that night, nor [unlike at the Kezar S.N.A.C.K. benefit on March 23] any voices in a wordless ~ironic blues chorus in “Blues for Allah”’s coda.) (I attended both concerts. Recording streams are available on archive.org.) No interpretations needed for the first lines of this song ( - or for any of its other lines) - Paradise waits on the crest of a wave Her angels in flame - pretty vibrant imagery, goes electrically with the startling musical opening.
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14 years 11 months

By David Dodd

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. 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. (I’ll consider requests for particular songs—just private message me!)

“Help On The Way”

“Slipknot”

A couple of summers ago, I was visiting New York City with my family. We were at the wonderful Natural History Museum, taking the elevator to an upper floor, and I noticed a message on the brass plate with all the buttons for floors, etc: “Help is on the way,” it said. There it was—reassuring us that, should the button be pushed, we could expect help to appear. Aha! I thought—it’s a stock phrase from the world of east coast elevators—that must be where Robert Hunter got it.

Accounts of the Blues for Allah recording session indicate that the songwriting team of Robert Hunter and Jerry Garcia took an unusual approach to the process—with the music preceding the lyrics, and the lyrics written to spec in the studio in the process of making the album.

Blues for Allah was released on September 1, 1975. The 1975 hiatus in the Dead’s performance schedule was broken only by a brief set in March at Kezar Stadium (which featured one of only three performances, all in 1975, of the song “Blues for Allah”), another show in June at Winterland (The Bob Fried Memorial Boogie), and two other shows, one the famed Great American Music Hall performance captured on One From the Vault, and the last a show at Lindley Meadows in Golden Gate Park, which, like the GAMH show, opened with “Help on the Way.”

The song’s performance at the Great American (captured in days long ago on a bootleg vinyl release I actually owned called Make-Believe Ballroom) included an introduction of the band by Bill Graham in which each member’s sound was layered into the song as he was announced (Donna Jean Godchaux’s name was pronounced, but she didn’t start singing right away), culminating in Garcia striking the opening chords of “Help on the Way,” opening a stunning performance of the piece, which moved into “Slipknot” and then “Franklin’s Tower.”

Someone out there will know for sure — DeadBase X indicates that an earlier performance of “Help on the Way,” on June 17, was without lyrics. If so, then the performance debut of the song, as a song, was at that Great American Music Hall show, and most of those present were likely hearing the song for the first time.

I can find no performances of “Help on the Way” not followed immediately by “Slipknot.” So, let’s talk about both of them in this post, ok?

“Slipknot” actually appeared quite a bit earlier in performance. DeadBase shows the piece appearing on June 20, 1974, sandwiched between “Eyes of the World” and “China Doll.” After that, it appeared once more before 1975, with nearly a year (but only 20 shows) separating the second and third performances of the piece.

“Slipknot” was mostly, but not always in the early days, followed by “Franklin’s Tower.” So the three titles were, from 1977 onwards, performed as a tryptich. (I’ll leave “Franklin’s” for another day, though.)

“Help on the Way,” lyrically, is a series of aphorisms linked by visionary imagery. There are angels in flame, sure, but without love in the dream…

Trying to parse the lyrics and imagery, we might find Hunter depicting Paradise as a winged female, surrounded by flaming angels, descending on a wave. But from there, the metaphor is subsumed by the lyrics themselves, as Hunter paints a picture that might resonate in a thousand brains differently.

Hunter posted a manuscript version of the lyrics:

Given the circumstances of composition, on the fly, in the studio, there are remarkably few false starts, corrections, etc. There is one entire verse not present in the finished song, marked out with a large “x.” This is the lyric linked on Dead.net under the “browse songs” link to “Slipknot.”

Beautiful lie / you can pray / you can pay
till you’re buried alive
Blackmailer Blues
everyone – in the room – owns a part of the noose
Slip Knot Jig – Slip Knot jig – Slipknot jig
Did someone say – Help on the way
Well I know / Yeah I do
that there’s help on the way

So, here we have the “Slipknot” reference folded into the “Help on the Way” lyrics.

An email exchange I had with Hunter in the early days of the Annotated Lyrics project shed some light on the whole process and interrelationship:

Date: Mon, 3 Jun 1996 23:59:21 -0400

David,

most of the Blues for Allah material was written on the spot on the fly, while engineers stood by waiting to record the vocals. Those lyrics are my style and seem familiar - there were lots of throw-aways and I doubt not those were among them. There's always a taker for throw away pages, and I believe someone was collecting them, possibly Ramrod.

rh

However, on the next day, Hunter wrote:

Date: Tue, 4 Jun 1996 21:04:29 -0400

David,

the lines are, of course, rejects from "Help on the way" - do as you will with them. Slipknot Gig would be in the space of: I will stay/one more day

There's no cutting it out. But it's neither permanent nor serious.

rh

What’s referred to as “Slipknot Gig” is clearly written as “Slip Knot Jig” (though, interestingly, and as transcribed above, in three different manners one right after the other….)

What I had not realized until I started to work on this piece is that a slipknot is more than the simple knot you might learn in scouting while working towards a merit badge. It’s usually the term applied to a hangman’s noose, and the reference is utterly clear in the excised verse.

OK—I will heed Hunter’s admonition that “it’s neither permanent nor serious,” and let go of the thrown-away lyric, but still! I like these small unexpected insights into the songwriting process. I still wonder whether the instrumental “Slipknot” was titled prior to or after Hunter wrote the discarded verse. Another of those questions that will likely never be answered.

Most important, and clearly paramount from the method of composition and from the fact that “Slipknot” was and remained an instrumental piece, is the musical virtuosity of the pair of pieces. The unison or parallel harmony playing of complex rhythmic and melodic figures is astounding to me, still, after many hundreds of hearings. The tricks of time signature throughout, with dropped beats and quick turnarounds, leaves me pretty much breathless. The words are literally secondary, in Hunter’s own words: “written on the spot on the fly, while engineers stood by waiting to record the vocals…”

And yet, still, there are phrases that ring loud and clear. In particular, the phrase on a decal I stuck on my car way back when, and which still rings true: “without love in the dream, it’ll never come true.”

(For those wishing to explore the music, I’ve recently discovered the wonderful resource “Dark’s Tabs” which includes this link for detailed work on “Help/Slip”.

“Help / Slip” was last performed on June 22, 1995, at the Knickerbocker Arena in Albany, NY.

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A couple of summers ago, I was visiting New York City with my family. We were at the wonderful Natural History Museum, taking the elevator to an upper floor, and I noticed a message on the brass plate with all the buttons for floors, etc: “Help is on the way,” it said.
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Greatest Stories Ever Told - "Help on the Way"/"Slipknot"
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A couple of summers ago, I was visiting New York City with my family. We were at the wonderful Natural History Museum, taking the elevator to an upper floor, and I noticed a message on the brass plate with all the buttons for floors, etc: “Help is on the way,” it said.
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A couple of summers ago, I was visiting New York City with my family. We were at the wonderful Natural History Museum, taking the elevator to an upper floor, and I noticed a message on the brass plate with all the buttons for floors, etc: “Help is on the way,” it said.

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So I was just midway through my second paragraph and hit the wrong button. Poof! It all disappeared...but maybe I was pontificating anyway. Let it go. I was just about to write that I am grateful to have seen Robert H. solo; one great show in the late 90s. Awesome lyrics and music...even if the latter is the 'main' thing. So, how about this: I had tickets for Springfield March '85...my first shows, but I didn't even make it to the 2nd set of the first night. I ended up in jail and then the local hospital. So I missed that Help>Slip. Fast forward to about 50 shows later...I went down to Hampton for the Warlocks shows and missed the Help>Slip breakout but got in for the 2nd night, which was of course the big one. Then the following Spring I made the Nassau run but arrived late when they opened the first set with it! I realize now that I never got to actually see a Help>Slip with Jerry and/or Brent. At least I'm pretty sure I didn't... Still, I've seen plenty of fantastic shows, including some nice Furthur versions of Help>Slip, and I love the spirituality of Blues for Allah, my favorite studio album. Peace, from Chiang Mai, Thailand.
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David, thanks for the illustration of that manuscript page! To me, Help/Slipknot!/Franklin’s are a complete narrative, and I'm glad to see some primary-source indication of that being true, at least as far as the first two are concerned. Hunter often wrote with an angel on one shoulder and a devil on the other. He managed magnificently to blend the two inputs, to be the arbiter, but in this hurried lyric it may have sufficed to divide their input into two songs. He sure crossed out the second verse from Help with a masterful X. I could hear Help On the Way a million times and still be thrilled by it, partly because of the music and arrangement as you say, but mostly because it captures the thrill of falling/soaring into love and lust in a beautiful, concise way. Have you ever seen a girl (/boy) who seems to you to be rushing forwards on the crest of a wave with flames/angels all around her, not hurting, not being mean, not doing anything for which she could be blamed? She’s spreading her wings, she'll fly above all this ... and maybe I can even come along! Hunter’s "bad" adviser is heard from in the second verse, but he crossed that out and then goes on. Love isn't a lie ... it definitely has a cost but paying the costs of life can't be avoided and can be uplifting in itself. The stakes are greater when it's sexual love, but you've gotta sell all your worldly possessions and go for it because once you've had that vision, your King is either going to be love or insanity. Footnote: to me "lock, bolt, and key" evokes an echo of "hook, line, and sinker" (or "bell, book, and candle?") ... Hunter's cynical adviser gets a word in here. And then the magnificent last verse! Another auditory mis(?)interpretation: I've always heard "I've got you today" as "I got here today." "Here" is the state of love and bliss the song's talking about. I wonder what that letter-colon preceding the corrected last line means in the manuscript? And I'm so glad that he corrected it and told that bad/cynical guy to shut up and wait for the next song. Without love in the dream it'll never come true! I also remember the bootleg of the Great American Music Hall concert hitting like a tornado in the bleak days of the hiatus. It was so thrilling to know that not only were the Grateful Dead continuing, they were out there in California thriving and were taking it up yet another cosmic notch. Who knows how high they could go? p.s. Sorry for all the exclamation points/slashes ... and elisions!
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Amazing how rh can come up with such beautiful and insightful lyrics under pressure and on the fly like that... the man is a genius. We love you Robert! Thank you for so much!
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... to Mr. Dodd, for writing 'Most important...' instead of the more typical, and incorrect, 'most importantly...'. The clause is short for 'what is most important'. Nice to see well-written English.
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Thanks for the link to the JDark's site! It can be hard to find accurate tabs or chords for Dead songs online. Another great piece here, Mr. Dodd. I'll just point out that the first bit of Slipknot! I've noticed was in the Playin' in the Band from 2/22/74, and then again in the Other One from the next night. It's just s small little tease from Jerry, but it's very clearly our beloved Slipknot! For anyone who cares, my favorite Help/Slip!/Frank is from Buffalo 05/09/77, but Furthur also managed to absolutely kill it at Bethel Woods on 07/15/12. They were way out there and suddenly just slammed into the closing ascending riff all at the same time without so much as a hiccup or stutter.
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My most recent experience with Help On the Way was Phil Lesh and Friends, Port Chester 2013-11-02. Phil's bands are so tight and they had just finished GDTRFB and were looking at each other. We thought it was the end of the set and time to settle in for the Donor Rap, but BLAM! They hit those first 4 notes of Help with such togetherness and such emphasis that I'm sure all of the Northeast heard them ... at least psychically. I love that song.
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Samson And DelilahHelp On The Way Slipknot! Franklin's Tower Estimated Prophet St. Stephen Not Fade Away Drums St. Stephen Terrapin Station Sugar Magnolia maybe my favorite 2nd set in all of deadom thats the show i'd take with me to oblivion
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Yeah, I definitely heard that one! The Slipknot! got a lot more adventurous than I would have imagined with P&F, but I guess they're all pretty adventurous guys.
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Sorry. I see you pointed out the earlier Slipknot first.
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Help on the Way; Jesus, Bhudda, Allah, rain clouds, snow clouds, thunderheads, clouds of free beer, the police, the fire department, Haight Ashbury Free Clinic, White Bird Free Clinic, Rock Medicine, AAA, AA(serenity now), the Hells Angels, an Angel of Mercy, the woman on the desert with pure water, your hiking boots, your Swiss Army knife , your common sense. Was at Winterland 2/23/74. A friend from the Blood Reserve in Alberta, Canada once told me a good one in in the pub in Ft Mcloud , "I'm gettin ready to tie the knot, but I'm afraid it's gonna be a slip knot". Thank you A . Wells. That's cowboy combined with native slang.
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“Help on the Way” (followed by “Slipknot!,” and then the first “Franklin’s Tower”) debuted, instrumentally, at that June 17 1975 Bob Fried Memorial Boogie multi-act concert at Winterland. No lyrics were sung to it. (Nor were there any lyrics sung to “Blues for Allah” that night, nor [unlike at the Kezar S.N.A.C.K. benefit on March 23] any voices in a wordless ~ironic blues chorus in “Blues for Allah”’s coda.) (I attended both concerts. Recording streams are available on archive.org.) No interpretations needed for the first lines of this song ( - or for any of its other lines) - Paradise waits on the crest of a wave Her angels in flame - pretty vibrant imagery, goes electrically with the startling musical opening.
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Well Said Jbxpro:"Hunter often wrote with an angel on one shoulder and a devil on the other. He managed magnificently to blend the two inputs, to be the arbiter, but in this hurried lyric it may have sufficed to divide their input into two songs." Yup..."Winds both Foul and Fair all Swarm" and like the Lady with a Fan...Paradise Waits to see who will risk the uncertain pains of hell to gain her. and We are left to Decide what is Wise and What is Not The Book of Genesis tells about the removal of the defiled Adam and Eve from the Garden which is now kept under guard by the Angelic Cherubim with Flaming Swords...Its quite an Amazing Image which Hunter takes to a Cosmic level by putting it on "the Crest of a Wave". -WoW- "She Is Pure, She is not to Blame" There is something Unimpeachable and Untainted about this Paradise. There's quite a paradox in the line ... "Like a Lie...she Can't be Undone" A Lie can never be True and the Truth can never be a Lie. Does that mean Once a Liar, always a Liar? I mean, if Someone True can become a Liar then why can't a Liar return to being True and thus return to Paradise? well...I am just wondering out loud as I ponder Hunter's words here. Especially his penned statement "Which of Us can Come True" It also strikes me how this is a real Grateful Dead Song Considering the fable of the Dead Soul trapped and unable to move on to "Paradise" until Someone Helps by bringing about a resolution and the Dead Soul can now Gratefully Move On.
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Wow, share-the-light, great point about this song relating to the historical "grateful dead" story of (to be abstract) the intervention of someone outside ourselves being necessary at times to help us achieve the next step on the path ... whether the path be to true love or true death.
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Great Song - For years I thought it was making the tunes without love in the dream it will never come true. Not one of the tunes I listened to the lyrics all that much from the first notes you are off and dancing for the next 20 plus minutes. Favorite live performance - Deer Creek 90 - Opened the show with a fierce Help/Slip and you gotta love the BG intro and version from one from the vault. Still have a tape deck in my car and that Great American Music Hall tape I have had for 20+ years gets priority rotation.
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12/31/7610/9/76 Blues for Allah :) like a child she is pure, she is not to blame
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Those ARE grand performances. I love the sound of the hall from 12/31/76.
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I've been enjoying listening to Dicks Pick 17with Bruce Hornsby doing his thing -Superb-
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Im not sure if I'd call this songwriting process unusual, at least for Robert Hunter. They are several stories throughout their history of Hunter writing the lyrics in the studio. Dark Star, Sugar Magnolia (reprise), etc... and other stories of Hunter writing the lyrics after all the music has been composed; Box of Rain, Uncle Johns Band, Casey Jones...Hunter is incredibly talented at coming up with lyrics that match an existing melody.
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...the dark star crashes...or in other words, goes to sleep. Perhaps Hunter's notion of just a few of the notions One might entertain before drifting off. The Dark Star we never saw, but whose lyrics we all continue to analyze and recall, finally crashes for the evening. Help on the Way. No doubt dreamin' some tremelous dreams. Light travels a lot faster than sound, so with light bouncing all around, there's a bit of a time lag before the sound and light line up just so before coming together to pass through the slipknot, so to speak...