Grateful Dead

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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!)

"Mason's Children"

I know, it must seem like I am all sweetness and light and totally just, like, gaga over every single song in the band’s repertoire sometimes. But hey, I can be just as cynical and grumpy as the next picky Deadhead.

I admit it: I don’t like “Mason’s Children.”

But, for only about the fourth time ever, I received a request to blog about a particular song, and this was the selection. Sigh…. No—really! I love getting suggestions for songs to write about. So, here goes.

First off, my personal belief is that there is a good reason that the song, written and recorded for Workingman’s Dead, never made it onto the album. Its tone seems inconsistent with the rest of the suite of songs on that particular masterpiece. And, along with that, I think that its relatively short performance career with the band was, if not an intentional statement, at least well-advised.

Hunter’s note on the lyric in his A Box of Rain simply states: “An unrecorded GD song dealing obliquely with Altamont.”

Interestingly, while most of my sources credit the song to Garica / Hunter, it appears to be attributed, at least according to the Grateful Dead Family Discography, to Garcia / Lesh / Weir / Hunter. But regardless, I think it is basically a Garcia setting of Hunter’s lyric. (As always, I stand ready to be corrected!)

Perhaps the most likeable thing about the song is the somewhat hilarious range of interpretations you can find just by spending five minutes browsing the web. It’s about mushrooms, it’s about the Masonic order, it’s about cannibalism, it’s about loan sharks….you name it, pretty much, and this song is about it. Well, that is true of many of the best Dead songs, so why should “Mason’s Children” be any different? There’s even a rather persistent thread pertaining to the song’s “satanic overtures.” Overtones?

Anyway.

If Hunter says it was obliquely about Altamont, then clearly the statement made by “New Speedway Boogie” was far stronger, and not oblique.

Another fun thing about the song (I do look for the positive in everything) is the conscious use of a children’s nursery rhyme motif, in enumerating the days of the week. Hunter returns to this particular children’s motif on at least one occasion, in “Althea,” where he alludes to the rhyme:

Monday's child is fair of face,
Tuesday's child is full of grace,
Wednesday's child is full of woe,
Thursday's child has far to go,
Friday's child is loving and giving,
Saturday's child works hard for a living,
But the child who is born on the Sabbath Day
Is bonny and blithe and good and gay

So too with “Mason’s Children” where the entire week is counted off. Well, except for the weekend. No Saturday or Sunday. (“Mission in the Rain” uses Saturday and Sunday, but not the rest.) “Day Job” uses Sunday and Monday, as does “Corrina.” Hmmm.

And then there’s “Keep Rolling By.” Not a song I could sing you offhand, but speculation by Alex Allan as to the song’s composition seems to indicate that there’s a possibility it was actually an original song, rather than a traditional tune. Indeed, a search on the fairly exhaustive Digital Tradition folk song site reveals no results for “Keep Rolling By,” which has the following lines, sung simultaneously:

{Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday ...
{Summer, winter, spring and fall
{Tick, tick, tick, tick ...

I do love the particular motif of referencing nursery rhymes in Hunter’s lyrics, which is encountered over and over. For me, hearing these phrases can bring me right back to being a child again, even when the context (Ashes, ashes, all fall down…) is dire.

“Mason’s Children” is dire, for sure. The story told by the song is disturbing, any way you look at it. Someone is bricked up in a wall, then disinterred, then possibly cooked in a stew and eaten. Some have suggested a reference to Robert Heinlein’s Stranger in a Strange Land, wherein the protagonist, Valentine Michael Smith, is boiled in a soup and consumed by his followers after his death.

I would love to hear a cogent story from anyone—oh heck—who cares about cogency? Let’s hear all the stories you might have that seem to come from these lyrics. This could be quite fun.

I’m sure there are those who love this song. I don’t mean to in any way denigrate that appreciation—as always, I really just want to point to a few angles, and throw it up for grabs for everyone to think about and chime in on.

Just don’t ask for “Day Job,” or “Money, Money,” ok?