Don't miss the sexual harassment — at 3:30 — and the attempt to justify it with the invocation of the lyric "We can share the women, we can share the wine." Comically justify it. They're mocking the justification.
Here's a Reddit discussion from a year ago: "We can share the women we can share the wine?/Looking back, what are the most problematic Dead lyrics?"
Here's a defense of the line at Dead.net:
It’s unfortunate that the opening lines of the song ["Jack Straw"] are often taken by listeners at face value—I always felt very strange about the roar that would emerge at the lines “we can share the women, we can share the wine.” In fact, as has been pointed out, that attitude led our pair of ne’er-do-wells onto a path of self-destruction. I’d be interested in hearing if anyone else heard that at shows—that inappropriate roar of approval—kind of like the line in “Baba O’Riley”: “You’re all wasted!” Hmmmm... and that’s a good thing?
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. I’d be interested in hearing if anyone else heard that at shows—that inappropriate roar of approval—kind of like the line in “Baba O’Riley”: “You’re all wasted!”
"Driving that train, high on cocaine,
Casey Jones you better watch your speed"
I've never been to a Dead show (thank god), but does that line illicite a roar from the crowd?
The Dead members were funny! Franken and Davis, not so much.
One of my favorite GD songs. I don't find it problematic at all. Then again, I can distinguish fact from fiction.
I'm familiar with the version of Jack Straw from the Europe '72 Grateful Dead recording. Good song. (I confess to liking the Grateful Dead, crucify me, OK?)
I never thought that the opening line was "problematic" (not one of my words, by the way, like "garner" is for Althouse) because it was just emblematic of the hippie mindset that the Dead came from back in those years. Many espoused that attitude, especially when it wasn't their woman who was being shared.
Of course, it all ended in tears, as it had to.
I don't see what the big deal is with Franken intercoursing with the Dead.
Comically justify it.
Reminds me of a "One Big Happy" comic strip, Ruthie's parents are encouraging her to tell a joke, and she says "No, you'd just laugh at it."
I guess the other lyrics about "jumping" and robbing a guy, then killing someone are OK because those actual victims - being shared isn't being a victim - are not women.
Al Franken was funny, but he was a leftist.
And he got busted for either copping a feel of some Army dame or posing in a photo that looked like he was copping a fee of some Army dame.
When I say busted, I mean ousted by the Dems to serve their political ends. If the Dems didn't protest, the mainstream media woulda been silent.
Yeah, I like some song of the Dead, but couldn't stand all those idle dumbass Deadheads who avoided work and structure in their lives.
Jack Straw from Wichita
Cut his buddy down
Dug for him a shallow grave
And layed his body down
I never hear anyone point to the truly problematic lyrics of the Stones' "Stray Cat Blues," nor the even more problematic cover of the Blind Faith album. Topless pubescent girls and screaming-in-ecstasy 15-year-old girls were just considered SOP for the time, I guess. But now Amazon slaps "explicit" on the lyrics to "Gimme Shelter."
Nonapod--
To answer your question, not that I ever heard. Perhaps it did in the 1970s.
The lyrics that got the most reaction in the 1980s and 1990s generally had to do with kindness and hope...
"All I want to know is 'Are you kind?' "
"We will get by. We will survive."
"Love will see you through."
"You know my love will not fade away."
"Without love in the dream, it will never come true."
"We can share what we got of yours cuz' we done shared all of mine."
@Crimso: some people consider fiction to be literal rather than allegorical or simple story telling. That's one of my favorite songs of the Dead also. Have a version of that song by Bruce Hornsby on an album called "Deadicated". A bit more upbeat (as Hornsby is given to be). Really great.
Here's a hint. Who do you think deflowered more 15 year old girls, David Koresh or Jerry Garcia?
Squeeze my lemon baby, let the juice run down my leg.
I'd like to read a Reddit thread on the most 'problematic' rap lyrics.
For Christ’s sake, Althouse, it’s the fucking Grateful Dead.
You’ve really lost it over this bullshit.
I read it as yet another sign that "sexual liberation," like abortion on demand, benefits men a whole hell of a lot more than it benefits women.
I love the men in my life and like many other men. But there was never a world in which, "Hey, gals, we have as much right to a zipless f*ck as men do! And we want it just as much, too! Let's all go sleep with strangers!" was a compelling argument for most women. I'm pretty mainstream (except for being Republican, which I understand compromises that second X chromosome of mine); from unofficial polling and observation of my women friends and acquaintances, I remain convinced that most of the women who say they love commitment-free sex with partners about whom they might know a medical profile but little more are saying it in order to be the Cool Girl.
Next up, we’ll invent a time machine so we can go back and spank the Dead for taking and peddling LSD.
1980 is a bit late for thinking that’s funny. But then 37 years later Al Franken still thought it was funny to force himself on Leeann Tweeden and to be photographed as though groping her. Apparently he had only seen her aerobics videos on YouTube and not the one where she shoots a .44 magnum Desert Eagle.
Jesus says share the women.
Democrats did it to him. They demanded he resign. I never thought of him as funny....just as a jerk.
News Flash --- 60's & 70's Counterculture Often Treated Women Like Shit.
Film at 11:00
(And admit it, you're looking forward to seeing it, you nasty bastard!).
Isn't the feminist view that "it's the environment we swim in" supposed to negate the fact from fiction argument. Institutionalized misogyny?
This confirms Al Franken’s real sin: he was never funny.
News flash:
Women flocked to the Dead to get passed around as groupies because they enjoyed the parties, drugs and orgies.
Those were the days.
Now, everybody’s terrified of scolding schoolmarms.
And the young women probably still want the same damned thing.
Franken made a honk-honk joke on a sleeping woman.
Why is he still not castrated and in prison?
Summary of the past two days of Althouse’s Marxist feminist moral system:
Gays are wonderful, liberated, colorful, free and oh so creative.
Their sexual relationships set moral standards we heterosexuals can’t hope to achieve.
Heterosexuals should stop flirting and mating because everything they do is abuse and rape.
Corporate mergers are often finalized with an exchange of women.
"Here's a hint. Who do you think deflowered more 15 year old girls, David Koresh or Jerry Garcia?"
Bob Weir, by a giant margin. The chicks might like Jerry, but he cared about privacy with his briefcase and contents, Bobby was notorious.
does that line illicite a roar from the crowd?
Love the "illicit(e)" for "elicit" slip - very appropriate!
Comically justify it.
So funny the idiot had to repeat it - sure sign of quality comedic sensibilities.
"the roar that would emerge at"
If you want chills, listen to the Folsom Prison crowd when Johnny Cash sings, "just to watch him die."
I was going to post on the Stiller and Meara thread that Franken and Davis may have been the last comedy duo act, but they weren't really much of an act, so I thought better of it. And now here they are.
Having been an actual Rock Star (in my mind), I can tell you that the sexual harassment usually goes the other way. The groupies can leave you bruised and a mess, after they careless share you like a bottle of wine on a camping trip.
How stupid must you be to conflate author and character?
I never knew anything about Franken and Davis, and I was shocked to see how slender Al Franken once was. But throughout the clip I wondered, How did that Schmuck ever get elected US Senator from Minnesota?
My recollection, from a long time ago, is that an awful lot of trouble was caused by guys who couldn't, or at least wouldn't, share the women, when the women were inclined to be shared.
These have to be in the running:
"So instead I've got a bottle and a girl who's just fourteen
And a damn good case of the Mexicali Blues Yeh
...
She took me up into her room and whispered in my ear
Go on, my friend, do anything you choose
Now I'm payin' for those happy hours I spent there in her arms
With a lifetime's worth of the Mexicali Blues, yeh
The notion that it’s only 15 year old girls who are groupies is nonsense.
I was associated with and did opening act gigs for a band closely related to the Dead.
The groupies were lined up ten deep for both bands and many of those women continued in their groupie role well into their 30s or until their looks gave out.
These women sought out getting passed around. They slept with every member of those bands, sometimes singly and sometime in orgies.
Those women loved this shit... the parties, drugs, being backstage, the orgies. They weren’t coerced. And, a lot of times, the whole scene was a helluva lot of fun. That entire scene was consensual and exactly what all the players wanted.
Question for Althouse, who seems to think this is a hetero dilemma: Where in the hell did AIDS originate. Any ideas?
I'll take a wild guess. Marxist Leninist Feminism?
Anal gang bang orgies in the bath houses in SF, LA and NYC.
You know, conducted by those saintly, oh so colorful, exciting gay men. Under the influence of a cocktail of drugs.
The Marxist feminist part is this bizarre scapegoating of traditional heterosexuals that seems to obsess Althouse.
Let me propose a wild idea.
Exploitive, mean, stupid and risky sexual behaviors are common human sins.
Gays aren’t and never were poor, abject victims of heterosexuals. Just like heterosexuals, they mostly suffered from their own sinfulness and the sinfulness of other gays, because that’s who they courted and screwed.
It’s a learning process for almost all of us.
The problem for gay men is that their sexual proclivities are often fatal. That’s not something heterosexuals inflicted on them.
This Marxist feminist history of persecution and objectification, etc., of women and gays is just about total bullshit. It’s obnoxious, too.
Really, I have to say it, Althouse.
This fag hag thing of yours is obnoxious.
This has nothing to do, as you will imagine, with some sort of prejudice against women or gays.
I encountered this bizarre fag hag bullshit constantly in Chicago, SF and NYC. It’s the spoiled brat act of rich suburban white women. It’s kinda cute when they’re 20 years old, but it just gets more and more obnoxious with age.
My gay men friends were in agreement with me. They couldn’t stand the fag hag routine either. Which is not to say they would not exploit it for all they could get.
But throughout the clip I wondered, How did that Schmuck ever get elected US Senator from Minnesota?
A lack-luster campaign by Norm Coleman, the incumbent, coupled with pretty open cheating.
Shouting Thomas @3:02 is correct, in my view.
Human nature is fundamentally flawed: Make up your own reason(s) why-- "Original Sin", the tyranny of the ego, "attachment to illusion", "Our genes don't give a shit if we suffer or make others suffer as long as we reproduce first" (my favorite, that one), or whatever. However you slice it, it's always our own wretched fault, the evil we make, not someone else's.
Sad!
Does the Devil exist? Sure. The Devil is us, in greater or lesser part.
Let us embrace our Godlike part instead.
I still think about the story Blasey Ford told the world, about that summer night in nineteen eighty something in some house east of the Ohio River where, despite denials of three of the four no wait five attendees (including a friend who she left behind, who might recall very vividly and tell all within earshot the next day in her own teenaged perspective, about being left behind in such a circumstance) and I wonder what music was playing in the background, when she left her friend on the couch with the still unknown mysterious host and went upstairs.
I would think she would remember if it was the Grateful Dead. Had she been able to tell the panel it was the Dead that was playing, who knows what way the world would have gone. No one wants a Deadhead on the court.
I always thought Good Morning Little School Girl (cover of an old blues standard) was maximally pervy.
60's & 70's Counterculture Often Treated Women Like Shit.
Keep women barefoot, available, and taxable. Planned with a forward-looking perspective.
I don't understand. Franken's behavior in the skit is to generate humor at his own expense.
I think by now I have absorbed Shouting Thomas's points about feminism and homosexual permissiveness.
1986, Alpine Valley. I still remember my girlfriend’s sleazy new boyfriend making a point of leaning over and singing “steal your wife” loudly to me during US Blues.
Just not cool.
For the record, Baba O'Riley is a critique, not an endorsement. The Who played at Woodstock and hated the experience. Pete Townshend especially disliked the behavior of the "teenage wasteland" they witnessed. This song is the result.
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