OK, bolded parts - Phil, you stole the words from my keyboard.philipgar wrote: I had never thought much about the 40 year time gap, but actually in reflecting upon it, it does make sense with the song, in that things are cyclical. It's kind of showing how every little thing becomes interrelated. The pearls at the end aren't necessarily the pearls from the beginning, at least if i'm thinking about it properly. I think part of the point of the story is how everybody is connected to everybody else, from the lowest (the prostitute) to the highest (the president), and how things repeat themselves. The story is a full cycle, and takes place over 40+ years I suppose, but does that make it any less? Sure no one in it is fleshed out, but no one in any song really is (except for maybe aqualung, but you don't need to know much about that guy to get the full picture).
Thinking about the song from a normal persons point of view doesn't necessarily make sense, but in what universe is Dave normal? I think calling him scatterbrained puts it very gently, and the song is fairly scatterbrained. It's all over the place, but in the end it gets back to where it started, and shows some form of order in the chaos. Not sure if my interpretation has any meaning whatsoever, but it's an abstract song, and I personally have always liked it.
Sure some of the lines were made for convenient rhymes, but come on, rhyming urinal and funeral is one of my favorite davisms ever! Although at this point I'd rather see Nice Guys in concert (just because i've always loved it, and have yet to see it), I don't know for sure if I'd put it above SoP or not. It's a tough one, and I think there really is a lot of love for SoP on this board from many of us.
Phil
And I'd add that it doesn't actually have to make sense, it's a song (by Dave, mind you), it's supposed to be fun, it's the interplay between the rhythm and the words that is so fun, it doesn't always have to make sense. I love it just because it doesn't make sense unless you add some kind of a personal interpretation to fill in the gaps in the logical sequence of events. Why does a song have to be logical to be good? If that's your only objection to it...