Jimmy Buffett - Volcano - [1979]

I'm sorta sorry for covering Buffett again as I know a lot of people hate him, but no big deal.  Its hard to find people that write lyrics that are actually worth listening to and he just cranks em out. Also, I'm a serious Buffett fan to the point where I based a college application essay off one of his songs (I was not accepted to that school)

'Volcano' [video | lyrics] is one of Buffett's more well known/overplayed tracks, but it's still one of my favorites.  I've listened to it a ton of times and just recently realized that I didn't understand one of the locations he lists off at the end of the song as places he despises.  Here is the full verse:

"But I don't want to land in New York City
I don't want to land in Mexico
I don't want to land on no Three Mile Island
I don't want to see my skin a-glow
Don't want to land at Camanche Skypark,
or in Nashville, Tennessee
I don't want to land in no San Juan airport 
or the Yukon Territory
Don't want to land no San Diego
Don't want to land in no Buzzards Bay
I don't want to land on no Ayatollah
I got nothin' more to say"

Some googling turned up an interesting and very old thread on the straightdope message board[1] and revealed some cool info about "Camanche Skypark".  Like all the other sites he mentions, it's real, and it is pretty shady looking. There is a dilapidated airstrip of sorts near the Sierras named Camanche Skypark that is hard to imagine planes carrying musical legends ever landed there. But it turns out Buffett and Jackson Browne were flying in there to play the 1978 Mountain Aire Festival, at Calaveras County Fairgrounds and this place was the closest landing strip to the fairgrounds.

His tour manager says: "As we circled the runway to make our landing, there were stunt planes flying all around us, and off the runway was a plane that had crashed while landing at the strip. This made Jimmy and all of us very concerned."


 [1] Yea its not a great 'source' but the accounts seem to all line up as far as the dates are concerned. Incidentally, the story behind the thread itself is pretty interesting as well.

John Prine - Grandpa was a Carpenter - [1973]

John Prine's "Grandpa was a Carpenter" [video | lyrics] is basically a song about how old fashioned his grandparents were, but mainly chronicles some of the badass, Ron Swanson-type shit his grandfather used to do.

'Grandpa wore his suit to dinner
Nearly every day
No particular reason
He just dressed that way

Brown necktie and a matching vest
And both his wingtip shoes
He built a closet on our back porch
And put a penny in a burned out fuse

Grandpa was a carpenter
He built houses stores and banks
Chain smoked Camel cigarettes
 And hammered nails in planks'

 I love the fact he wears a three-piece suit to dinner for no reason, and fixing the burned out fuse with a penny is just brilliant. (+camden lindsay assures me it actually works despite not being at all safe)

'Well, he used to sing me
"Blood on the Saddle"
And rock me on his knee'

If you have never heard "Blood on the Saddle" [video | lyrics] check it out, or reading the lyrics alone will do, because it has to be one of the worst songs to sing to child that was around back then. All while chain smoking Camel's...this guy is my hero.

Anyway - the real line I wanted to mention was the line at the end of the chorus, "He voted for Eisenhower, 'Cause Lincoln won the war." This one has always intrigued me because I didn't understand the relationship between the two Presidents who have almost 100 years between their terms.  Abraham Lincoln (b. 1809) was a Republican who served as President from 1861 to 1865 and Dwight D. Eisenhower (b. 1890) was also a Republican, elected to office from 1953 and serving until 1961.

Prine's grandfather would have been about 20 years younger than Eisenhower, and likely was born shortly after the end of the Civil War in 1865.  As a result, many people of that time held staunch political grudges which were sympathetic to the views they held before the war began. This resulted in most Southerner's voting Democratic (i.e. Yellow Dog Democrats) and most Northerner's voting Republican with great regularity.

So Prine's grandfather was one of these Northern Republicans (he was from Illinois and his wife Kentucky...or at least she went to school there.) Either way, both states were Union supporting, Republican leaning, Northern/Border States in the war.  I wish I knew more about how this rift affected political relations between the two parties but I really don't have any idea.   We think the two parties are useless and hate each other now, but this rivalry must have made it very difficult to compromise on anything.