I remember that song from around the time it came out. Our middle school lunch room got a jukebox that year and all us kids used to shovel nickels (or quarters) into the machine. That song was a favorite. The money went to fundraisers (we were told) but some of it must have wound up in Tommy James' coffers.
Words In Drag
6 comments:
What does that even mean?
It sounded like "towing" the line.
Then it sounded like "tugging" the line.
I never heard "dragging."
That's even better. That's best of all.
It's a Hippy song innit. Because everything's fine. I signed it while it played, easy as pie, easy as eating pie, easy as eating a delicious home-baked pie of your favorite kind with ice cream on top. That's how easy it is to slip into the whole feel of it and hit each predicted word on the beat and adjust as you go, as with the word "time" the drum kicks in right there and "time" is a tap on the back of the wrist as if tapping a watch, perfect for the drum beat, and seeing a tree goes perfectly with, "then hugging it" as you walk by because your tree is right there graphically standing and ready to be assaulted by a tree-crazed hippy. It's a delightful song in sound and sign. I like it immediately. It shows perfectly.
In the mood of the song "dragging a line" could be taking a toke off a doobie but the line in that context is not clear. Still "line" is one of my favorite signs because it's just so doggone linear. Two pinkie "i's" that touch at the tips pulled apart. But it doesn't makes sense.
Sticking with recreational drugs, "dragging a line" could be pulling up a line of cocaine. That is exceedingly graphic and clear, but cocaine being a speedy upper is antithetical to the whole laid back tone of everything being alright at the basic level of snow and rain and bright sunlight and trees that get hugged on sight. Comprende le vous?
So it's probably not drugs and that's a bummer because they both go so well with the song. Then what is it?
*reads lyrics*
It means work. He has a job but his mind is elsewhere. That's all. It's a hippy singing about having to work. I like the sone anyway. And i like my misinterpretations better than the real meaning but I can live with this in its graphically toned down and less fun form.
Good times. (did you see that?)
Chips been strolling by that skunk shoppe again. sniffin' round
;) *ducks*
*Not that there's anything wrong with that.
Does sailing have a "dragging a line" term?
Are you trawling or trolling, Lem?
Tommy James was getting high and finding Jesus around that time. Maybe the song refers to Mark 1:17
And Jesus said to them, 'Follow Me, and I will make you become fishers of men.'
Although I've heard this one enough times since 1971 to be able to sing the intro, I'd have sworn the repeated phrase was "Hangin' around" in place of "draggin' the line". Is there a version that uses those words in that spot, or was that what my brain filled in for me? When I asked MrM what he'd remembered the words to be, he was sure "tugging the line" was what was sung.
So here we both sit, with two pairs of lyin' ears that allowed us to drag along the wrong line for 44 years.
Taking a cue from the confusion I tried to impart at my link after the jump, "to drag" really does mean to pull or to draw--purely--without the frictional element of gravitational grinding against the earth.
Pullin' the Line
Drawin' The Line
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