# "American Pie" explained (for Trophywench)



## robert@fm (May 14, 2014)

http://understandingamericanpie.com/ 

I've only read as far as "verse 2" so far, and they omit at least one part of the explanation of that; the "pink carnation" comes from _A White Sports Coat_ by Terry Dene (1957). I think I read somewhere that there's another song from that era called _The Bible Tells Me So_, but I'm not certain of this.

As for the chorus; in the phrase "them good ol' boys", "old" is used merely as an intensifier for "good", not literally.  In _Good Omens_ by Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman (written before either of them got famous), the "good old" description is applied to an 11-year-old girl. Also, since there's more than one "boy", it was likely that some of them were drinking ordinary whisky, and others rye whisky.

(My brother once made a similar, but to my mind a lot worse, linguistic mistake; he insisted that the Beach Boys in _Do It Again_ were singing about "all the places we searched and danced", despite the fact that, even through the fuzzy quality of AM radio, I could clearly hear that it was "surfed", and despite the Beach Boys being known for surf rock, not "search" rock.  I tried pointing this out to him, but he just said "people don't dance on the beach!", thereby making several more mistakes:

How was he so sure what people do, or don't do, in California? He'd never been there.
There are several songs which _explicitly_ refer to dancing on the beach; one, by Britain's very own Stiff Pilchard, is even *called* "On the Beach".
If you want realism, I've never heard of real-life people dancing in the street either; but that never stopped Martha Reeves and the Vandellas singing about it.
Who said that the phrase "all the places we surfed and danced" refers to just _one_ set of places? It could well be short for "all the beaches where we surfed, and all the clubs where we went to dance when it got too cold/dark to surf". This might not be very good grammar, but then we're talking about the genre which gave us "I can't get no_[sic]_ satisfaction".
)


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## robert@fm (May 14, 2014)

In case anyone's wondering what prompted this thread, it's this post. 

If you really want baffling lyrics, try _'39_ by Queen (a filk song about a voyage, as many traditional folk songs are).  (That song appears to contradict itself, since the Volunteers appear to come home the same year they left, despite having been gone a year.) It makes sense once you realise what it's about; hint, Brian May (who wrote it) was studying astrophysics.


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## robert@fm (May 14, 2014)

They missed another one, in Verse 5; although the line "a generation lost in space" is a metaphorical reference to youth snared by the drug culture (not for nothing is Timothy Leary's mantra sarcastically parodied as "turn on, tune in, drop dead"), it also refers to (or at least is named after) the SF sitcom — sorry, drama — _Lost in Space_; the only show ever to be named after what ought to have become of it. 

And regarding verse 4, I once read an SF short story (I can't remember title or author) about a huge skyscraper, sealed off from the supposedly toxic outside world (what would now be called an "arcology") called "Festive", although older residents claim the name to be a corruption of "Fall-out Shelter Five"; the story concerns an inhabitant on what used to be the top floor, and who still has a skylight due to his apartment not being built over (so it's now at the bottom of a well), whose hobby is to fly robot birds from his roof space. I've sometimes wondered whether McLean was alluding to this story, as well as the Byrds and their single "Eight Miles High"; the Byrds are also said to have had a 1960s single called "Fallout Shelter".


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## AlisonM (May 14, 2014)

I've danced in the street Robert, twice. First time was in Cyprus as a small child when it rained after a drought of several years and everyone went a bit daffy, dancing in the rain.

Second time was a street party not long after I came home. It was held for some neighbours' 60th wedding anniversary. We ended up doing a conga from house to house much to the bemusement of a couple of Japanese tourists.


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## robert@fm (May 16, 2014)

robert@fm said:


> If you really want baffling lyrics, try _'39_ by Queen (a filk song about a voyage, as many traditional folk songs are).  (That song appears to contradict itself, since the Volunteers appear to come home the same year they left, despite having been gone a year.) It makes sense once you realise what it's about; hint, Brian May (who wrote it) was studying astrophysics.



I'm surprised nobody has yet tackled this one. 

Another clue is that the Volunteers "sailed across the milky sea". What's Ancient Greek for "milky"? Or to put it another way, what oft-seen thing is usually described as "milky"?


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## Northerner (May 16, 2014)

FTL travel?


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## AlisonM (May 16, 2014)

Northerner said:


> FTL travel?


Is that where you meet yourself coming back?


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## robert@fm (May 16, 2014)

Northerner said:


> FTL travel?



Not quite.  If it was a FTL trip they would probably have got back the year _before_ they set out...


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## Redkite (May 16, 2014)

Oh yes I love that song.  Isn't it about travelling across the Milky Way, so you'd have to travel faster than the speed of light and (dodgy physics from me) end up in a different relative timeframe than the one you'd left.  Or something!


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