Lyr Add: Blues For Allah (Grateful Dead)

Subject: Lyr Add: BLUES FOR ALLAH (Hunter/Garcia)
From: rangeroger
Date: 22 Sep 01 - 12:52 AM

I often use album liners to learn the lyrics of songs.Tonight while digging through a briefcase full of music,looking for a Rodney Crowell liner, I saw one with Arabic writing on it.Pulled it out, read it and knew I had to post the song.

Blues For Allah (Hunter/Garcia)

Arabian wind
The needle's eye is thin
The ships of state sail on mirage
and drawn in sand
Out in no-man's land
Where Allah does command

What good is spilling blood?
It will not grow a thing;
"Taste eternity" the swords sing
Blues for Allah
In'sh'Allah

They lie where they fall
There's nothing more to say
The desert stars are bright tonight
let's meet as Friends

The Flower of Islam

The Fruit of Abraham

The thousand stories have
come round to one again
Arabian Night
Our Gods pursue their fight
What fatal flowers of darkness
bloom from seeds of light

Bird of Paradise
Fly
In white sky
Blues for Allah
In'sh'Allah

Let's see with our heart
These things our eyes have seen,and
know the truth will still lie
Somewhere in between

Under eternity
Under eternity
Under eternity blue
Bird of Paradise
Fly
Blues for Allah
In white sky
Under eternity
Blues
for Allah
In'sh'Allah

The words were translated into Hebrew,Arabic,and Persian on the liner.
copyright 1974

rr

Subject: RE: Lyr Add: Blues For Allah
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 22 Sep 01 - 07:56 AM

I'm glad I opened up this thread. What's the album?

Subject: RE: Lyr Add: Blues For Allah
From: Joan from Wigan
Date: 22 Sep 01 - 01:12 PM

Those are beautiful words. Any chance of a tune please?

Joan

Subject: RE: Lyr Add: Blues For Allah
From: Sorcha
Date: 22 Sep 01 - 07:47 PM

Thanks, rangeroger.........

Subject: RE: Lyr Add: Blues For Allah
From: rangeroger
Date: 23 Sep 01 - 02:34 AM

Kevin,
The album is the appropriately titled "Blues for Allah" by the Grateful Dead.The cover artwork is some of the finest I've ever seen,Grateful Dead or other.It shows a white haired,robed,skeleton in sunglasses playing a fiddle left-handed while sitting in a circular window in stone wall.

Joan,
the tune is difficult to describe.Suffice to say,mid 70's Dead with a Zappa-like, mid-eastern,minor key flavor.It does get somewhat bluesish toward the end.

I did make a mistake in typing out the lyrics.In the fourth line of the first verse, the word is "drown" not "drawn"

rr

Subject: RE: Lyr Add: Blues For Allah
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 23 Sep 01 - 02:11 PM

Thanks. I thought "drawn in sand" was rather good.

This should be a link to a picture ofvthe the albu m cover". Striking.

Subject: RE: Lyr Add: Blues For Allah
From: rangeroger
Date: 23 Sep 01 - 06:13 PM

Kevin, thank you for that link.

While looking at the cover again last night,I noticed there is a tear-drop coming from under one lens of the sunglasses.

rr

Subject: RE: Lyr Add: Blues For Allah
From: Rev
Date: 23 Sep 01 - 09:43 PM

The Grateful Dead had an interesting relationship with the Middle East. In 1978 they played a series of concerts at the Sound and Light Theater in Giza, Egypt, right in front of the Pyramids and the Sphinx. The run of shows culminated on the night of a total eclipse. They even tried to wire the King's Chamber in the Great Pyramid for sound, to use it as an echo box. Maybe it was pyramid energy in the way, but they could never get it to work. It's interesting that Hunter and Garcia wrote "Blues for Allah" before they went to Egypt. As for that song's appropriateness right now, it's quite startling to me how well it applies. Hunter is always good at writing ambiguous lyrics that can reveal meanings you never knew were there.