Lyr ADD: Pancho and Lefty (Townes Van Zandt)

Subject: RE: The Ballad of Pancho and Lefty
From: catspaw49
Date: 10 Jan 08 - 05:01 PM

Shit Charley......LMAO........I just about choked on the salad I'm eating........I think I have some Romaine forced up a sinus cavity now............

Spaw

Subject: RE: The Ballad of Pancho and Lefty
From: Little Hawk
Date: 10 Jan 08 - 05:00 PM

Hey, Amos???? Say "Hello" to my leetle friend....

Subject: RE: The Ballad of Pancho and Lefty
From: Charley Noble
Date: 10 Jan 08 - 05:00 PM

It's hot and heavy and the sun still ain't down in the west.

Charley noble

Subject: RE: The Ballad of Pancho and Lefty
From: Charley Noble
Date: 10 Jan 08 - 04:58 PM

Amos is scratchin' his hip some more,
Tryin' to channel his next metaphor;
Hawk is screamin' as if in pain
'Cos no one can speel Pancho's name;
Spaw is spewing HEY PAAAHH-N-CHO !
HEY CEEEE-Z-KO!
Why he spews so?
Well, there ain't nobody knows.

But all the Mudcat lurkers say,
They could have posted better any day;
The opportunity just slipped away,
It's a kindness, I suppose.

Cheerily,
Charley Noble

Subject: RE: The Ballad of Pancho and Lefty
From: Little Hawk
Date: 10 Jan 08 - 04:57 PM

He ees planning to seet on the fence, hombre! He feegers he can play both side for hees own gain and get dates weeth girls, but he's gonna get a beeg sorpresa...BANG! Because the Federales een Mexico gonna blow heem right off that fence and back to California. We use them fockin' gringos chingados like heem for target practice.

Subject: RE: The Ballad of Pancho and Lefty
From: catspaw49
Date: 10 Jan 08 - 04:51 PM

I'd be careful Amos or you'll end up on the wrong side of that new fence they're building.

Spaw

Subject: RE: The Ballad of Pancho and Lefty
From: Amos
Date: 10 Jan 08 - 04:44 PM

Hey, little pinche cabronito, doan be tellin' me how to speak no Spanish mon. Doan forget I live a lot closer to the border den you do, hokay? You gotta remember dese tings, little pendejo, or you get yourself in a LOT of toruble, ya know? A LOT of trouble.

A

Subject: RE: The Ballad of Pancho and Lefty
From: Little Hawk
Date: 10 Jan 08 - 04:34 PM

Hijo de un gran puta!

Subject: RE: The Ballad of Pancho and Lefty
From: catspaw49
Date: 10 Jan 08 - 03:29 PM

HEY PAAAHH-N-CHO !
HEY CEEEE-Z-KO !
HEY PAAAHH-N-CHO !
HEY CEEEE-Z-KO !
HEY PAAAHH-N-CHO !
HEY CEEEE-Z-KO !
HEY PAAAHH-N-CHO !
HEY CEEEE-Z-KO !
HEY PAAAHH-N-CHO !
HEY CEEEE-Z-KO !
HEY PAAAHH-N-CHO !
HEY CEEEE-Z-KO !
HEY PAAAHH-N-CHO !
HEY CEEEE-Z-KO !
HEY PAAAHH-N-CHO !
HEY CEEEE-Z-KO !
HEY PAAAHH-N-CHO !
HEY CEEEE-Z-KO !
HEY PAAAHH-N-CHO !
HEY CEEEE-Z-KO !
HEY PAAAHH-N-CHO !
HEY CEEEE-Z-KO !
HEY PAAAHH-N-CHO !
HEY CEEEE-Z-KO !
HEY PAAAHH-N-CHO !
HEY CEEEE-Z-KO !
HEY PAAAHH-N-CHO !
HEY CEEEE-Z-KO !
HEY PAAAHH-N-CHO !
HEY CEEEE-Z-KO !
HEY CEEEE-Z-KO !
HEY PAAAHH-N-CHO !
HEY CEEEE-Z-KO !
HEY PAAAHH-N-CHO !
HEY CEEEE-Z-KO !
HEY PAAAHH-N-CHO !
HEY CEEEE-Z-KO !
HEY PAAAHH-N-CHO !
HEY CEEEE-Z-KO !
HEY PAAAHH-N-CHO !
HEY CEEEE-Z-KO !
HEY PAAAHH-N-CHO !
HEY CEEEE-Z-KO !
HEY PAAAHH-N-CHO !
HEY CEEEE-Z-KO !
HEY CEEEE-Z-KO !
HEY PAAAHH-N-CHO !
HEY CEEEE-Z-KO !
HEY PAAAHH-N-CHO !
HEY CEEEE-Z-KO !
HEY PAAAHH-N-CHO !
HEY CEEEE-Z-KO !
HEY PAAAHH-N-CHO !
HEY CEEEE-Z-KO !
HEY PAAAHH-N-CHO !
HEY CEEEE-Z-KO !
HEY PAAAHH-N-CHO !
HEY CEEEE-Z-KO !
HEY PAAAHH-N-CHO !
HEY CEEEE-Z-KO !
HEY CEEEE-Z-KO !
HEY PAAAHH-N-CHO !
HEY CEEEE-Z-KO !
HEY PAAAHH-N-CHO !
HEY CEEEE-Z-KO !
HEY PAAAHH-N-CHO !
HEY CEEEE-Z-KO !
HEY PAAAHH-N-CHO !
HEY CEEEE-Z-KO !
HEY PAAAHH-N-CHO !
HEY CEEEE-Z-KO !
HEY PAAAHH-N-CHO !
HEY CEEEE-Z-KO !
HEY PAAAHH-N-CHO !
HEY CEEEE-Z-KO !

HEY FUCK YOU PAAAHH-N-CHO
HEY UPPA YOU ASS CEEEE-Z-KO

Subject: RE: The Ballad of Pancho and Lefty
From: Little Hawk
Date: 10 Jan 08 - 02:28 PM

Villa rhymes with Mia...did you know?
Just say "Villa Farrow", put it in your barrow, feel it to the marrow, and you'll know!
Villa makes you see-a things you never saw before.
Villa is the bee-ah that you spilled upon the floor.
Villa wasn't quee-ah, he consorted with the gals.
Villa like Maria ends in "ee-ah"! That's how you say Villa.

And Pancho is still spelled with a "A" in the 1st syllable.

P-AAAHH-N-CHO   VEEEEE-YAHHH

Got it?

Subject: RE: The Ballad of Pancho and Lefty
From: Amos
Date: 10 Jan 08 - 02:21 PM

Franz was getting hot and sore,
Pacing up and down the floor,
Researching antecedents which
He found in 1934.
But Franz could not, for all his tryin'
Get the other guys to buy-in,
He swore old Villa was the pillar,
But maybe it ain't so...

All the professorés swear
They'd heard of his repute somewhere
They only lost the footnote source
When the winds began to blow.
Ohhhh, ohh, the winds began to blow....

Subject: RE: The Ballad of Pancho and Lefty
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 10 Jan 08 - 01:46 PM

Pancho Villa as Samuel Johnson? Quite a thought. Or the other way round, that would have been fun: ""Depend upon it, sir, when a man knows he is to be hanged in a fortnight, it concentrates his mind wonderfully."

Subject: RE: The Ballad of Pancho and Lefty
From: Franz S.
Date: 10 Jan 08 - 01:41 PM

I've always believed that the TVZ song more or less followed the story of the film "Viva Villa!" (1934; Wallace Beery). There was a reporter named Wallace who was portrayed as a sort of Boswell to Villa. And according to the film Villa was killed by a relative of one of the "wives" he had wronged. I don't recall any hint that the reporter had betrayed Villa in the film, but it's been at least 30 years since I've seen it. Doesn't anyone else here remember it?

For web references:
http://www.geocities.com/cinemorgue2/wallacebeery.html
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0025948/

Sorry, my blue clickies never work.

Subject: RE: The Ballad of Pancho and Lefty
From: Charley Noble
Date: 09 Jan 08 - 10:55 PM

Hawk, Dick, Mick, Charley, Amos, and Spaw all toll the bell -
All along, down along, down along lee;
They've huffed an' they've puffed this whole thread to hell,
And it's a good thing ol' TVZ is not here to see!

Cheerily,
Charley Noble

Subject: RE: The Ballad of Pancho and Lefty
From: Little Hawk
Date: 09 Jan 08 - 02:15 PM

By the way, Spaw, I printed out some of your "member" photos from Mudcat on the printer and showed them to my Dachshunds.

"This is the guy," I said.

They tore them up savagely and pissed on them.

Subject: RE: The Ballad of Pancho and Lefty
From: Little Hawk
Date: 09 Jan 08 - 02:13 PM

Ha! Ha! Ha! (jeez....it's a good thing that poor old TVZ is not here to see this)

Subject: RE: The Ballad of Pancho and Lefty
From: catspaw49
Date: 09 Jan 08 - 11:17 AM

Well FINALLY!!!!!!

At last this has turned into a real Mudcat thread. Lots of fun pokin', an Amos original of high quality, and foremost above all, just about completely lost from the original topic in the best tradition of this joint. Truly past the classic "Thread Drift" and into the rare air of "Thread Blown All to Hell."

I want to thank all of the other "Old Timers".........Hawk, Dick, Mick, Charley, Amos.......... who have successfully converted this otherwise sillyass thread into a complete piece of crap.

BRAVO! BRAVO!   BRAVO!

Spaw

Subject: RE: The Ballad of Pancho and Lefty
From: Charley Noble
Date: 09 Jan 08 - 10:37 AM

Mick-

how can i typeeee when i keep falling off this chair laughingggggg

Amos, you's the KING!

Charley NNNNNoble

Subject: RE: The Ballad of Pancho and Lefty
From: Big Mick
Date: 09 Jan 08 - 10:24 AM

I ...... cannot ......... wait ....... for ..... the ....... response ....... to ...... this!!!!!!

You are a master, Amos.

Mick

Subject: RE: The Ballad of Pancho and Lefty
From: Amos
Date: 09 Jan 08 - 10:07 AM

The Ballad of Pat and Charley's Literary Criticisms

Old Pat was plain and sexual,
He warn't no inty-leckshual,
He like to shout in terms obscene,
At people on the movie screen.
But down at Mudcat, on a break
Someone made abig mistake,
Asked Pat for a literary critique,
Something you should never do.

All the professorés swear
They'd heard of his repute somewhere
They only lost the footnote source
When the winds began to blow.

Now Charley, he a can't pick amd choose
Every verse, like he useter do,
When Pat produced his grand critique,
It raised a bit of Charley's pique
It was all bullshit, smoke and phlegm
But that didn't matter much to him,
He started writing one himself,
AN' we all know how that goes.

All the professorés swear
They'd heard of his repute somewhere
They only lost the footnote source
When the winds began to blow.

Now critics all ignored old Pat,
And Charley's counterpoint fell flat
On grounds of insufficient charm
And post-deconstructionist alarm.
And Pat, he needs your prayers, it's true
But save a few for Charley, too,
He's writing guidebooks for the Zoo
Who show up in the spring.

All the professorés swear
They'd heard of his repute somewhere
They only lost the footnote source
When the winds began to blow....
Oh, when the winds began to blow....

Subject: RE: The Ballad of Pancho and Lefty
From: Charley Noble
Date: 09 Jan 08 - 09:07 AM

An alternative explanation would posit that Pancho was weaned all too early and had latent sexual fantasies about his mother:

You weren't your mama's only boy
But her favorite one, it seems;
She began to cry when you said goodbye
And sank into your dreams

There's the additional suggestion that Pancho was also impotent:

Wore his guns outside his pants

Lefty on the other hand (his larboard one) was equally tramatized but by too early toilet training, the key reference in the song being these lines:

The dust that Pancho bit down South
It ended up in Lefty's mouth

This song, I fear, is never going to seem the same after all this erudite discourse.

I suppose, out of kindness, we might have let it go.

Charley Noble

Subject: RE: The Ballad of Pancho and Lefty
From: Amos
Date: 09 Jan 08 - 08:50 AM

SPaw,

I think you might have over-analyzed things, here. But not by much...



A

Subject: RE: The Ballad of Pancho and Lefty
From: Big Mick
Date: 09 Jan 08 - 08:04 AM

Charley, that one drove me back to the hard drugs of my youth.

LOL.

Mick

Subject: RE: The Ballad of Pancho and Lefty
From: Charley Noble
Date: 08 Jan 08 - 08:29 PM

Awesome!

Why do I even bother to post! Such insight! Reality stripped away to its orgasmic elemental state. But words are inadequate.

I need another drink...

Charley Noble

Subject: RE: The Ballad of Pancho and Lefty
From: dick greenhaus
Date: 08 Jan 08 - 04:01 PM

Seems to make as much sense as the other explanations.

Subject: RE: The Ballad of Pancho and Lefty
From: Little Hawk
Date: 08 Jan 08 - 01:03 PM

Oh, now you're really asking for it...! Sacred ground, buddy, you're treading on sacred ground.

Subject: RE: The Ballad of Pancho and Lefty
From: catspaw49
Date: 08 Jan 08 - 12:48 PM

Man, that all sounds great to me........except for the lack of Weimaraners. Any kind of life, afterlife or otherwise, is simply worthless without Weimies.............***sigh***............but I guess I could even take that providing there were no fucking Dachshunds!

Spaw

Subject: RE: The Ballad of Pancho and Lefty
From: Little Hawk
Date: 08 Jan 08 - 12:36 PM

You are such a dipwad, man. ;-) I have it on good authority that immediately after dying you are going to be teleported to a special part of hell where you will be surrounded by nothing but Woody Allen clones who will talk to you constantly about their personal problems and follow you around relentlessly. There will be no women there, no beer, no food at all, no easy chairs, no TV, no music, and no weimaraners! But there will be Freudian analysts to whom you can go to talk about your woes, and they will all look and act very much like Dick Cheney. They will charge you heavily for their time, and you will have no money, so you'll have to work it off in the salt mines while "Woody" tells you all about his romantic disappointments and family problems.

You're fucked.

Subject: RE: The Ballad of Pancho and Lefty
From: catspaw49
Date: 08 Jan 08 - 12:22 PM

I was able to copy the first verse with detailed explanations for each line from another website where they too seem to be doing research on this song. Here's the first verse I copied and the website with a blue clicky hot link provided:

Livin' on the road, my friend
Was gonna keep you free and clean
TVZ believed that a life without soap wasn't worth living and since the best soaps came from many far away places, a life on the road would be needed to avail oneself of all the possibilities. There is also some reasonably certain probability that the mention of "free" had something to do with TVZ's fear of living in houses. His boyhood home was destroyed when the neighboring condom factory exploded and coated the whole place in latex.
But now you wear your skin like iron
Van Zandt now alleges that his central character failed miserably in finding any soap at all and now after years of weathering his skin was in pretty bad shape.
And your breath's as hard as kerosene
Plus he was in dire need of toothpaste and a dentist as well
You weren't your mama's only boy
While this was true, he was the only one born with balls the size of cantelopes which required immediate surgery
But her favorite one, it seems
This was because the baby had a willie to match which they didn't operate on
She began to cry when you said goodbye
Mom had been long into the incestuous relationship which would prove to be very detrimental to her son's mental health. While she dreamed of a porn star future for him, all he could think of was how great it would be taking a piss without stepping on his dick. His dream was surgery
And sank into your dreams
He vowed to save all he could for that glorious day when penis reduction surgery would be possible.


For more info click the link and go to www.tvzwuzzadoofusandurallfucktup.com

Spaw

Subject: RE: The Ballad of Pancho and Lefty
From: Little Hawk
Date: 07 Jan 08 - 11:07 PM

May I say just one thing at this juncture...?

It's not Poncho fer Chrissake! It's PANCHO!!!!!!!!!!!! P-A-N-C-H-O! Pancho with an "A". Got it, folks?

A poncho is a thing you wear. The common Mexican name is Pancho.

Geez!

Subject: RE: The Ballad of Pancho and Lefty
From: Amos
Date: 07 Jan 08 - 11:05 PM

Chad:

You're spinning an interesting story, but it's not the one in the song. The night they laid old Pancho low, Lefty split for Ohio. But where he got the bread to go, ain't nobody knows. There's only one rational conclusion to be made from this little line.


A

Subject: RE: The Ballad of Pancho and Lefty
From: GUEST,Chad
Date: 07 Jan 08 - 10:55 PM

Just to add a few thoughts to this discussion, and I am probably wrong. But what if Lefty was a folk singer writing songs about Mexican outlaws (Poncho). But after Poncho dies so does Lefty's dream and he can no longer sing the blues all night long like he used to. So he moves back home to Cleveland back dies off slowly with dust in his mouth the same way Poncho died in the desert.

Subject: RE: The Ballad of Pancho and Lefty
From: Little Hawk
Date: 07 Jan 08 - 01:31 PM

Yes, Charlie, that's a whole different kind of discipline, and it's definitely a worthy one. People who do it that way, writing new songs every day like the folks in Tin Pan Alley did, are to be respected for their hard work and their accomplishments. They come up with a few really great ones.

I never approached songwriting in that disciplined fashion, because I wasn't trying to make a living at it, so I just wrote stuff when the muse hit me, and you never know when that will be.

I would say that the worst stuff I ever wrote was the stuff that I was pre-thinking or calculating as I was doing it...in other words, I had some idea in advance to write about something in particular...that usually resulted in a mediocre song.

The best stuff I ever wrote came seemingly out of nowhere, very fast, totally unplanned, as if I was just the conduit and the song came from beyond me, but through me.

That has shaped my view of where the best songs come from. I don't think they come from me, but simply through me. In coming through me, they are of course influenced and colored to some extent by the person I am, so my fingerprints, so to speak, might be all over them, but they still came from way out there far beyond my own calculating mind.

Subject: RE: The Ballad of Pancho and Lefty
From: Charley Noble
Date: 07 Jan 08 - 09:14 AM

LH et al-

I like the romantic theorgy of "where the best songs come from" but I also admire the song crafters who grind out waste quantities of songs, out of which a few great ones still float to the top. It's a hard business, this songwriting, and if we had to wait for the muse to strike before composing a song we songwriters might not be so filthy rich!

Cheerily,
Charley Noble

Subject: RE: The Ballad of Pancho and Lefty
From: GUEST,Question Mark
Date: 07 Jan 08 - 09:01 AM

I've listened a number of times to this song since the beginning of the year. Can't get it out of my head now.

In retrospect, I like the theory of the song that I previously stated. Kinda deep.

The only thing to add to that interpretation is that the story line might be referencing that Pancho's dying words were to tell Lefty where the money he stole as a bandit was at...which Lefty then took. The local police may have known that, but let Lefty split town with it 1) because Lefty was a dreamer, and 2. because they killed his brother. Over the years, though, Pancho's dirty money got Lefty nowhere...perhaps even guilt ridden.

QM

Subject: RE: The Ballad of Pancho and Lefty
From: Little Hawk
Date: 01 Jan 08 - 06:32 PM

The best songs, I think, are written out of a pure feeling that comes over a person, and it pours out spontaneously in a completely unplanned way into a song. That doesn't mean that the writer necessarily knows what it's about at the time, though it might be that some of the meanings become more clear to him or her with the singing of the song as time goes by. Other people will find their own personal meanings in it, and new meanings will be found. That's good. The song arose out of powerful feelings of some kind, and it engenders powerful feelings in the listeners...if they are susceptible to it.

If not...(shrug)   Well, then they'll tune into something else instead.

I think the greatest songs are written by something far beyond the writer himself, something way beyond the boundaries of a human being. To let that happen one has to either be quite unaware it's happening...or one has to consciously surrender to something greater. It's surrender, either way...either conscious or unconscious. The song writes itself. The so-called writer is the scribe...his voice is the instrument. He becomes the instrument of what people in a far more worshipful and courtly age than the present one might have called the Allmighty or the Great Spirit.

You have to be without prejudice or judgement in such moments of surrender, seems to me.

And how common is that?

Pancho and Lefty is a great song. Doesn't matter whether or not TVZ had a clue what it was about when or after he wrote it. Does it resonate somehow with the life of Pancho Villa? Yeah, probably, just the way a wave that bounces off the shores of New York will one day kiss the sands of France. It's inevitable. The wave, like the song, is moved by something greater than prejudice or judgement. It goes where it will and arrives in its own time, seen or unseen.

"The cloak and dagger dangles,
Madams light the candles.
In ceremonies of the horsemen,
Even the pawn must hold a grudge.
Statues made of match sticks,
Crumble into one another,
My love winks, she does not bother,
She knows too much to argue or to judge." - Bob Dylan

Subject: RE: The Ballad of Pancho and Lefty
From: GUEST,QuestionMark
Date: 01 Jan 08 - 03:00 PM

I think you just hit it upon the head by citing "Now poets sing how Pancho fell"...this is a perhaps a song best commenting on sung and unsung heroes. The bandit gets glorified by poets, while the drifter dreamer (the poet...perhaps, Townes himself) only gets the glorified bandit who bit the dust's dust in his mouth...ie. the unglorified life that Townes likely felt he lived as a singer-songwriter.   

QM

Subject: RE: The Ballad of Pancho and Lefty
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 01 Jan 08 - 02:01 PM

"The other one ends up dead in the dunes of Mexico."

But he also, perhaps more significantly in the long run, ends up as a folk-hero - "Now poets sing how Pancho fell. As much alive as predecessors like Robin Hood and Jesse James.
.....................................

What typically happens in folk balladry is that it probably starts with a complete version with all the answers provided, but through the proceeds of being handed on this gets pared down to the bone, so that we end with a version in which it open to the imagination of the singer or the listener to fill in the gaps. The end result is less complete in a sense, but there is something gained that can outweigh that.

More often than not, when you go back to the earliest version of some story song in a broadsheet, it just doesn't measure up to what it was transformed into, in the course of being passed along. That's what "the folk process" is centrally about, turning straw into gold.

It seems to me that what Townes van Zandt was doing with this song, intentionally or not - foreshortening the process.

Subject: RE: The Ballad of Pancho and Lefty
From: Amos
Date: 01 Jan 08 - 11:51 AM

Fascinating how various the propositions are about what the song says. Lefty and Pancho are now proposed to be brothers, and earlier someone suggested they were alter-egos of the same person.

One of the ads down below leads to the Pandora On-Line radio with TVZ themes.


A

Subject: RE: The Ballad of Pancho and Lefty
From: Art Thieme
Date: 01 Jan 08 - 12:57 AM

Jerry is well last I heard from him --- but that was an e-mail years ago now; 1998 I think it was. He is a fine singer. One of my favorites. I do believe he was/is still in Dinkytown. And he did this song wondrously well!

Art Thieme

Subject: RE: The Ballad of Pancho and Lefty
From: GUEST
Date: 31 Dec 07 - 11:48 PM

I just re-read through the lyrics. It isn't really that mysterious or incomprehensible. There were two sons. One was a peaceful freewheeling drifter/dreamer...that'd be Lefty. The other was a mean gun totin' bandit. That's be Pancho. Pancho lived the real life, Lefty the dreamer life. Pancho got killed. Lefty didn't do so well either, none of his dreamer dreams of being a drift produced much of anything, but a lonely loner's life. Society looked down on both in many ways. Pancho got the lost soul prayers...Townes reminds that Lefty needed some of those prayers, too. I suspect Townes related to Lefty. A good dude drifter, not an outward bad seed...but a lost soul, too. That's my take on it. Probably, why Willie sings it so especially good, with both the "outlaw" and drifter elements in him.

Just my interpretation of the song.

QM

Subject: RE: The Ballad of Pancho and Lefty
From: GUEST,Question Mark
Date: 31 Dec 07 - 11:19 PM

Maybe the song was simly Townes Van Zant's TexMex take on Dylan's Lily, Rosemary, and the Jack of Hearts. Or vice a versa. Which was written first? Weren't they written about the same time...mid 70's? Heck, after hearing Dylan's song, I too wrote a song with an unexplanable story line...it was the cool thing to do as a songwriter at that time.

QM

Subject: RE: The Ballad of Pancho and Lefty
From: Amos
Date: 31 Dec 07 - 10:45 PM

The notion that there was a stolen identity makes no sense to me. There are two guys. One betrays the other. The betrayer ends up poor and aging in a cheap motel in Cleveland. The other one ends up dead in the dunes of Mexico.

A

Subject: RE: The Ballad of Pancho and Lefty
From: Declan
Date: 31 Dec 07 - 09:02 PM

Its a song with a story. A bit of a mystery story. Many stories dont have a resolved conclusion. There are at least two plausible outcomes suggested on this thread. A third, which suggested itself reading this thread, was that Poncho attacked Lefty, assumed his identity and disappeared to Ohio, leaving Lefty for dead in the desert.   And now he's growing old, something that Poncho had little chance of doing in Ohio. Doesn't seem to me to be any more far fetched than any of the other suggested explanations.

The song presents numerous conclusions. Just enjoy it.

Subject: RE: The Ballad of Pancho and Lefty
From: dick greenhaus
Date: 31 Dec 07 - 08:55 PM

Russ- I don't demand that a song be realistic. Just comprehensible.

McGrath-
To me, there's a huge difference between an incomplete story and intentional obscurantism. If Pancho and Left makes sense to you, good on yer.

Subject: RE: The Ballad of Pancho and Lefty
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 31 Dec 07 - 08:26 PM

but not part of any folk tradition I know of.

How about St James Infirmary? Just one example of a song which implies a story rather than narrating it, and leaves that story pretty wide open.

Subject: RE: The Ballad of Pancho and Lefty
From: GUEST,QuestionMark
Date: 31 Dec 07 - 04:32 PM

Pancho and Lefty is a unique song in that when I play it with others at a jam or partnering with another musician, I don't really care what the song is about at all. It's just the chance to play those TexMex arpeggio fillers and do that one cool chord change on the gitbox before the last line in each verse in the song that makes the song a standout.

QM

Subject: RE: The Ballad of Pancho and Lefty
From: GUEST,Russ
Date: 31 Dec 07 - 04:13 PM

Dick,
Thanks for the response.

I guess it all depends on what you mean by "tell" and "a" and "story".

I sing several versions of "The cruel mother." That's as traditional as you can get.

They all purport to tell a story, but according to my belief system the story cannot possibly be true.

So when I sing the song I sing it as vague and evocative.
It's a song about infanticide and its consequences, not about a specific instance of infanticide.

I sing Pancho and Lefty as a song about betrayal and its consequences, not about a specific instance of betrayal.

Am I even addressing your point?

Russ (Permanent GUEST)

Subject: RE: The Ballad of Pancho and Lefty
From: dick greenhaus
Date: 31 Dec 07 - 03:25 PM

Russ-
They all represent the vague, evocative stuff I refer to. OK if you like it, but not part of any folk tradition I know of.

Subject: RE: The Ballad of Pancho and Lefty
From: GUEST,Russ
Date: 31 Dec 07 - 03:17 PM

I like to sing songs that mean something to ME.

I might be interested in the writer's intention, or not.

I think I developed this attitude as I got into Dylan.

A lot of his stuff that I like was probably "triggered" by something or somebody, but the songs were never really about the trigger.

"Motor cycle black madonna two wheeled gypsy queen."
I really don't care who or where or when, I just like the imagery and the rhythm.

Who cares who the "sad eyed lady of the lowlands" really was? Not me. When I sing it I am thinking about MY sad eyed lady of the lowlands.

Russ (Permanent GUEST)