Ah.
A joke.
Thank you.
Celyn you are gettin’ sexier and sexier each time I read a post here!!
screechie, I hope I wasn’t sounding snippy. It’s just that some other posters had mentioned that they had other song lyrics that they wanted deciphered so I added a particularly pithy one (I had hoped) to the list. Celyn’s info about Davey Moore is correct, but I’d just like to add that in the song, everyone (even Sugar Ramos) says that they are not responsible and then places the blame elsewhere. Sorry for any confusion I started.
Not snippy at all. I had never heard of this song or the particular incident. I appreciate the clarification.
Hmm, name-changing one, so can I use this as a sig, should I decide to make one? Hey, maybe I use use it as a character reference, even. 
Aye, lassie. If’n it’d be a-pleasin to ye, honored I’d be.
Yes, but “Quinn the Eskimo” was written and originally recorded with The Band at Big Pink in 1967, as part of the BASEMENT TAPES. It didn’t make it onto the 1974 2-LP release, but it’s on the original bootleg. Twice.
The way I always explain this song is that it foretells a coming Apocalypse (“Everybody’s building big ships and boats,” a la Noah), it hails the advent of a superhuman Savior (pigeons running to Quinn, everybody jumping for joy at his arrival, etc.), it’s LSD-based (“Everybody’s gonna want to doze” read/heard as “Everybody’s gonna want to dose”), or, as Dylan claimed, it’s just fabulously entertaining nonsense.
In any case, it’s got a good beat and you can dance to it. As Robert Hunter says, “If you get confused, listen to the music play.”
Alchemy Esoteric Ormus Quintessence etc
Quin means 5 or fifth element
The mighty Quin is the mighty five or Pentagram called Pow or Power. A God being known as the " Quintator" or God of the Sea fisher and Eater of Men etc.
Oh yes Dylan was just foolin with us when he wrote that you all know Dylan is an adept.
[MOD NOTE: this post revives a thread from 2001]
In other news…
What does Sloopy need to hang on to? How will this help Sloopy?
Why didn’t the cake baker check out the weather before leaving it outside in t e rain?
…answers to these questions and more after some messages
The original discussion here happened over twelve years ago.
That said, I am a big Dylan fan and have always liked that song. Netflix had the Antony Quinn movie on streaming at one point and knowing the backstory of the song, I was happy to finally get to see it. I only got a out half way through. The damn thing is painful to watch.
And why was the icing green?
Nobody puts green icing on a cake.(well, except at a 5year old’s birthday party).
(hey, if we’re gonna revive a 12 year old thread, let’s do it with all the important issues)
(and why did nobody report this thread back then for a forum change?)
(and who was the mod back then who didn’t move this to Cafe Society?
Oh…how the Dope has changed…)
It’s actually
“everybody’s gonna want a dose”
as in a dose of LSD.
I know nothing about Bob Dylan, but I always thought the was a contrast of the modern way of life and the sort of back-to-nature lived by those who get snowed in during the winter. Eskimo dog-sledders had to bring food and medicine to areas like Nome, Alaska.
I always interpreted the “dose” as a reference to the 1925 serum run to save the children of Nome who were dying in droves from diphtheria. And the pigeons referred (in my head) to the way the citizens would gather around the sleds vying for food, news, and medicine.
Frickin’ blackberry won’t let me edit. Argh I hate this thing!
Anyhoo, these kinds of plagues would tend to hit when a town reached a certain population density (everybody on everybodies toes) but hadn’t yet developed series like sewage pipes or hospitals.
Services, not series.
Argh!!!
Manfred Mann mucked up the lyrics to Springsteen’s Blinded by the light too. :eek:
zombie or no
it was before people on this board ate food or had multimedia.
I also thought it was about Quinn about to deliver some cocaine.
When the song came out, Dorothy ‘Sloopy’ Sloop was an aging (51 years old) jazz musician. So perhaps the singer is telling her to hang on, because she still has a Special Fan.
No, it’s not that either. The correct lyrics are:
when Quinn the Eskimo gets here
Everybody’s gonna overdose
Everyone is too wound up with their day-to-day problems to get any sleep, but once Quinn shows up they’ll be able to lay down their burdens and relax. It’s a happy-go-lucky song about the coming of a vaguely described messiah who’s going to make everything alright.
Not every rock/pop/folk song from the '60s has to be about drugs, you know.