The Grateful Dead originally wheeled out their original composition “Mason’s Children” in 1969 at a live show at the Fillmore West in Frisco, played it live for a couple of years, and then ditched it entirely. (Furthur, and some of the other post-Garcia Dead bands brought it back recently…I understand it opened a show in 2015.)
It was supposed to be a cut on the classic studio album Workingman’s Dead (1970) but didn’t make it.
There are suggestions that it was referential to the Altamont debacle. But “New Speedway Boogie,” which was much less obscure, was the Altamont song that got onto the album.
Lyrics-wise, it makes a lot of Deadheads queasy. The words are downbeat yet psychedelic-weird in the mode of many 1969 Dead songs…think Aoxomoxoa’s “China Cat Sunflower” and similar tunes.
A lot of folks recall Poe’s “Cask of Amontillado” at the line “bricked him in the wall,” although Mason is dead in the lyrics when interred. Some people think the song has something to do with Freemasonry (duh). Full lyrics here:
http://artsites.ucsc.edu/GDead/agdl/maso.html
To ME, the messianic figure of Mason has always been Charlie Manson, along with his “children.” He teaches them things, and they “grow tall” (carry out ritual murders). Then hide – “never hid so well before” – from the law, going “underground,” later carrying out assassination attempts on political figures during the '70s.
Finally they “cook a stew,” and “never had such times before.” I don’t remember Manson and his people engaging in cannibalism, but it doesn’t seem out of character.
If you want to hear it live, here’s a MONSTER 10-minute version (bad choice of adjective, I know) from a 12/28/1969 show in Hollywood, Florida.
I’d love to hear opinions from the 5% of SDers who are Deadheads (and everyone else) and the 20% of those who are familiar with the obscure “Mason’s Children” (and everyone else).