{"id":26869,"date":"2021-05-18T05:00:00","date_gmt":"2021-05-18T12:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/estreetshuffle.com\/?p=26869"},"modified":"2021-05-18T05:39:49","modified_gmt":"2021-05-18T12:39:49","slug":"roll-of-the-dice-bishop-danced","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/estreetshuffle.com\/index.php\/2021\/05\/18\/roll-of-the-dice-bishop-danced\/","title":{"rendered":"Roll of the Dice: Bishop Danced"},"content":{"rendered":"

“This next song is kind of a nonsense song. I\u2019ll give you a quick rundown:<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

It\u2019s about a bishop and his wife and this violin player in West Virginia.<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

It\u2019s about how their daughter lost her mother to mathematics while on a business trip in Detroit.<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

It has a Top 40 hook part that if we knew the words, everybody could sing to it.<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

It’s about pancakes and this guy named Muskrat who lives in Richmond, Virginia, who I met when I was playin\u2019 down there. (He plays saxophone.)<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

It\u2019s about James Garner, when he was very popular years ago in his Brit (Bret? Bert?) Maverick TV shows, and it was a well-known Hollywood secret that he had an affair with a mad woman with one eye.<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

It\u2019s about this little boy who told his father that the Indians are still in the woods, only nobody sees \u2018em.<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

And it\u2019s about sexual pathos of elderly choirboys in Butte, Montana.”<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

— Bruce Springsteen, January 31, 1973<\/em><\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Yeah, I should probably leave it at that.<\/p>\n

Because if we accept Bruce’s description verbatim, we end up with an impressionistic mess that’s at least fun to sing; if we treat his plot summary as tongue-in-cheek, however, we end up with a song-length ode to self-pleasure.<\/p>\n