Big Casino...

Okay, so it's come to my attention that "our generation" does not have any good war-protest songs. I mean, it seems that way...songs of the Vietnam era seemed to unite people in the fight...Bob Dylan, John Lennon, The Police, Ani DiFranco, any punk group...those seemed to work(?). I'm not willing to make a statement on whether or not I think they worked; I realized as I was on a solo car trip (wow, me in my car for 4 hours...damn, I was hoarse, and the truck drivers all got a show) that I may have read the Jimmy Eat World "Big Casino" all wrong.

So, for nothing more than posterity...[and my future ENG/SOCIOLOGY interdiscioplinery college course on explicating song lyrics as a facet of modern storytelling...] here's what I think:

I feel like it's a war protest song, however, it doesn't seem like anti-Iraq or Afghanistan or anything. I mean, there's been talk of a draft, but nothing has actually happened on that front. So, I guess I feel like it's referencing wars with drafts...or maybe it's even taking on the perspective of other countries which DO have mandatory military service...yet there's the New Jersey thing! Gosh, I felt a lot smarter about this when I was driving and listening to it incessantly at 3 in the AM!


Well theres lots of smart ideas
In books I never read So, we're establishing that the speaker is young.
When the girls come talk to me and apparently attractive, or otherwise able to inspire lithe young admirerers.
I wish to hell I had and, he's young and dumb...but now has the perspective of regret

Get up, Get up
Turn my ignition
Get up, Get up
Fight off [fire up?] the system So, that's pretty anti-war, anti-The Man, etc.
Play my little part in something big This line I just love. Mother Teresa says this, "We cannot do great things. We can only do small things with great love."


I'll accept with poise, with grace Grace is a message I can live with, war-protest or not.
When they draw my name from the lottery What lottery? WWII? Vietnam? NATO-driven Eastern European countries?
And they'll say all the salt in the world couldn't melt that ice Cold day in hell when...[you name it] message here? I'm still puzzling.
I'm the one who gets away So, you wanted to play in something grand on your own scale; is escape the solution?
I'm a New Jersey success story Totally don't get this one, but I think about Michael Moore's message in "Fahrenheit 9/11" with the family stories of the kids who either chose to serve in the military or were coerced into serving from Flint. The kids from Flint are the proverbial Everyman.
And they'll say Lord give me the chance to shake that hand If the admirer girls are shaking the hands, or the other people who admire those who serve? Higher-ups?


Back when I was younger
I was someone you'dve liked This makes me a little pensive because I wonder if whatever the event was: the war, the escape, the lack of participation in society has made this person hard and closed off.
Got an old guitar I had for years I let you buy Clearly, the music and lightness in his heart is gone...if it was ever there.
you ain't dying enough to know Such a threat and a warning to the living. Youth is wasted on the young, as they say...but it's never too late to take up your plan to rage against the bad in the world.
There's still some livin' left when your prime [time?] comes and goes But this is pessimism-- it's not a warning; it's just saying that you're just like him and you've wantonly wasted every chance you got to suck the marrow out of the bones of life.


Get up, Get up
Dance on the ceiling Fred Astaire? This is getting crazy!
Boy you must be dreaming This isn't the hopeful dreaming.
Rock on, young savior, don't give up your hopes It's hard to say, here what he believes. Is he hopeful for the one who isn't him? He maybe has transpired into something beyond his ego, here.

I have one last wish
And its from the heart The song is a swansong? It's over, he went to war and he died? Or is he just dead inside?
Just let me down
Easy I wish this was "don't let me down".

The chorus happens again here...but the final line seems truncated, while it isn't. "They'll say" is actually pretty powerful, I think. He's pretty sure of himself that he's made such an impression on people, on the girls, on the war, on New Jersey, on the comrade "Young Savior" that they will still have reason to talk about him...but will they?
They'll say