A song by the
Dave Matthews Band, it's on the album
Before These Crowded Streets.
You may have caught the
vh1 storytellers that
Dave Matthews did not that long ago, though, I'm not sure
precisely when. I
thought that his
explanation for don't drink the water was
node-worthy, so I
transcribed it to the best of my ability.
"I have to talk about
Don't Drink the Water cause this is a storytellers, welcome to it. I'm not really good at explaining my songs, cause uh,
I just work here. But I guess the
inspiration for a.. well let me.. there's
times, there are times when I've
travelled around this fine
country, and others, but
this fine country.. I remember one time
standing on the edge of lake superior, up where we we were
camping on the northern side of it, and looking out and imagining on these
little rocks that jut out, families of
people going past in
canoes, you know, and
hunting on the side of the
lake there. Also, like if you sit and look at the
grand canyon and get a little distance between you and the
mcdonald's thats peering down over the canyon with
you.. just
imagine the quiet that must have been there and the people that
enjoyed it before..
before we came. And I just got awed by it, got this sort of
overwhelming feeling looking at those things, just going 'man, does that
suck.. does it suck that we could
erase somebody, you know,
take somebody's whole universe away. Just un
believable for those people. If
800 years ago you could have gone up to somebody that lived on the edge of the grand canyon and said, 'You know what? In 800 years you're not going to be around anymore, and if you are, you might have
a drinking problem and you won't have
schools that you
love and your
traditions will be smashed' so kind of that was a little bit of the
inspiration for don't drink the water, just the
fact that a little bit of our
history has got
a lot of poison in it. Maybe we can't
reverse things but if nothing else we could
pay a little tribute to it once in a while by
thinking about it.
What about
New York? What about the people that
lived in New York? 'You know what this is gonna look like? See those trees? See those rivers?? *insert chuckling*' I love this
city, but I couldn't imagine the people.. there are
ghosts wandering around going '
what happened?? What happened?? What's going on?'"