Friday, January 3, 2020

Snow & Ice: Snow (Hey Oh)



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And here I thought this song was all about winter conditions.

It was my son who introduced me to the Red Hot Chilli Peppers - me being from a Who and Stones generation, I find/found it harder and harder to keep up with groups that appeared after about the arrival of Prince. Around about Nirvana's arrival, I just tuned out.

Granted, it would have been hard to miss the arrival of some of the post 90s music, and the Chilli Peppers fall into the pretty hard to miss category.

But my ignorance - no naivete goes deeper: I took the lyrics of <Snow> on their surface meaning. I mean "tracks in the snow" - you know how you leave footprints in drifts. As Anthony Kiedis said: a fresh canvas of snow. In between the perfect cover of another wonder - I mean, a covering of snow is a true wonder. Master of lyrics he is, I now read that Kiedis is couching his addiction to snow of a different kind in a metaphor about the weather. Look a bit deeper, and the lyrics speak about "get high on" and "killing me". Oh! Snow. Now I get it. Ah well, chalk it up to experience.

Doesn't detract from my love of the song. It's great music that sits up there with classics like the Stones and the Who.

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