First Blood
Lyrics
Mail order body armor
Map to the Blue Bucket Mine[1]
Guy who had a place[2] down by the lakeside
Changing water to wine[3]
Devastating schematics
Rough drafts of the twenty-third psalm[4]
Paul Kersey never left his apartment[5]
John Rambo never went to Vietnam[6]
Armor-piercing black talons
From the first production run
Nobody's seen them in the wild
Since 1991[7]
Out in the cul-de-sacs at midnight
Where the candy for the cannons comes from[8]
I heard Buford Pusser was dirty
John Rambo never went to Vietnam
Shall we rise to the occasion
Or go to sleep for good in the trenches?
Dug in beneath a brilliant blue sky
Helmets hanging high in the branches
Empty vessels by the dozen
Diamonds in the sun
We worship nothing in the foxholes[9]
John Rambo never went to Vietnam
John Rambo never went to Vietnam
Banter
- Not to wax unnecessarily political but, like, there used to be old sexist jokes about how the person in the band who can't play, plays the tambourine. Motherfuckers, you try to play the tambourine! That is a sexist joke. The tambourine is hard! [audience: more cowbell!] (off mic) Don't make that joke! That joke is tired! [audience member: new jokes!] You need new jokes! (on mic) We could fix 'more cowbell' with 'more clave'. Same joke, but with claves. (2023-10-27 Cactus Theater)
- Fellas, should this one have a long, slow, like, drift (?), contemplative intro so that everybody thinks, like 'they can do a slow jam now'? [slow jams are played] Maybe they think it's a little country. And just when they're starting to feel relaxed, putting down their fourth whiskey of the evening, ready to lull into the sweet sound of the last fall copy from japan (?) just run it behind them and grab 'em by the neck. (2023-10-28 Longhorn Ballroom)
- I'll tell ya. This is a song - I like it - it's got a lot of violence in it. Very violent song. Somebody, they didn't really yell it, very tenderly, someone went "violence". The tender violence vibe. This song relies very heavily on the B string, so lemme get it in tune. Man, when I was a child, Cat Stevens had a song called Peace Train. And for about 25 years of my life, I thought he was saying "B string". [laughter] And I did not understand this song. What are you talking about, Cat Stevens? I thought I would understand it better if I became a better musician. That hasn't happened yet, so I still don't quite get it. He was very excited about it, would get all growly and sing [Cat Stevens imitation] "Ride on B string!!" I dedicate this song to Yusuf Islam, formerly known as Cat Stevens. (2023-10-29 The Heights Theater)
Commentary
- First Blood is explicitly about how our action-movie stories are myths. In an action movie, none of the people who get shot have hopes, dreams, parents, or children. They’re just bad guys, right? (JD, 2022 interview in Vulture)
- I watched First Blood Part II in Portland, Oregon, in the '80s. And to tell you the god's honest truth, I bought a tab of acid off somebody and ate it and went in the movie theater, but it turned out to be bunk. I just sat there waiting for it to come on and nothing happened. This song is extremely meta about the nature of action movies. And especially with action movies in the '70s, there's so many of these—Walking Tall and Death Wish—like, 'Well, sometimes you got to take the law in your own hands.' John Rambo, if a guy is going over to Vietnam to be a one-man army freeing a bunch of brothers, that's not how it's going to work out. They're bloody-minded fantasies. It makes the point that this sort of thinking is latent for a lot of people and eventually, those people get jobs on benches in courtrooms and stuff. (JD, Album commentary on Apple Music)
Live Performances
Footnotes
"the verses name things you will never see on this earth and the choruses name things whose idealized representations are probably untrue."
"Buford Pusser" was an ad lib based on a gut feeling that turned out to be right (he was not just a guy tough on crime, he did do murdering)
- * Variant: "house" instead of "place" (2023-10-06, 2023-10-28, 2023-10-29)