Cinnamon and Lesbians

Album: Wig Out at Jagbags (2014)
Play Video

Songfacts®:

  • This song fuses Portland resident Steven Malkmus' fantasy about the Green Tortoise bus – a cheap way of getting from San Francisco to Portland in the 1970s – with an encounter he had with a "ne'er-do-well hippy guy," who declared that the people who died in the Twin Towers on 9/11 deserved their fate because they were working for The Man. "It's a Portland song, but it's Portland in the 80s, before I was here," Malkmus explained to Uncut magazine, "when cinema and was avant garde and lesbianism was shocking to some people."

    "Joanna (Bolme, bass) was worried the title might be un-PC, so I asked our publicist in New York," he added. "He's like, 'No. Those cinnamon and there's lesbians. What's the problem?'"
  • Malkmus incorporated the riff from the Grateful Dead's "St. Stephen" into this song. However, the frontman has said in interviews that he's not much of a Deadhead. He told American Songwriter magazine: "Yeah. It's interesting, but it's pretty simple. I like the early stuff, recorded and live, like Pigpen and the acid-y stuff. And I like Workingman's Dead and American Beauty, and I don't really like it after that. And I didn't go to shows, and I don't listen to bootlegs much. I'm approaching things from albums and what they recorded. That's what I know. I'm the suburban guy who just got the albums. I just created my own vision of things; I didn't really get into the scene."

Comments

Be the first to comment...

Editor's Picks

Mike Love of The Beach Boys

Mike Love of The Beach BoysSongwriter Interviews

The lead singer/lyricist of The Beach Boys talks about coming up with the words for "Good Vibrations," "Fun, Fun, Fun," "Kokomo" and other classic songs.

Jim McCarty of The Yardbirds

Jim McCarty of The YardbirdsSongwriter Interviews

The Yardbirds drummer explains how they created their sound and talks about working with their famous guitarists.

American Hits With Foreign Titles

American Hits With Foreign TitlesSong Writing

What are the biggest US hits with French, Spanish (not "Rico Suave"), Italian, Scottish, Greek, and Japanese titles?

He Hit Me (And It Felt Like A Kiss): A History Of Abuse Pop

He Hit Me (And It Felt Like A Kiss): A History Of Abuse PopSong Writing

Songs that seem to glorify violence against women are often misinterpreted - but not always.

The Police

The PoliceFact or Fiction

Do their first three albums have French titles? Is "De Do Do Do, De Da Da Da" really meaningless? See if you can tell in this Fact or Fiction.

Laura Nyro

Laura NyroSongwriting Legends

Laura Nyro talks about her complex, emotionally rich songwriting and how she supports women's culture through her art.