Jump to content

Talk:Bobcaygeon (song)

Page contents not supported in other languages.
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Untitled

[edit]

This whole article feels - umm.. off? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 99.225.230.116 (talk) 23:57, 31 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Anachronism

[edit]

If the events described are the Christie Pits riots (August 1933), it's highly unlikely that the people in Bobcaygeon were listening to Willie Nelson (Born April 1933) unless they were baby-sitting him. WhiteHatLurker (talk) 00:38, 6 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Two points: 1) Willie Nelson is slang for cannabis; 2)Downey is employing a literary technique in which two seemingly unrelated scenarios are juxtaposed, highlighting specific and unexpected similarities. cf "Nautical Disaster" (Day for Night, 1994), "Ahead by a Century" (Trouble at the Henhouse, 1996) — Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.118.209.193 (talk) 04:44, 8 June 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Willie Nelson may be slang for cannabis (which is also not a confirmed fact about what Downie really meant, but simply a common interpretation), but even if that's true it's still a slang term that can't have existed in the 1930s (when, for that matter, neither did the Horseshoe Tavern or The Men They Couldn't Hang.) There's no actual evidence that the song is actually referring to Christie Pits; that's a belief that gets repeated a lot, but there's no evidence to actually back it up. Bearcat (talk) 17:55, 29 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]

The Chrisite Pits riot was a baseball game?

Looking at the video, it was a concert by a band with a banner over the stage with "The Constellations" written on it when what looks like a hate monger comes up to steal the microphone. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 208.124.142.154 (talk) 20:05, 23 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]

The video doesn't have to be a literal depiction of real history. Bearcat (talk) 17:59, 29 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]

I also don't think this references Christie Pits. Instead, I think it references the Neo-Nazi activity that was occurring in Toronto in the 80s and 90s, centred around Ernest Zundel. If I recall correctly, that group had a (really bad) skinhead band. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 206.45.157.246 (talk) 02:55, 18 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I suspect people glommed onto Christie Pits as the explanation because they didn't know about the more recent incidents and thought Christie Pits was an isolated incident that had never been repeated because Canada's so totally over racism now (as if), and was thus the only incident he could possibly have been referring to. It wouldn't be appropriate to say that outright in the article without reliable sources to support it, however. What I have done is revised the article to acknowledge that the Christie Pits interpretation exists, while stepping back from the assertion that the Christie Pits interpretation is any kind of confirmed truth — and also adding referenced proof that more recent and "contemporary to the song's timeframe" incidents happened as well. I avoided any speculation about which specific incident is being described, however. Bearcat (talk) 17:55, 29 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]