Sunday, March 10, 2019

"Rainbow Stew," is a better theme song for The Green New Deal than "Big Rock Candy Mountain."

Yesterday, I posted The perfect theme song for The Green New Deal  and said it was Big Rock Candy Mountain. It is a song about a hobo's vision of the perfect world: 
 All the cops have wooden legs
 And the bulldogs all have rubber teeth/ 
And the hens lay soft-boiled eggs
The farmers' trees are full of fruit
And the barns are full of hay

Oh I'm bound to go
Where there ain't no snow
Where the rain don't fall
The wind don't blow
In the Big Rock Candy Mountains
It is as irrational and fanciful as the Green New Deal. There are a couple line that are really relevant to GND: "the handouts grow on bushes" and "the sun shines everyday." However, while thinking it was a good fit, I was little disappointed because I thought it had a line about cars running on water are something like that.  I thought maybe it was in another version of the song.  I searched and searched and couldn't find those lines.  I thought maybe I had imagined them. 

I woke up this morning and it came to me! The lines I were thinking about were not in Big Rock Candy Mountain, but in a Merle Haggard song, Rainbow Stew.  No wonder I was confused, the songs have a similar theme.  Both talk about free bubble-up and rainbow stew.  Rainbow Stew had to be influenced by Big Rock.  Here are the lines that make Rainbow Stew a better theme song for The Green New Deal than Big Rock Candy Mountain.
When they find out how to burn water
And the gasoline car is gone
When an airplane flies without any fuel
And the satellite heats our home
But one of these days when the air clears up
And the sun comes shinin' through
We'll all be drinkin' that free bubble-ubb
And eatin' that rainbow stew
Also, Merle Haggard's song is more catchy than the Big Rock song. Here it is: 

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