dbt track of the week # 107 - Days of Graduation

[Clams]

Since it's June and schools are letting out, I thought this one would be appropriate. I would describe it as more of a spoken-word intro to SRO than an actual song, but still, there's lots to like about this track. One issue I have is that I get this painfully incomplete feeling anytime I hear this song if isn't followed by Ronnie & Neil (I can listen to Ronnie & Neil without Days of Graduation, but not vice versa).



Bobby went out for a joy ride with my best girl
Left me at the party,
He was my best friend and I miss him.
It was almost June and the 3/4 moon illuminated the rain-soaked streets like a candy wrapper.
I guess that's why Bobby had his lights off,
Tear-assing threw the back part of town and those deserted country roads where me and Bobby tear-assed so many times before.
Sometimes with my best girl and sometimes Bobby had him one too.

But this night he banked that curve just a little too hard and that 442 went airborne,
Hit a telephone pole and split in two, Bobby's skull was split right in two,
And my girl was pinned in her seat, partially embedded in the dashboard
And for the next twenty minutes the only sound in the night were her screams.
And the sound of the wheel still spinning.

In a little while the ambulance came and the sound of its siren mixed with the screaming girl and the spinning wheel.

But when the story was told the next day at the graduation ceremony,
Everyone said that when the ambulance came
The paramedics could hear "Free Bird" still playing on the stereo.

You know it's a very long song.

[Zip City]

The one spoken word song I actually like

[Duke Silver]

The one spoken word song I actually like

x2 (but i REALLY, REALLY like it)

edit: (wait, does world of hurt count as spoken word? i might need to retract this.)

[Zip City]

The one spoken word song I actually like

x2 (but i REALLY, REALLY like it)

edit: (wait, does world of hurt count as spoken word? i might need to retract this.)

I wasn't counting World of Hurt, no.

[RolanK]

I love this tune and how sets the scene for the rest of the album. The dark guitars and the rumbling bass. I remember hearing it then followed by R&N for the first time. i think it was what cemented my love for DBT. Had to go back the start again after R&N and just crank it up before I listened to the rest of the album.

[Sterling Big Mouth]

I'm pumped that this song gets center stage this week.

I absolutely love how you can faintly hear Angels and Fuselage at the beginning. The foreshadowing of Betamax's story on the introduction track is just genius. Every time I hear it, I get shivers because it's a sign that DBT is on a different level, and I'm along for the ride with SRO.

[Gang Green]

Ditto on the Ronnie and Neil thing. If I'm listening to DBT on the IPod on random and Days of Graduation comes on, I'll stop what I'm doing and find Ronnie and Neil to play next. Love all Patterson's spoken word stuff including Three Alabama Icons along with Days of Graduation which does give me the creeps especially with having my own teenage kid driving.

[mark lynn]

Passing along from Patterson. This is a good one. I liked DBT before SRO but was enthralled as soon as I heard Days Of Graduation for the first time. As awful as it is like it was right out of my high school days:


Hey Y'all,

I enjoy the weekly analysis of songs.
Sometimes I agree, sometimes, not so much, but that's just as well
as once it's written, recorded, mixed, mastered and put out there, it's no longer really our song, it's yours
and if it has some meaning to you, it's rather immaterial that I agree or intended it to be that way.
This is perhaps easier on some that others.
A song like "Heathens" has so much personal relevance to me that I might have trouble separating myself from it, but other times I see a song take on a entire new life through some stranger's reaction to it.
Such is one of the most wonderful things about what I am privileged to be able to do.

"Days of Graduation" was one of the first things I wrote for Southern Rock Opera and was to me one of the keys into the thing.
The story predated SRO by over a decade, as it was my first attempt at a screenplay, back in 1989.
The song essentially describes the final act of a story that mostly revolved around teenagers hanging out, picking up girls and driving too fast in the two week period leading up to High School graduation.
Bobby was the protagonist's slightly redneck, very charismatic best friend who's sudden death on the eve of graduation leant the story a shocking gravity (and actually provided the reason for it's existence).

The teen film has been a movie staple for many years, especially since the 50's when youth culture really became a sociological force in our society.
The teenaged car crash has also been a terrible but consistent rite of passage for about the same length of time, but most of the better (and lesser) teen films of my time avoided it all together (Fast Times at Ridgemont High being among the best, Porky's 2 and 3 among the worst). American Graffiti, arguably the best of all ended with a car crash but the kids survived it, although during the captions that acted as an epilogue of sorts it was mentioned that the John Miner character was later killed by a drunk driver. Just this past week in town's across America, there have been the local headlines about some car load of young people in a terrible accident and a graduation ceremony dealing with at least one memorial.

Although my own personal graduation was spared this particular tragedy, my youth was bookmarked by car crashes, the first being my first taste of mortality when a friend's older sister was killed in a car crash the summer after my 7th grade year; and the car crash death of close friend, band mate and proposed DBT founding member Chris Quillen two weeks before the recording session that marks our band's beginning.

I'm not sure of the exact sequence of events that merged "Days of Graduation" with Southern Rock Opera, but it should be noted that the working title for the first 5 years of our work on the project was Betamax Guillotine and that a my fear of dying on the road (a borderline phobia in our early touring days) was a major early inspiration. At one point in the screenplay of Days of Graduation, Bobby tells the 'urban legend' story of a different car crash fatality where "Free Bird" is still playing on the stereo when the paramedics come. This was a real 'urban legend' from my High School days that I actually heard told in relation to a car load of teenagers who ran off an embankment during my sophomore year. I didn't know the kids involved but the guy I rode to school with before I got my license told it to me as if it were fact. I later heard the story invoked about a different wreck during my college years. Remembering the urban legend when I was researching SRO certainly led to the connection, plus I liked the idea of it beginning with a car crash and ending with a plane crash (as I said, I was pretty phobic at the time) plus that all tied in with the infamous car crashes that the Skynyrd guys had before the plane crash ("Oak tree you're in my way".)

Before writing Betamax Guillotine, we outlined the story, based on the outline that Earl Hicks and I had come up with when we had planned on writing it as a screenplay.
"Days of Graduation" was one of the first actual songs that I wrote and I knew it would be the lead off track. I really liked the idea of people expecting some big guitar thing to lead it off and being thrown off guard by this weird spoken word piece. It also laid the groundwork for writing "The Three Great Alabama Icons" and later 'spoken' pieces like "A World of Hurt" and "Uncle Phil and Aunt Phyllis in the Month After the Election" from my Murdering Oscar album. (There is a new such piece coming on my new solo album this fall).

It should also be noted that when we make albums, we don't really think of them as a collection of songs as much as 'an album' and frequently place small scenes in. While they might not hold up as individual songs per se, they might conjure a feeling or emotion that we feel benefits the songs on their periphery. For example, "Careless", which was inspired by my friend Chris' tragic wreck. His passing was a major part of Decoration Day's writing and that song, while seemingly incomplete on it's own, added a shot of adrenaline when placed between the slow and intense "Your Daddy Hates Me" and the mid-tempo and soulful "Pin Hits The Shell". It also tied side one and tow together due to his being an inspiration for "Marry Me". It could be argued that my love of movies and frustrated attempts at screenwriting has been an influence on this part of our band's oeuvre'

We took this idea to the next level in making Brighter Than Creation's Dark, as we were more concerned with how that album played as one long listening experience than as individual songs. Many of the songs on that album are seemingly incomplete on their own but fit together like a puzzle conjuring each other into play. "Three Dimes Down" is two verses without  chorus or bridge. "The Home Front" connects with the much more fleshed out "That Man I Shot". We were thinking like Exile on Mainstreet which similarly has song segments linking the more developed songs together. (Liz Phair's excellent Exile in Guyville album does the same).

A couple of weeks ago, I was asked to give a keynote address at a local High School's commencement and it stirred up my own memories of those days as well as thought of my dormant screenplay (I completed two drafts and am well into a third one). Many of the ideas, scenes and concepts that were fresh and even innovative back in 1989 when I began it all have since come to fruition in other artist's work. The near universality of the whole endeavor made that inevitable and honestly my own desire to move forward instead of backwards often has played into it. In recent years it has also been attempted in book form, along with a couple other story ideas. One of those story ideas was abandoned last year and adapted into my upcoming solo album. Even if I never actually complete a book or a screenplay, I find it a positive experience when it leads to more songs and further musical projects. Sometimes the journey is more important than the destination.

Have a safe and happy summer and see you soon.
Patterson Hood (office, June 4, 2012)




[b[/b]

[TW_2.0]

Awesome

[Kudzu Guillotine]

Thanks, as always to Patterson for the invaluable insight. When Southern Rock Opera first come out I visited a Skynyrd board to get people's takes on the urban legend aspect of "Freebird" via "Days of Graduation". Unfortunately, mostly what I got were critiques against the Drive-By Truckers because so many of the Skynyrd fans perceived Southern Rock Opera to be some sort of personal affront to Lynyrd Skynyrd which obviously wasn't the case at all. I wish I could put my hands on it and perhaps it's included in some sort of online archive somewhere but I distinctly remember reading a story in People magazine long ago about either a person or a couple that threw a brick on the accelerator of their car and drove off of a cliff with "Freebird" playing. That's one of many things that comes to mind every time I listen to "Days of Graduation". I also had a friend that was in a real bad car accident towards the end of the school year back in the late 70's. He and another friend of mine were skipping school that day and took a hairpin curve way too fast. My friend in the passenger side wasn't wearing a seatbelt and was thrown from the car through the windshield. Miraculously, he survived with a few scratches (due to the broken glass) and bruises. However, my other friend wasn't nearly as fortunate. He ended up pinned beneath the car. My Mom, who was on her way home from grocery shopping that day, happened upon the crash. At that particular time, the Jaws of Life was on the scene, lifting the car off of my friend. He survived but they had to perform brain surgery on him which left him without all of his faculties. At the present time, he's living in an old folks home even though he's my age (close to 50). Between the time of the accident and now, he's spent time in and out of jail for various offenses. My other friend that was in the car with him died in a four wheeler accident back in 1996. He was driving home on a dirt road in the rain and didn't see a van that had pulled over on the side of the road and ran into the back of it. If he had been wearing a helmet, he might have lived but I imagine the injuries still would have been pretty severe.

[burtreyn0lds]

Right after reading this thread, my Yahoo homepage had this as the top story. Eerie.

http://news.yahoo.com/4th-teen-dies-pre-graduation-crash-ohio-150245089.html

[GuitarManUpstairs]

Thanks Patterson - awesome, interesting and a little scary that you read our interpretations of your songs. Days of Graduation is definitely my favorite album intro. Love the opening sort of unintelligible garbled noises going on underneath the slow guitar strum and reverb, reminiscent of being in a semi-conscious fog after some sort of accident as first responder's work to get to you. Then those two heavy bursts that just hit so hard and mark the opening of the tale. It gives such texture to the scene and if you are really engaged with the song you are taken to that spot. Love how your telling of this story doesn't shy away from the rawness of the situation. It is all to real and while it's none too pleasant its honest and strikes a real emotion.

[beantownbubba]

Patterson's delivery on "You know it's a very long song" is absolutely perfect, somehow factual/observant, ironic, smirking, simultaneously mythologizing and mythbusting, sad, world weary and more all at once.

"Days of Graduation" is not a great song by any usual definition but it's an essential part of a great album and, not surprisingly given Patterson's explanation, very cinematic.

I also sometimes think of it as a rite of passage for new fans: You can't be a DBT fan unless you love, or at least like a whole lot, SRO and a longish, spooky spoken word intro about a HS car crash & death is not exactly the easiest entree. Some people don't get past it. Other people are, well, us.

As always, thank you Patterson for the insights and background. Great stuff.

[211poundsofpork]

I really love that this spoken word piece is at the beginning of SRO as well. SRO was my introduction to DBT yrs. ago, but it took me a couple of years before I got into them. I liked Days of Graduation and how it opened things up and I was into the whole Betamax Guillotine thing in the liner notes. I remember liking 72, Guitar Man, and R&N but for some reason I just couldn't digest the WHOLE thing (namely Act II). Lo and behold, a couple of years later I gave SRO and DBT another chance and have been a huge fan ever since!
Definitely agree with beantownbubba about SRO being a rite of passage with DBT fans. Days of Graduation opens the door.

[Lurleen McQueen]

I love it when Patterson sheds light and one of my favorite things about him is his story-telling. I am holding my breath for his screenplay. I just finished reading Billy Bob Thornton's memoirs last week and it reminds me of how long and hard Billy Bob worked on the piece that would become Sling Blade. Keep writing, Patterson.

SRO was also my introduction to DBT. A friend played, "Three Great Alabama Icons" first, followed by LTBR. I ran to the record store and bought it myself and the third "song" I heard was "Days of Graduation."

I immediately flashed back to 10th grade. I can't remember all the facts anymore, but there was a really cute football player named Bobby (I cannot recall his last name for the life of me). I think he was a senior.

He drove a fine black souped up trans-am that allegedly had the gas tank bored out so it would take a higher octane fuel. I think he had been out riding with Mike Ferrell, my best friends bad-news older brother and maybe had just dropped Mike off at home.

He sped over the hill out on two-lane Highway 28 (I think it was) and ran head-on into a preacher at top speed.

The volunteer firemen who responded told the story that the cars were on fire and that the preacher's bible was flung out into the middle of the road and fell open to a passage in Revelations that told of a fiery death.

Bobby was pinned inside the car and died and was my first taste of mortality, too. Of course I had had old relatives die of "hardnin' of the arteries", but hell, they were ancient and didn't shock me the way Bobby's death did.

We all gathered at Buffy May's house to mourn and look at yearbooks and re-tell the tale over and over, each time adding a more macabre twist. Seems like they had to let school at early the next day or maybe we all just went home because we were too grief stricken to cope. A bemused grin creeps across my face when I think about how melodramatic a 10th grade girl can be.

I KNEW the author of these songs the first time I heard them and was convinced that he must have grown up in my hometown -- there was just no way he could have had the same exact life experiences as I had. Well, he didn't - he was up the road a piece in North Alabama, but I think he could have been writing from Wyoming or Poland and I still would have felt that connection...that's the beautiful thing about talented writers - they can use their words and the turn of a phrase to tell a story that immediately draws you in and makes you BELIEVE that they know you - even when they don't.

[Iowan]

God, I love it when Patterson chimes in on these things.

I'd love to hear his thoughts on any of my written interpretations of his songs.

[Kudzu Guillotine]

I KNEW the author of these songs the first time I heard them and was convinced that he must have grown up in my hometown -- there was just no way he could have had the same exact life experiences as I had. Well, he didn't - he was up the road a piece in North Alabama, but I think he could have been writing from Wyoming or Poland and I still would have felt that connection...that's the beautiful thing about talented writers - they can use their words and the turn of a phrase to tell a story that immediately draws you in and makes you BELIEVE that they know you - even when they don't.

I can't find the exact quote at present but writer/radio host Rick Cornell once opined that "Let There Be Rock" spoke to all of our shared experiences. I think the very same thing holds true for "Days of Graduation" and the Truckers' work in general but especially Southern Rock Opera as a whole.

[RolanK]

The teenage car crash as a universal "rite of passage", as pointed out by Patterson is a very good observation, at least in western culture, and hence may explain why it frequently pops up in various forms of popular culture. If some generalisation is allowed, I guess the "avarage kid" in western culture will grow up under relatively protected circumstances, until late in his/hers teens at the threshold of adulthood a car accident and sudden death of classmates or friends may be the first experience of how brutal life can be. A wake up call so to say, telling you that there is a fine line between life and death, joy and sorrow, pleasure and pain, and how the choices you make may have life changing concequences for yourself and the people around you.

I grew up and live on the other side of "The Pond", but I have no problem relating to the topic of this song. Over here, especially on the contryside, roads are generally very bad, narrow, twisting and turning with rocks and boulders along the side with little or no railing. When I grew up DUI unfortunately was very common, and the cars that kids could afford were generelly in very bad technical condition. So, everybody knew someone who had died or were badly injured in a car crash.

[Penny Lane]

What a passage..wow...that was my favorite Patterson comment yet..

Even though it's probably not in that genre, I immediately thought of A Bronx Tale, probably my favorite movie of all time, as a different and more urban example of the car crash motif..

[RolanK]

I find this passage particularly interesting. Allowing a 'glimpse' behind the scenes in the making of the albums and the creative process that leads up to the final result.

It should also be noted that when we make albums, we don't really think of them as a collection of songs as much as 'an album' and frequently place small scenes in. While they might not hold up as individual songs per se, they might conjure a feeling or emotion that we feel benefits the songs on their periphery. For example, "Careless", which was inspired by my friend Chris' tragic wreck. His passing was a major part of Decoration Day's writing and that song, while seemingly incomplete on it's own, added a shot of adrenaline when placed between the slow and intense "Your Daddy Hates Me" and the mid-tempo and soulful "Pin Hits The Shell". It also tied side one and tow together due to his being an inspiration for "Marry Me". It could be argued that my love of movies and frustrated attempts at screenwriting has been an influence on this part of our band's oeuvre'

We took this idea to the next level in making Brighter Than Creation's Dark, as we were more concerned with how that album played as one long listening experience than as individual songs. Many of the songs on that album are seemingly incomplete on their own but fit together like a puzzle conjuring each other into play. "Three Dimes Down" is two verses without  chorus or bridge. "The Home Front" connects with the much more fleshed out "That Man I Shot". We were thinking like Exile on Mainstreet which similarly has song segments linking the more developed songs together. (Liz Phair's excellent Exile in Guyville album does the same).

Regarding the sentences highlighted in bold above, I must say that I have never perceived any of the tunes mentioned as incomplete by any means. Still it is a very interesting point Patterson is making and perhaps shows how different the listener and the composer may perceive and relate to a song. For instance I have never really reflected over the fact that Three Dimes Own contains only "two verses without  chorus or bridge". To me as a listener it is as complete as any other tune. However, after having this pointed out I can image during the writing/recording process that discussions or concerns as to the completeness and "readiness" of the song may have surfaced on one level or another. The listener only hear the song when it is finally released on the album, and reacts to it as a completed work of art, whereas the composer may have "lived with it" for a long time, and perhaps recorded it in different versions (Like Goode Fields Road), re-written verses, re-arranging the order of the lyrics, experimented with different ideas for choruses, chord progressions and melody lines etc.

[Cole Younger]

A weird but cool thing happened today. After reading this, I put SRO in the cd player of my truck for the ride home. Now obviously all my DBT is on my ipod too but for some reason my SRO disk won't play Ronnie and Neil and I need that song to come in as soon as Days of Graduation ends. And after reading this thread and Patterson's comment, I had to hear them both. I put it on, was ready for Days Of Graduation to end with just silence after...except that didn't happen. The guys ripped right into Ronnie Neil for the first time forever in my truck and I turned it up even louder.

[Gator McKlusky]

The 2nd DBT song I ever heard; 3 hours after hearing the first one (Marry Me) so will always have a special place for me. Great introduction to SRO (and DBT)

[Kevidently]

Wow - I love that Patterson comments on this stuff.

Regarding "Three Dimes Down" being only two verses and no chorus ... well, Springsteen's "Thunder Road" has no chorus, and it's an undisputed classic. I've never really thought of those songs mentioned being "incomplete," just different.

I got into DBT in a haphazard way. Someone put "Birthday Boy" on a mix for me and I loved the song for almost a year before I was like, "I wonder if they have any other good songs." I bought the greatest hits album, then bought recommended tracks from iTunes and realized I loved the band. The first FULL album I bought was SRO (because of all the critical accolades), and was a little taken aback by "Days of Graduation." Did NOT expect that, especially having already been familiar with "Ronnie & Neil" as a big rock song.

The two big things that get me about "Days of Graduation" are that final line - as someone on here said, its intent can be interpreted in so many different ways - and the way he says "the sound of her SCREAMS." Almost like someone telling a ghost story and emphasizing that word. It always chills me, in the same way that the word "embedded" gets absolutely no embellishment - it's just a fact.

[Cole Younger]

Wow - I love that Patterson comments on this stuff.

Regarding "Three Dimes Down" being only two verses and no chorus ... well, Springsteen's "Thunder Road" has no chorus, and it's an undisputed classic. I've never really thought of those songs mentioned being "incomplete," just different.

I got into DBT in a haphazard way. Someone put "Birthday Boy" on a mix for me and I loved the song for almost a year before I was like, "I wonder if they have any other good songs." I bought the greatest hits album, then bought recommended tracks from iTunes and realized I loved the band. The first FULL album I bought was SRO (because of all the critical accolades), and was a little taken aback by "Days of Graduation." Did NOT expect that, especially having already been familiar with "Ronnie & Neil" as a big rock song.

The two big things that get me about "Days of Graduation" are that final line - as someone on here said, its intent can be interpreted in so many different ways - and the way he says "the sound of her SCREAMS." Almost like someone telling a ghost story and emphasizing that word. It always chills me, in the same way that the word "embedded" gets absolutely no embellishment - it's just a fact.

Awsome. Seems kind of ironic now doesn't it? The answer is, yeah, one or two.

I meant to comment on this earlier, it is amazing. The way Patterson says it has always sort of given me the creeps, but in a good way if that makes sense.

I have also always loved how he describes the the moon lit, wet streets as being iluuminated like a candy wrapper. Sounds simple but very, very few people are able to turn phrases like that.

[Swamp]

From our archives. Our first homecoming weekend (09), 2nd night and the night we met UR and CG.
I was wearing my "Tonight's the Night" shirt and had told UR I was hoping to get R&N.
When this song started UR looked at me and said "you're getting it!"

[Clams]

From our archives. Our first homecoming weekend (09), 2nd night and the night we met UR and CG.
I was wearing my "Tonight's the Night" shirt and had told UR I was hoping to get R&N.
When this song started UR looked at me and said "you're getting it!"

Great vid. Love the shot of Swamp's shirt. I miss the gold top.

[Gator McKlusky]

Why did his girl leave with Bobby anyway? Sounds very suspicious to me!

[beantownbubba]

Why did his girl leave with Bobby anyway? Sounds very suspicious to me!

Haven't you seen Friday Night Lights?

[Gator McKlusky]

The movie or the TV show?

[beantownbubba]

The movie or the TV show?

tv