song of the week # 133 - The Flying Wallendas

[Clams]

Leave it to Patterson Hood to do a rock'n'roll homage to the Wallenda family. Can't imagine anyone else doing that.





And they fell from the skies with the greatest of ease
And they landed on the ground under tents and trapeze
And they were told that they fell with such beauty and grace
That The Flying Wallendas would be the name on their case
And the fine folks of Akron would forever be saying
That they flew through the air like the wings of a prayer
But they all walked away amidst the gawking and stares
And the children revisited their fall in nightmares
But they never would stop and they never surrendered
And they lived like they died, The Flying Wallendas

They could dance on the wire through the fire and the storm
John Ringling had seen Karl in Cuba perform
And he raised up his kids for performance and stardom
They performed center ring at Madison Square Garden
With a seven man pyramid folks lined up just to see em
Till they fell from the sky at Detroit's State Fair Coliseum
And they fell to the ground with the greatest of ease
And three didn't get up from the blood in the breeze
But Karl wouldn't be stopped from his home in the skies
Till he fell from the wire in San Juan and he died

In Sarasota as a child my Grandparents lived next door
To the surviving Wallendas and their amazing wild stories
I was amazed and astounded that the old lady who was out
Pruning her orange trees had flown to the heavens and back

[dime in the gutter]

dig it.

spooky interplay from the dimmer twins...and a banjo, i think.

journey to the center of the earth neff.

inspired freaky shit from gonzo.

pretty outstanding vocals from patterson.

and then there's the line about the detroit state fair coliseum.

total freakout the last 1:45. scorched earth.

[Duke Silver]

one of my favorites from tbtd

[Smitty]

Love it - especially the demented circus intro when played live... all hail Jay

[Duke Silver]

Love it - especially the demented circus intro when played live... all hail Jay

i wish they would have developed the circus theme a little more on the album. coulda done so much more with it.

and fuck shonna for slamming this song on her patterson diss track.

[Iowan]

Some days this song doesn't do a damn thing for me. Some days it smolders.

There probably isn't another song in the DBT canon I go back and forth on so heavily.

[LBRod]

dig it.
total freakout the last 1:45. scorched earth.

Damn right

[Clams]

They're at it again....

Wallenda to Cross Gorge Near Grand Canyon on Wire
AP, June 21, 2013

Nik Wallenda, the Florida-based daredevil, acrobat and heir to the famed Flying Wallendas circus family, is afraid of only one thing.

"I would say the only thing I fear is God," said the 34-year-old Wallenda.

He certainly had no fear of walking across Niagara Falls on a tightrope, riding a bike on a high wire 260 feet above the ground or hanging from a hovering helicopter by his teeth.

On Sunday, Wallenda will attempt an even more ambitious feat, even for a man who was born into a family of risk-takers.

He will bid to walk on a tightrope stretched across the Little Colorado River Gorge near the Grand Canyon. The event, which will be broadcast on live television at 8 p.m. EDT on Sunday with a 10 second delay, will take place on the Navajo reservation near Cameron, outside the boundaries of Grand Canyon National Park.

Wallenda will walk a third of a mile across a wire suspended 1,500 feet above the river. (In comparison, the Empire State Building in New York City is 1,454 feet high).
http://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory/wall ... cSKEI7CE20

[Kudzu Guillotine]

Karl Wallenda and Evel Knievel at JFK Stadium, October 1973

[Tequila Cowboy]

Wallenda to walk the wire between Chicago skyscrapers

[Zip City]

http://news.yahoo.com/jenny-wallenda-ma ... 10318.html