There’s mosquitoes on the river,
fish are rising up like birds
It’s been hot for seven weeks now,
too hot to even speak now
Did you hear what I just heard?
Say, it might have been a fiddle,
or it could have been the wind
But there seems to be a beat, now,
I can feel it in my feet, now
Listen, here it comes again!
There’s a band out on the highway,
they’re high-steppin’ into town
It’s a rainbow full of sound
It’s fireworks, calliopes, and clowns1
Everybody’s dancin’
C’mon, children, c’mon, children,
Come on clap your hands
Sun went down in honey,
and the moon came up in wine
Stars were spinnin’ dizzy,
Lord, the band kept us so busy,
We forgot about the time
They’re a band beyond description
like Jehovah’s favorite choir
People joining hand in hand
while the music plays the band
Lord, they’re settin’ us on fire
Crazy rooster crowin’ midnight,
balls of lightning roll along
Old men sing about their dreams,
Women laugh and children scream
and the band keeps playin’ on
Keep on dancin’ through to daylight,
Greet the mornin’ air with song
No one’s noticed, but the band’s all packed and gone
Was it ever here at all?
But they kept on dancing
C’mon, children, c’mon, children,
Come on clap your hands
Well, the cool breeze came on Tuesday
And the corn’s a bumper crop
The fields are full of dancin’,
full of singing and romancin’
The music never stopped2
Words by John Barlow
Music by Bob Weir
See note under “Doin’ That Rag.”
The sentence “The music never stopped” appears in a science-fiction novel called The Stars My Destination (1956) by Alfred Bester, the story of the apotheosis of Gulliver Foyle, a brutish interstellar merchant seaman who, through a series of growth experiences sparked by a desire for revenge, inadvertently changes the course of human history. The sentence appears in a passage describing the “Four Mile Circus,” an absurd traveling circus under the tutelage of “Fourmyle of Ceres” (Gulliver Foyle disguised as a nouveau riche fool).
There was a roar of laughter and cheering and the Four Mile Circus ripped into high gear. The kitchens sizzled and smoked. There was a perpetuity of eating and drinking. The music never stopped. [Italics mine] The vaudeville never ceased.
Written in Cora, Wyoming, and Mill Valley, California, June 1975.
Studio recording: Blues for Allah (September 1, 1975).
First performance: August 13, 1975, at the Great American Music Hall in San Francisco. This is the performance captured on One from the Vault. It remained in the repertoire thereafter.
