Kevin's Watch

He was a boi
She was a girl
Can I make it anymore obvious?
He was a punk.
And she did ballet.
What more can I say?

dANdeLION wrote:It certainly is not difficult to understand.

sgtnull wrote:

Waiting for the break of day
Searching for something to say
Dancing lights againnst the sky
Giving up I close my eyes
Sitting cross-legged on the floor
25 or 6 to 4


Staring blindly into space
Getting up to splash my face
Wanting just to stay awake
Wondering how much I can take
Should have tried to do some more
25 or 6 to 4


Feeling like I ought to sleep
Spinning room is sinking deep
Searching for something to say
Waiting for the break of day
25 or 6 to 4
25 or 6 to 4

dlbpharmd wrote:Good one, Sarge! What the heck is that about, anyways?

Dear Straight Dope:

I have searched several music sources and asked numerous individuals for the answer to the following question. Obviously you are my best bet as your book series now occupies the shelves previously held by my Britannica. What the heck does 25 or 6 to 4 mean in the song by Chicago (previously Chicago Transit Authority--everything seems shorter these days)? Any help is appreciated, oh wise Cecil and/or research staff. --Dennis Wilson, P.E., Omaha

SDSTAFF Songbird replies:

It's always wise to leave such big things in our hands, Dennis.

Big Thing, incidentally, was the band name used by Robert Lamm, James Pankow, Walter Parazaider, Lee Loughnane, Terry Kath and Danny Seraphine when they first got together. After some mild success, they opened for a band called The Exceptions for two weeks. When The Exceptions' bassist (a guy named Peter Cetera) heard the Big Thing's new sound, he took exception to his own band and joined Big Thing.

When the group's sound really began to come together, they changed their name to Chicago Transit Authority and cut an album. Then the real CTA objected to the name, so they shortened it for their second album to the now familiar Chicago.

The song "25 or 6 to 4" appeared on "Chicago II" and was written by organist/vocalist Robert Lamm. The title and lyrics have puzzled many since it appeared in 1970. Some say it's a drug reference, suggesting a unit of measurement involving the quantity of joints that can be rolled from a what-used-to-be dime bag. Some feel it's about looking for spiritual revelation, undergoing a mysterious soul-searching journey.

Perhaps you're too young to recall that in the late '60s and '70s it was a popular parlour game--if not quite an intellectual pursuit--to read hidden messages and double meanings into song lyrics. Many people thought "Hey Jude" was about shooting heroin. Just about everything Bob Dylan wrote went through hours of scrutiny by his fans. Did you ever check into the "Hotel California" by the Eagles? Many of the Rolling Stones songs were supposedly about drugs, though it's hard to ignore the more explicit meanings ("You make a dead man come.") What about "I Am the Walrus," which was supposedly written on an acid trip about Paul McCartney's greatly exaggerated and rumored demise? Goo goo g'joob, baby.

Lamm says it's simpler than that. "The song is about writing a song. It's not mystical," he says. Take a look at some of the lyrics:

Waiting for the break of day--He's been up all night and now it's getting close to sunrise.
Searching for something to say--Trying to think of song lyrics.
Flashing lights against the sky--Perhaps stars or the traditional flashing neon hotel sign.
Giving up I close my eyes--He's exhausted and his eyes hurt from being open too long, so he closes them.
Staring blindly into space--This expression can be seen often on the faces of writers and reporters. Trust me.
Getting up to splash my face--Something you do when you're trying to stay awake, though a good cup of Starbuck's does wonders for Cecil and me.
Wanting just to stay awake, wondering how much I can take--How far can he push himself to get the song done?
Should I try to do some more?--This is the line that makes many think it's a drug song. But it is just as easily construed as a frustrated writer wondering if he should try to do some more lyrics/songwriting.

As for the curious title, Lamm says, "It's just a reference to the time of day"--as in "waiting for the break of day" at 25 or (2)6 minutes to 4 a.m. (3:35 or 3:34 a.m.)

I think we can take Lamm's word for the whole thing. Because, when it's that early in the morning, does anybody really know what time it is?

dANdeLION wrote:

dlbpharmd wrote:Good one, Sarge! What the heck is that about, anyways?

It was about the writer staying up all night studying for a college exam, with the tv on in the room to help keep him awake.

Maria came from Nashville with a suitcase in her hand
she said she'd like to meet a boy who looks like Elvis

"would you catch me if i was falling, would you kiss me if i was leaving, would you hold me 'cause i'm lonely without you"

Fist and Faith wrote:Risking Lucimay's ire, I'll offer Counting Crows' Round Here:

Step out the front door like a ghost
into the fog where no one notices
the contrast of white on white.
(no one notices the contrast because it's Fog City here, man. Fog City. San Francisco)

And in between the moon and you
angels get a better view
of the crumbling difference between wrong and right.

here, The City, San Francisco. den of eniquity! or at least that's how SOME people think of it.


Well, I walk in the air between the rain,
through myself and back again.
Where? I don't know.

you just have to live here, that's what it's like walking in a San Francisco misty drizzle, Adam used to live here. he wrote this when he lived here.

Maria says she's dying.
Through the door I hear her crying.
Why? I don't know.

maria's depressed, don't you think?


Round here we always stand up straight.
Round here something radiates.

but we who live here are PROUD we live here, it's ours, it's lovely, something DOES radiate here


Maria came from Nashville with a suitcase in her hand.
She said she'd like to meet a boy who looks like Elvis.
And she walks along the edges where the ocean meets the land
Just like she's walking on a wire in the circus.

everybody in San Francisco used to be somewhere else and everybody that comes here comes with a boatload of dreams. oh, she's walking on Ocean Beach. we call it Land's End.

She parks her car outside of my house,
and takes her clothes off,
says she's close to understanding Jesus.
And she knows she's more that just a little misunderstood-
She has trouble acting normal when she's nervous.

Maria's a little nutty. we have a lot of those here.
i have trouble acting normal when i'm nervous. no mystery there!

Round here, we're carving out our names. trying to "make it in a band"
Round here, we all look the same. get's pretty generic, we all look like skater dudes! heh.

Round here, we talk just like lions,
but we sacrifice like lambs.
we talk big, dream big, but SOME dreams die don't they? and a LOT of the dreamers that come here are just KIDS. they still hang out in droves on Haight Street and spare change and tattoo themselves into oblivion trying to "live the dream"
Round here, she's slipping through my hands.

round here

Sleeping children better run like the wind
Out of the lightning dream.
Mama's little baby better get herself in
Out of the lightning.

She says, "It's only in my head."
She says, "Shhh....I know it's only in my head."

But the girl in the car in the parking lot
says: "Man, you should try to take a shot.
Can't you see my walls are crumbling?"

Then she looks up at the building,
says she's thinking of jumping.
She says she's tired of life;
she must be tired of something.

Round here, she's always on my mind.
Round here, hey man, we got lots of time.
Round here we're never sent to bed early,
and nobody makes us wait.
Round here we stay up very, very, very, very late.kids, right?

I can't see nothin'.
Nothin'.
round here.
Oh, will you catch me if I'm fallin'?
will Catch me if I'm fallin'?
Will you catch me 'cause I'm fallin' down on you? it's scary comin here with a dream and tryin to "make it" that's what Adam was doing when he came here. he was trying to put a band together. he was living out near Ocean Beach, partying and practicing and writing and hangin with his friends...and he was, in his own mind, "under the gun" to "make it". some kids don't hold up. some kids like Maria.
I said "I'm under the gun."
Around here.
"Aw man," I said "I'm under the gun."
Around here.
but I can't see nothin, nothin.
Roooound here.[/i]

Round Here

This guy has heard all those life lessons that you're given when you're a child about what you should do to be a good adult and carve out your name in society -- all those cliches. He's an adult now and has the rights to do the things that 10-year-olds aren't allowed to do -- but so what, it's nothing. Everything has such consequences for him, he can't touch anything or anyone, he's terrified. By the end of the song, he's so completely lost; he's become more of a ghost than a person, and he's taking other people down with him. When you are a kid, people are always telling you to wait and they are always sending you to bed early. Round Here is a song about someone facing a life that doesn't seem to be the logical end product of all the things that he thought were leading up to it. For a list of these cliches of childhood, see every line of every chorus. In that last chorus he is saying I got all the things I wanted when I grew up(e.g. not having to wait for anything, staying up late) and it doesn't seem to mean anything("i can't see nothing round here").
The first way Counting Crows ever sounded, it was me and Dave in bars and coffee houses playing open mics, doing this song this way. The song begins with a guy walking out the front door of his house, and leaving behind this woman . But the more he begins to leave people behind in his life, the more he feels like he's leaving himself behind as well. The less and less substantial he feels like he's becoming to himself. And that's sorta what the song's about because he feels that even as he disappears from the lives of people, he's disappearing more and more from his own life. The chorus is, he sorta keeps screaming out these idioms these lessons that your mother might say to you when you were a kid, sorta child lessons ya know, ‘round here we always stand up straight'..'carving out our names'; .

Things that you're told when you're a kid are the things that ‘you do these things, and when you're grown up it'll add up to something' ya know... you'll have a job, you'll have a life and, I think for me and for the character in the song, they don't add up to anything. It's just a bunch of crap kind of, your life comes to you or it doesn't come to you, but, those things, they didn't really mean anything. "And then, by the end of the song he's so dismayed by this that he's sorta screaming out that he gets to stay up as late as he wants, and nobody makes him wait. The sorta things that are important if you're a kid, ya know.. that you don't have to go to bed, y ou don't have to do anything; but the sorta things that, they don't make any difference at all when you're an adult, they're nothing...and..this is a song about... about me. And it's called Round Here.

whos Maria?

Maria is the only one who's not completely real. She's just an idea of someone I came up with when I was writing "Round Here." I mean, she's me. It's through the eyes of a girl, but it's someone very much like me struggling at the edge, not sure if she's going to fall off on one side or the other. It's a theme that's stuck through songs. So she keeps popping up.

Tazzman wrote:hey luc, if its about Frisco to you then thats what its about.
when i hear it it'll always be a love song about two misunderstood kids.
thats the bueaty of Counting Crows music imo. all things to all people.

Lucimay wrote:

Tazzman wrote:hey luc, if its about Frisco to you then thats what its about.
when i hear it it'll always be a love song about two misunderstood kids.
thats the bueaty of Counting Crows music imo. all things to all people.

Tazz honey, DON'T call it "Frisco".

The City. SF. Sam Clam's Disco. Fog City. ANYthing but "Frisco"!!