FORUM › Forums › Lucinda Williams › Lucinda Records › June Bugs and Hurricanes
- This topic has 33 replies, 15 voices, and was last updated 8 years, 6 months ago by Lafayette.
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June 1, 2008 at 5:08 am #29260AnonymousInactive
Discovered Lucinda and her music about 4 years ago, and I’m the newest member of this forum. I saw her open for Neil on the Greendale tour in 2003, but for some reason, she just didn’t make much of an impression on me at that time. Maybe sitting in the lawn area far from the stage at the Tweeter Center in Camden had something to so with that.
About a year later I was looking for some new music, and “World Without Tears” happened to catch my eye. I thought to myself, “If she opened for Neil, she must be good”. So, I took a chance on Lucinda and WWOT, and after a few listens, I was thoroughly hooked. Within a few months, I had all her records (I still call them records, too), and I listen to her nearly every day. It just never gets old.
After 4 years of listening and 5 shows, I still have a question about one particular lyric. Maybe it’s because I’m a yankee who’s never been to Louisiana, but I just don’t get the phrase, “June Bug vs. Hurricane”. What does that mean ? Can somebody out there please explain that to me ? I feel kinda stupid, but just don’t know what it means. Thanks for your help, and look forward to your replies.
June 1, 2008 at 11:21 am #35862MikeParticipantI’m pretty sure that Lucinda saw the phrase “june bug vs. hurricane” in a picture in the book “Juke Joint” which served as inspiration for the song 2 Kool 2 B 4Gotten. I may have heard her comment at some point that even she wasn’t sure of the graffiti artists’ meaning. (I believe it was written on the wall in a juke joint as I saw the picture myself). To me the june bug represents the old times in Mississippi and that culture and the hurricane represents the landscape being ruined by the building of casinos, etc. and lack of disrespect for times past and especially all the great delta blues that came from that time. Big corporations don’t care about sacred things like that as they only exist to be self-serving.
June 1, 2008 at 11:28 am #35863coffee4throadParticipantwelcome to the site, 2 Kool.
that’s a great question we’ve probably all had. personally, i got an image of Lucinda sitting around writing the song with her front door open, a junebug crawling around on the screen door with a hurricane on the way, storm visible on the horizon. i guess it struck her as kool at the time?
what’s your take?June 1, 2008 at 1:02 pm #35864bonesParticipanthello everyone. i’ll feel stupid as well by asking what “play me choco train” means ? is it a song ? thanks everyone. i enjoy these forums.
June 1, 2008 at 1:51 pm #35865coffee4throadParticipantwhere’d you get the book mike? sounds interesting.
choco train sounds like John Coltrane, which is what the lyric is
just before Doug starts kicking assJune 1, 2008 at 6:19 pm #35866MikeParticipantHi Coffee. I don’t have the actual book but saw the photo on the internet that Lucinda got the inspiration for 2kool from. It was a few guys standing in what appeared to be a hole-in-the-wall juke joint. I can’t remember if it was all in one picture or 2 separate pictures but on a wall in a picture someone had written “june bug vs. hurricane”.
June 1, 2008 at 6:56 pm #35867MikeParticipantHey Everyone……….By doing a search on the book Juke Joint by Birney Imes and clicking on the 2nd link on that google search page, you can view some photos from the book. Now tell me, does one of the photos look familiar? Also, by doing the same search and by clicking “images” at the top of the Google search page, go 3 photos over and 3 down and click on the one with the 3 young men. Now look on yonder wall and tell me what you read. Look closely.
June 2, 2008 at 4:09 am #35868AnonymousInactiveHi Mike. Thanks for the replies and the excellent research. I was aware the Birney Imes books was an inspiration, but had never before seen the pictures from the book. As you point out, it’s all right there in the pictures. What the phrase actually means is still somewhat a mystery, but your take on it sounds good to me. Thanks again.
June 2, 2008 at 4:16 am #35869AnonymousInactiveCoffee, thanks for the welcome and reply. Your take on the phrase certainly sounds possible, and in fact, that’s kinda what I visualized, too. However, I believe Mike is definitely on to something. If you haven’t already done so, check out the pictures from the instructions in Mike’s post.
June 2, 2008 at 4:01 pm #35870kfsParticipanthaha, I always thought she was saying
Jim Bob vs. Hurricane!hahaha
June 2, 2008 at 7:48 pm #35871coffee4throadParticipanthi all, nice discussion.
i saw some of the pictures, but in the one w/ the 3 guys i still couldn’t find the june bug vs hurricaine thing. maybe it was a different picture i was looking at…
oh, yes, and i saw that picture that looked very familiar, too.as a college summer job i used to deliver RC Cola to some juke joints in east texas (Mance Lipscombe territory) almost 40 years ago and those joints in the pictures are much nicer that the ones i was visiting.
June 2, 2008 at 11:10 pm #35872GringoParticipantThis is a kool thread 😉
This must be the shot… its all there!
http://images.artnet.com/artwork_images_911_144158_birney-imes.jpg
June 2, 2008 at 11:26 pm #35873coffee4throadParticipantthanks for posting the picture, that’s a different one than i saw. i wonder if june bug and hurricane are nicknames for some of those kids?
anyway, it’s definitely one of my favorite songs.
June 3, 2008 at 1:12 am #35874MikeParticipantHere’s something else I JUST NOW noticed. Look super closely on the side wall………..It says “Is God the Answer………Yes” ! I found another clue…………
June 6, 2008 at 3:26 am #35875AnonymousInactiveAnother good find by Mike. I saw that writing on the side wall, but couldn’t make it out until Mike’s last post. I also like coffee’s suggestion that June Bug and Hurricane might be the nicknames of the opponents in the pool game. So, what’s that thing hangin’ from the ceiling in the background ? Looks like a heat-warped 45 rpm vinyl record. Wonder what that’s about ? Mike, any ideas on that one ?
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