#and he'll be forthright and rob you with a six gun instead of lying and robbing you with a fountain pen

[murderballadeer]

one thing about me is if we are in the car and one of my songs comes up on the playlist i will start listing all the trivia i know about anything remotely connected to the song

#was in the car with my friends and we made a joint playlist and i added pretty boy floyd #queue me rambling on about how its technically about a real guy but the song makes him sound way cooler than he was #but it's more about the idea of a robin hood figure in depression era america than it is about a guy robbing banks in oklahoma #and how it's similar to the jesse james mythos in that the actual guy basically sucked #but the folk hero in the public imagination is so divorced from the real guy that it might as well be a fictional story #so pretty boy floyd the song is less about pretty boy floyd the guy #and more about giving woody guthrie a framing device for lines like ''some will rob you with a six gun and some with a fountain pen'' #ultimately the guy is irrelevant the message is ''the great depression sucks and also capitalism did this #so we might as well identify with pretty boy floyd the outlaw bc at least he's one of us #and he'll be forthright and rob you with a six gun instead of lying and robbing you with a fountain pen #well i think i just proved my own point. #soapbox