Monday, February 16, 2015

Cold War Kids' "We Used to Vacation"

A few months ago, I happened to hear most of Cold War Kids' Robbers & Cowards in my sister's car, and the phrase "tax-deductible charity organization" in "We Used to Vacation" sounded familiar to me.
I’m just an honest man
Provide for me and mine
I give a check to tax-deductible charity organization
Two weeks paid vacation won’t heal the damage done
I need another one
I eventually placed it; it's from Bob Dylan's "Ballad of a Thin Man" from Highway 61 Revisited.
You have many contacts
Among the lumberjacks
To get you facts when someone attacks your imagination
But nobody has any respect
Anyway, they already expect you
To all give a check
To tax-deductible charity organization 
It's not a phrase that's particularly lyrical, so I don't think it's just coincidental that it appears in both songs.  It might just be my mishearing it in both cases, but I didn't hear an S in either song ("tax-deductible charity organization" not "organizations").

Dylan's song is not very readily coherent, so I can't really tell if the songs have anything more in common beyond that phrase.  The figures in each seem to exhibit some kind of desperation, but I can't be much more specific than that.  Still, I felt the common phrase worth mentioning.