chicken-slang?

[Jonathan Lighter]

So far as I know, "chicken" was not and is not and kind of recognizable drug slang. In my experience, incoherence, impenetrable personal allusions, and intensionally mystifying ambiguity have been frequent features in rock lyrics since the late ' 60s.

And the beat goes on.

JL

Lois Nathan <LBNath88545112 at AOL.COM> wrote:
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Sender: American Dialect Society
Poster: Lois Nathan
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OK, Larry, if you're right, your story is coherent. Mine has a missing
link. Maybe the text doesn't have the dimension I expected it to have.
However, the two other stanzas of the song are suggestive of possible drug-related
images (stanza 2) or are at least ambiguous (stanza 3) :
stanza 2 :
There's a guy with a ticket to Mexico
No, he couldn't look much stranger
Walking in the hall with his things and all
Smiling, said he was the Lone Ranger

(Mexico was well know for drug trafficking...and anyone looking strange and
claiming to be the Lone Ranger has got to be under some influence.)

stanza 3 :
Hip woman walking on a moving floor
Tripping on the escalator
There's a man in the line
And she's blowing his mind
Thinking that he's already made her

("moving floor" is ambiguous : floors move to carry you somewhere OR they
don't really move, you just perceive them that way if you are under an influence.
"Tripping on the escalator" is also ambiguous : falling or tripping as in
"on drugs". Etc...

So, I was looking for coherence on that theme in the first stanza. I
couldn't find any reference to "chicken" as drug slang, but I don't have easy access
to RHHDAS or OED. But, perhaps there is none and the song isn't as coherent
as I would have liked.

Lois


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