Fire On the Mountain
Lyrics: Robert Hunter
Music: Mickey Hart
© 1978 Ice Nine Publishing
Recorded on: Shakedown Street, Dead Set and
Dick's Picks Volume 6
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Long distance runner what you standing there for?
Get up, get off, get out of the door
You're playing cold music on the bar room floor,
drowned in your laughter and dead to the core
There's a dragon with matches loose on the town
Take a whole pail of water just to cool him down
Fire - Fire On the Mountain
Fire - Fire on the mountain
Almost aflame still you don't feel the heat
Takes all you got just to stay on the beat
You say it's a living, we all gotta eat
but you're here alone there's no one to compete
If mercy's in business I wish it for you
More than just ashes when your dreams come true
Fire - Fire on the mountain
Fire - Fire on the mountain
Long distance runner what you holdin out for?
Caught in slow motion in your dash to the door
The flame from your stage has now spread to the floor
You gave all you got, why you wanta give more?
The more that you give, why, the more it will take
to the thin line beyond which you really cannot fake
There's a fire
Fire on the mountain
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The Grateful Dead first performed this on March 18,
1977 at Winterland Arena, San
Francisco. It followed Scarlet Begonias, closing the first set.
These two songs, like so many others in the Dead's rich repertoire launched extended
improvisations as "Scarlet" sprouted wings and flew, generated a
fractal consciousness and burned, its ashes forming phoenix-like in to "Fire." Forever
after the two became known as "Scarlet Fire" on the cases of tapers
everywhere.
Also, Mickey Hart recorded a percussion instrumental version with his
Diga Rhythm Band on their album Diga, naming it "Happiness Is
Drumming". Even if you don't normally listen to this type of music
because you think it is
just glorified drum circle tripping, buy it anyway because it's
pretty yummy stuff.
A few years ago when weekend mornings meant hours of peaceful plodding, I used the first two lines of the song as a
mantra when the alarm went off around 2 or 3 a.m. It's not a bad
song to roll in your head as you lope down the road.
http://arts.ucsc.edu/gdead/agdl/fire.html
CST Approved