Chorus:
    It's hi and lo all at once
    Not one or the other
    You know what I mean
    There's no in between

Green and blue
Pink and puce
There's six million hues to choose from
There's no stop and no start
It's forever they sing together
More than the sum of their parts

(Chorus)

In time of flood you'll find a dearth
Of anything you thought had worth
Ebb and flow wax and wane
I know it sucks but I still dig the earth

(Chorus)
(Chorus)
(Chorus)

Freedom and purpose and lots of time
To think about everything and nothing
On the road to unlimited devotion
It's great crusading but I'm debating what I've been missing

Chuck:

I suppose this song can be summed up pretty simply:  nothing is every perfect or completely wrong, everything is made up of small wrongs and rights that have a sum.  Kinda like the 'every silver lining has a cloud' principle, only with a little more math and Hermann Hesse's "Siddhartha" mixed in.  I give it two stars on the pompous scale.  The song was originally written and played ad nauseam on acoustic with some 'om'-like syllables hummed over the top.

"Hi And Lo" is undoubtedly a song with deep lyrical conotations and subtle but complex references.  The song evoked several different interpretations from listers on the MOE-L.  Amy Ross shared her understanding of the song with me...

If you look at TIN CANS AND CAR TIRES as a whole, you will see that is is geared toward life on the road.  I think that "Hi And Lo" is a song about just that, life on the road.  "On the road to unlimited devotion, it's great crusading but i'm debating
what i've been missing."  I think Chuck loves his job, his music, etc.   Although there is definitely an element missing...life outside of the road.   He truly does miss a lot of things that we, being immobile (so to speak) take for granted.  *His* road to unlimited devotion is *his* road to success....he is willing to devote everything to his career, music, etc....he loves doing it, however, he's bummed that he misses out on a lot of things.  AND....I would venture to say that he wrote those lyrics with "Furthur Tour" fresh in his mind.  That's how I see it.

Lurker Davy Smyth had earlier approched the possible significance and extent to the song's Dead references...

While reading the lyrics to "Hi And Lo" I was struck by how they might relate to Chuck's impressions of the Dead or the Dead scene, especially the last verses "On the road to unlimited devotion, it's great crusading but I'm debating what I've been missing" and the middle verses "It's forever they sing together more than sum of their parts."  Maybe I'm just being a Freudian Deadhead but it struck me while reading the lyrics...shrug...who knows?  Just a thought.

Jesse Jarnow took the analysis to some more abstract levels (no shit!) and viewed it in the context of having a possibly religious basis...

>The Dead connection with Hi & Lo is the lyric "on the road to unlimited
>devotion...it's great crusading..yadda yadda"
>
>The Golden Road (to Unlimited Devotion) is the name of a Dead song,
>though the title words do not appear in the song itself.

I'm almost positive I've heard the phrase used in the context of Christian religion -- as in, the unlimited devotion to Jesus, Mary, and all those other wonderful symbolic characters.

>The word
>"crusading" makes me think the reference is intentional, though Chuck is
>the least "dead" of moe.

Then it would make sense that Chuck knows the song. There are only like one or two versions in known circulation -- from tapes in 66/67. However, it also happens to be the very first song on most people's initiation - or, at least, initial exposure - into the world of the Dead: "Skeletons In The Closet", a moderately dreadful "Best Of Collection". Only "moderately" 'cause still is
the good ol' Grateful Dead.

>The Golden Road in the Dead thing (at least
>how I understand it) is essentially the world of sex, drugs and
>rock-n-roll on the road but with a hippie-mystic backspin. Thus, the
>"crusading" metaphor that comes out in Hi & Lo assuming the reference is
>deliberate. If this is how it is intended, it's quite an elegant
>line!!

Doubly elegant if it's also a reference to Christian religious practices. The line in the song - the moe. song, that is - is "On the road to unlimited devotion/ It's great crusading but I'm debating what I've been missing..." On one level, that could come from "Hi" perspective -- the Christian who has devoted his life to religion and converting other people. Somewhere, he's got to question his devotion: why does he do it. The other level would be the "Lo" (ie. the really, really high) world of sex, drugs, and rock and roll. Does that mean Chuck is on his way to bein' a groupie-shaggin' adrenochrome junkie. Probably not.

Once one is in the world of rock n' roll, the road to unlimited devotion can have two meaning as well: the "hi" road and the "lo" road. The "hi" road would be the path of pure absolute dedication to one's craft. The "lo" road, the path of least resistence: long pill-poppin' booze-filled nights fading into...more nights. ("Some days we don't see the day...") Presumably, Chuck - and the
entire band, for that matter - has grappled long and hard with this issue. Witness older moe. tapes where band members are audibly wrecked by the time the end of the second side rolls around. Somewhere along the line - perhaps - a decision had to be made -- the "hi" path or the "lo" path.

Aha! No! Liar!

Defining things as "hi" and "lo" simply defines them as extremes -- that doesn't mean one has to *go* to either end of the spectrum. Chuck's notes on the tune in the album liner notes seem to say a lot in this respect: "nothing is ever perfect or completely wrong, everything is made up of small wrongs and rights that have a sum." There may exist extremes, theoretically, but it's absolutely impossible to follow either one of them. One ends up with a combination, somewhere in between "Hi" and "Lo".

All of this has a broad application -- yep, it can apply to the Dead, Phish, moe., or any other scene. That makes a lot of sense for discussion of the song on this list, considering or pretty general common ground to all of this music. I think I can safely say that most people on this list have a fair amount of devotion to the music they listen to. People travel distances to see shows - the golden road... maybe - and, well, devote a lot of their time to these things. There comes a time in *everybody's* listening career where he or she has to evalute what all of this means: what it means to follow a band, what it means to devote your travels to following someone else, what does unlimited devotion really mean and does one really want to give unlimited devotion to these people in question. It's all about self-questioning -- the song and the process.

It can also easily apply to the Christian thing. That comes up because Christianity has been such a dominating force in society for the last, roughly, 1998 years. It can apply to *anything*, really, that has to do with interactions between multiple people, relationships -- anything that's external. It's just a matter of what frame one places it in. And once one starts quesitoning his place in one set of relationships in his life, he will inevitably begin to question it elsewhere -- the song becomes way more universal.

Eventually, it's one's entire existence that's on the questioning block. One judges where one is, what one can be, what one will be, all that deep and meaningful shit. One takes stock of his entire situation, value judgements are made. And, in the end, none of the individual parts are neither "hi" nor "lo" -- they just are. And, past the end, one's entire life is neither "hi" nor "lo", it just is.

Pat Plummer reacted to Jesse's interpretation...

>Defining things as "hi" and "lo" simply defines them as extremes -- that
>doesn't mean one has to *go* to either end of the spectrum. Chuck's notes on
>the tune in the album liner notes seem to say a lot in this respect: "nothing
>is ever perfect or completely wrong, everything is made up of small wrongs
>and
>rights that have a sum." There may exist extremes, theoretically, but it's
>absolutely impossible to follow either one of them. One ends up with a
>combination, somewhere in between "Hi" and "Lo".

This is more in keeping with the way I interpreted the song's lyrics. More of a Taoist duality -- the balance of yin and yang. As well as the fact that many of us tend to see the world as black/white, right/wrong, etc and miss all of the "hues" in between and all the enrichment and joy that come with their appreciation. As Don Juan might have said, the world mis just as much "not-doing" as it is "doing". Sometimes it's as important to look at an object's shadow as it is the object itself to judge its true nature.

>That comes up because
>Christianity has been such a dominating force in society for the last,
>roughly, 1998 years.

In American/European society anyway -- not so in a majority of the rest of the world. However, the same principles can be applied to nearly any religion or system of beliefs, really. As per your statement below.

>It can apply to *anything*, really, that has to do with
>interactions between multiple people, relationships -- anything that's
>external. It's just a matter of what frame one places it in. And once one
>starts quesitoning his place in one set of relationships in his life, he will
>inevitably begin to question it elsewhere -- the song becomes way more
>universal.

Yes!

Finally, Alex figured he'd post my basic reactions to some specific lyrics...

I think the lyrics have a lot of basis in the band's (and especially Chuck's) experiences of the Furthur Festival in 1997.  Perhaps the line "I was served a lucky twist of fate" is simply a reference to the band's opportunity to join tour.  If you interpret the rest of the verse on this basis, the lyrics can be paralleled to the unquestionable pressure the band faced on the tour ("Big enough to choke an ox") and the right of passage the band experienced as a result ("Through a trap door I'd have never found otherwise"); it's very likely that the band left the tour with a greater knowing of themselves and their purpose.  The next verse is incredibly powerful when you almost listen to it with a visual perspective of the band looking out over the masses of people in the crowd.  Listen to the line "Green and blue/Pink and puce/There's six million hues to choose from/There's no stop and no start" and then picture the scene at a Dead concert with seemingly endless conglomerate of people gathered with their tie-dye shirts.  "It's forever they sing together/More than the sum of their parts" is most likely, as Davy pointed out, a reference to the crowd uniting in singing together with the band.  It can also be viewed as a unique Dead reference, with "More than sum of their parts" referring to the crowd filling in the verses for a struggling Bobby.  The last verse, as has already been pointed out extensively, captures the essence of life on the road, noting, perhaps, the the free life of the crusading man comes with its good and its bads.