Mexicali Blues (song)

"Mexicali Blues" is a song from Bob Weir's 1972 Ace solo album that, like the rest of the material on that record, was de facto by the Grateful Dead. Indeed, it appears on the 1974 Skeletons from the Closet: The Best of Grateful Dead compilation.

"Mexicali Blues" was written by Bob Weir and lyricist John Perry Barlow. This was the first songwriting collaboration for Weir and Barlow. Barlow has noted that Weir had an idea for a "cowboy song" and asked Barlow to write the lyrics after Robert Hunter declined. Weir would soon switch to using Barlow rather than Hunter for the bulk of his songwriting.

The song concerns a man who had recently ridden to Mexicali, Mexico from Bakersfield, California. There over a bottle of booze, he thinks back upon his meeting a girl named "Billie Jean" and falling under her spell; she later appeals to the narrator to shoot a stranger when she tells him that unless he uses his gun to prevent it, the stranger will take her away. He does shoot and kill the stranger (who never even drew his gun), and then flees to Mexico rather than face hanging for his crime.

Grateful Dead

The Grateful Dead was an American rock band formed in 1965 in Palo Alto, California. Ranging from quintet to septet, the band was known for its unique and eclectic style, which fused elements of country, folk, bluegrass, blues, reggae, rock, improvisational jazz, psychedelia, space rock, for live performances of lengthy instrumental jams, and for their devoted fan base, known as "Deadheads". "Their music," writes Lenny Kaye, "touches on ground that most other groups don't even know exists." These various influences were distilled into a diverse and psychedelic whole that made the Grateful Dead "the pioneering Godfathers of the jam band world". The band was ranked 57th in the issue The Greatest Artists of all Time by Rolling Stone magazine. The band was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1994 and their Barton Hall Concert at Cornell University (May 8, 1977) was added to the Library of Congress's National Recording Registry. The Grateful Dead have sold more than 35 million albums worldwide.

Mexicali

Mexicali (pronounced  mexi'kali ) is the capital city of the Mexican state of Baja California, seat of the Municipality of Mexicali. The City of Mexicali has a population of 689,775, according to the 2010 census, while the population of the entire metropolitan area reaches 996,826.

The city maintains a highly educated and skilled population, as the city has modernized and become an important population center in the desert region.

Mexicali's economy has been historically based on agricultural products, and to this day it remains a large sector of the economy. As time has progressed, however, its economy has gradually gone from being agricultural to include industry, mainly maquiladoras. Companies such as Honeywell, GKN Aerospace, Kellogg's, Gulfstream, UTC Aerospace Systems, SunPower, Rockwell Collins, LG Electronics, National Oilwell Varco, Mitsubishi, Autolite, Nestlé, Coca-Cola, Robert Bosch and Goodrich Corporation have built maquiladora plants in the city.

Mexicali is the national pioneer for the aerospace industry in Mexico, when Rockwell Collins (former Hughes Tool Company) decided to establish an operation in 1966. Rockwell Collins it's the oldest company under the maquiladora program nationwide.

Blues

Blues is a genre and musical form that originated in African-American communities in the "Deep South" of the United States around the end of the 19th century. The genre developed from roots in traditional African music, combined with European American folk music. Blues incorporated spirituals, work songs, field hollers, shouts, and chants, and rhymed simple narrative ballads. The blues form, ubiquitous in jazz, rhythm and blues and rock and roll, is characterized by the call-and-response pattern, the blues scale and specific chord progressions, of which the twelve-bar blues is the most common. The blue notes (or "worried notes") which are often thirds or fifths which are flatter in pitch than in other music styles, are also an important part of the sound. Blues shuffles or walking bass reinforce the trance-like rhythm and form a repetitive effect called a groove.

Blues as a genre possesses other characteristics such as lyrics, bass lines, and instruments. The lyrics of early traditional blues verses consisted of a single line repeated four times. It was only in the first decades of the 20th century that the most common current structure became standard: the so-called AAB pattern, consisting of a line sung over the four first bars, its repetition over the next four, and then a longer concluding line over the last bars. Early blues frequently took the form of a loose narrative, often relating troubles experienced within African American society.

Phrase

In everyday speech, a phrase may be any group of words, often carrying a special idiomatic meaning; in this sense it is roughly synonymous with expression. In linguistic analysis, a phrase is a group of words (or possibly a single word) that functions as a constituent in the syntax of a sentence—a single unit within a grammatical hierarchy. A phrase appears within a clause, although it is also possible for a phrase to be a clause or to contain a clause within it.

Common and technical use

There is a difference between the common use of the term phrase and its technical use in linguistics. In common usage, a phrase is usually a group of words with some special idiomatic meaning or other significance, such as "all rights reserved", "economical with the truth", "kick the bucket", and the like. It may be a euphemism, a saying or proverb, a fixed expression, a figure of speech, etc.

In grammatical analysis, particularly in theories of syntax, a phrase is any group of words, or sometimes a single word, which plays a particular role within the grammatical structure of a sentence. It does not have to have any special meaning or significance, or even exist anywhere outside of the sentence being analyzed, but it must function there as a complete grammatical unit. For example, in the sentence Yesterday I saw an orange bird with a white neck, the words an orange bird with a white neck form what is called a noun phrase, or a determiner phrase in some theories, which functions as the object of the sentence.