You could get lost in trying to figure out the meaning of “Move (Chicago 196X),” but that won’t do you any good.

Track: “Move (Chicago 196X)”
Album: Taboo VI: The Homecoming (1992)

When John Darnielle played the entirety of his first album at a live show in 2014, he joked about “Move (Chicago 196X).” He said it was one of two songs that he knew had never been played live. He called the instrumental middle a “dream pop interlude” and explained that you can hear his mother talk to him and squeeze a toy pig into the microphone while he was playing piano.

It is difficult to imagine needing more information than that about a song that is, in total, a person saying “if you leave you’re gonna get athlete’s foot” in various formations for a few minutes. John Darnielle said at that same show “if my dream of ever turning us into a jam band is ever realized, you will hear this song again.” It’s all a joke, because it has to be.

I don’t know what the title refers to and I don’t know if there’s a deeper meaning to this one. I suspect the answer to both is “it doesn’t matter.” Thirty years ago, John Darnielle was not imagining people trying to figure “Move (Chicago 196X)” out. It probably would have delighted him. If there’s anything to draw out here, it’s the mindset of John Darnielle in the early nineties, not planting mysteries but taking what might be an odd phrase he imagined and exploring the space it creates.