Sheep Go to Heaven
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Sheep Go to Heaven is the seventh song on CAKE's 1998 release Prolonging the Magic. The title of the song is a reference to Jesus's parable of "The Sheep and the Goats" found in The Gospel of Matthew chapter 25. The following verses can be found in the King James Version of the New Testament:
Matthew
31When the Son of man shall come in his glory, and all the holy angels with him, then shall he sit upon the throne of his glory.
32And before him shall be gathered all nations: and he shall separate them one from another, as a shepherd divideth his sheep from the goats.
33And he shall set the sheep on his right hand, but the goats on the left.
34Then shall the King say unto them on his right hand, Come, ye blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world.
41Then shall he say also unto them on the left hand, Depart from me, ye cursed, into everlasting fire, prepared for the devil and his angels.
Another of this song's more obscure references is in the line "And the gravedigger puts on the forceps." This is a quote from the second act of Samuel Beckett's play Waiting for Godot. In which the character Vladimir is heard to say, "Astride of a grave and a difficult birth. Down in the hole, lingeringly, the grave digger puts on the forceps. We have time to grow old. The air is full of our cries. But habit is a great deadener"
The song also references Dionysis' half man/ half goat drunken companions, the Satyrs: "I just want to play on my pan pipes. I just want to drink me some wine."
Also, the song references a carpenter, which is probably a reference to Jesus: "The carpenter will take you out to lunch."
