This isn’t John Prine’s most famous song, but it’s the one that many of his fans — including Bob Dylan — consider his greatest. Unlike most of his story songs, this one has an inscrutable plot — each of the three verses seems unrelated to the others. The first is about how the Twin Lakes, a real place on the Illinois-Wisconsin border, got their names. The second is about a camping trip he took trying to save a crumbling marriage. The third is about a double murder. As always with Prine, the scenery along the way is more important than the destination.
It also asks and answers one of the most important questions in music: You know what blood looks like on a black-and-white video?