to make amens (Amen - "So soll es sein" - im Gebet sagen) hätte ich jetzt geraten.

Ich habe das immer als "ich muss da mithalten (können)" verstanden ...
related discussion: to make amends (auch eigennützig möglich?)
related discussion: make a mense

https://www.englishforums.com/English/WhatMea...

Not #1.

OT: she's got the Mercedes bends ...

Oh, wie peinlich...

Siehe Beitrag #6 in jenem Faden: related discussion: make a mense - #6

Hat mal gerade jemand ein Loch frei, in dem ich versinken kann? ;-)

OT: she's got the mercy dispense ...

Da brauch ich was als Ausgleich.

z. B., um die Idee des amending wenigstens ansatzweise beizubehalten. Aber inhaltlich läuft es wohl auf no me brés mithalten hinaus.

Sie bitte darum, mithalten zu können :-) RIP Janis Joplin - and completely OT, I still can't "forgive" my Daddy (RIP), for NOT allowing me to go to her concert in San Bernadino when we lived in Riverside, CA - 5 miles - she died 3 months later :-(

Edit: Sie bittet noch weiter: ...won't you buy me a color TV, won't you buy the next round - still have her album + record player :-)

Vielleicht verwendet sie 'amend' ja im Sinne von 'verbessern', das ergäbe halbwegs Sinn, oder? ('make amends' halte ich in der Bedeutung zwar nicht für eine übliche Kollokation, aber es ist ein Songtext...)

Sonst verstehe ich es nämlich auch überhaupt nicht.

To amend heißt doch u. a. to put right (auch wenn diese Bedeutung laut oxforddictionaries "archaic" ist) und make [...] changes [...] in order to make it fairer [...]. Aus der Sicht des lyrischen Ichs besteht eine Ungerechtigkeit, die ausgeglichen werden möge: All ihre Freunde fahren Porsche; sie hat hart gearbeitet, niemand hat ihr was geschenkt, und sie hat noch nicht mal einen popeligen Mercedes. Das ist unerträglich! ;-) Also bittet sie um einen Ausgleich für diese himmelschreiende Ungerechtigkeit, um in ihrem Freundeskreis mithalten zu können.
http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/...

So verstehe ich das wenigstens.

Harald, Clicked onto your link, but that is NOT Janis singing - here's the background to her song, but unfortunately, GEMA strikes again, and won't show the video :;-((( On my LP, she starts the song off with the bold-faced quote, and ends it with a giggle, or two (like in the video) :-)

http://performingsongwriter.com/janis-joplin-...

Joplin steps to the microphone and makes a declaration. “I’d like to do a song of great social and political import,” she says, a twinkle in her eye. It goes like this." Then she begins to sing, exercising soulful control over her enormous, whiskey-soaked voice: “Oh Lord, won’t you buy me a Mercedes-Benz? / My friends all drive Porsches, I must make amends …”

“Mercedes Benz” is a lonely blues tune about the illusory happiness promised (but rarely delivered) by the pursuit of worldly goods, a hippie-era rejection of the consumerist ideals that Joplin saw growing up as a self-described “middle-class white chick” in Port Arthur, Texas. She had come to California in the early ’60s and quickly earned a place as one of the leading musical lights in a generation that shared her utopian anti-materialism. When Joplin sang, in the second and third verses of “Mercedes Benz,” for “a color TV” and “a night on the town,” she knew all too well that neither would bring her peace. “It’s the want of something that gives you the blues,” she once said. “It’s not what isn’t, it’s what you wish was that makes unhappiness.”

Here's the REAL Janis Joplin :-) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vvbK-i0RR5g

edit: Excerpt from the article - my link shows her car - didn't know that until just now Outside the hotel on the night of her death sat Joplin’s car: not a Mercedes, but a Porsche she had bought in 1968 and paid friend Dave Richards $500 to paint in psychedelic colors. The hippie icon who sang, “My friends all drive Porsches,” was herself well aware of the real—if fleeting—pleasures to be found behind the wheel.

I agree with Cro-Mignon (#10) that it means something like "für ausgleichende Gerechtigkeit sorgen", though I don't think it can really refer to unfairness to her (since "make amends" implies something like "Wiedergutmachung", "tätige Reue").

Probably more in a general sense of fairness, perhaps towards Mercedes.

Perhaps it requires a bit of poetic licence, but it rhymes with Mercedes Benz.

MikeE, Did you read what Janis herself said it meant?? :-)

http://www.beatmuseum.org/mcclure/MichaelMcCl...
McClure hung around Haight-Ashbury during the Summer of Love, playing poetic melodies on his autoharp and participating with Ginsberg and Snyder at the January 1967 Human Be-In in Golden Gate Park. During this period, he wrote the original words on which Janis Joplin's song "Oh Lord, Won't You Buy Me a Mercedes Benz" was based.

Carly, danke für den Link zur echten Janis. Mit Flower-Power-Porsche. Vom Feinsten! Ich hatte in meinen Link nicht wirklich hineingehört. Warum auch, ich hab die A-Capella-Version auf Platte. Und kann dank Deiner #11 jetzt auch die einleitenden Worte verstehen.

Ich war eigentlich nur auf den Song verfallen, weil ich beim Aufräumen wieder auf diese herrlich schräge Adaption des Songs von Hubert von Goisern gestoßen war: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=38CWSOYq-nc

Ich finde es übriges sehr tröstlich, dass auch die NES bei der Deutung dieser amends nicht zu einer ganz eindeutigen Lösung kommen. Das macht die eigene Unvollkommenheit leichter erträglich. ;-)

Without wishing to annoy any Janis Joplin fans, I must say I think it makes no sense at all and is there purely for the rhyme.

Hecuba, It might not make sense to you, but it does to me :-) I just happened to live in California at the time, and was not only a Janis Joplin fan (not to mention Jimi Hendrix, Eric Clapton, Cat Stevens, on and on), but also a so-called "Jesus freak" :-)) Was even baptised in the ocean

make amends = wiedergutmachen
trying to find me = Have you found Jesus?? (many services started off with that question)
Play on words with "Delivery" - deliver my color TV + deliver me from my sins
I'm counting on you: to answer my prayers
Prove that you love me - by answering my prayers

http://www.lyricsfreak.com/j/janis+joplin/mer...

Oh Lord, won't you buy me a Mercedes Benz?
My friends all drive Porsches, I must make amends.
Worked hard all my lifetime, no help from my friends,
So Lord, won't you buy me a Mercedes Benz?

Oh Lord, won't you buy me a color TV?
Dialing For Dollars is trying to find me.
I wait for delivery each day until three,
So oh Lord, won't you buy me a color TV?

Oh Lord, won't you buy me a night on the town?
I'm counting on you, Lord, please don't let me down.
Prove that you love me and buy the next round,
Oh Lord, won't you buy me a night on the town?

Everybody!
Refrain, followed by: That's it! + giggling

Harald, I hadn't heard that version yet - nice!!! Even if I can hardly understand what he's singing :-)

Harald & Carly, vielen Dank!! Ich trällere dieses Lied oft vor mich hin, habe aber den Text nie so ganz verstanden. Jetzt weiß ich endlich, worum es geht.

Statt "wiedergutmachen" könnte auch "wettmachen" passen

Oedipa, Taking this trip down memory lane has just been fun :-)

Had edited:
And "My friends all drive Porsches" could also have something to do with the "Keeping up with the Joneses era," which was more or less predominant back then...

Carly, thanks for giving the complete lyrics in #16 - given this context, and your comments, I can understand the whole thing better.

I can appreciate the double meanings, or allusions, in 'trying to find me', 'deliver', etc., and the ironical way in which the whole thing is presented - as though asking God for material things, when really it is about turning away from them to something better.

So one should probably not focus too much on the exact meaning of 'make amends'. I think the expression has to mean something along the lines of 'start to live a better life, do something to make up for all the materialism and frivolity I have been indulging in (or past sins in general)'. Maybe, in fact, it's just a loose way of saying 'mend my ways' or 'amend my life'.
I don't think one can find another meaning in it relating to having or not having a Mercedes: as I see it, there's no way 'make amends' can mean 'mithalten / keep up with the Joneses', or 'make things fairer for me'.

So it may not be totally logical, and the need for a rhyme will have played a part. But it's probably just too pedantic to focus on the precise meaning of that one half-line.

Hecuba: Excerpt from #11 - quoting Janis - Think you and I are both saying the same thing, and I just added the "keeping up with the Joneses" bit, because it seems to fit in with her/their message :-)

“Mercedes Benz” is a lonely blues tune about the illusory happiness promised (but rarely delivered) by the pursuit of worldly goods, a hippie-era rejection of the consumerist ideals that Joplin saw growing up as a self-described “middle-class white chick” in Port Arthur, Texas. She had come to California in the early ’60s and quickly earned a place as one of the leading musical lights in a generation that shared her utopian anti-materialism. When Joplin sang, in the second and third verses of “Mercedes Benz,” for “a color TV” and “a night on the town,” she knew all too well that neither would bring her peace. “It’s the want of something that gives you the blues,” she once said. “It’s not what isn’t, it’s what you wish was that makes unhappiness.”