tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-74022893138508245792024-03-05T04:55:44.853-08:00Anthems for a New GenerationA songbook of progressive/protest music for the twenty-first century. Dozens of anthems from 1970 to the present, from around the world, all with an essential "hook" that makes them ideal for progressive mobilizations and celebrations.Adam Jones, Ph.D.http://www.blogger.com/profile/02040417664765882878noreply@blogger.comBlogger46125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7402289313850824579.post-66591613957354932152012-08-29T20:57:00.003-07:002012-08-29T22:39:13.122-07:00"Takin' It to the Streets" - The Doobie Brothers<i>[under construction]</i><br />
<a name='more'></a>Adam Jones, Ph.D.http://www.blogger.com/profile/02040417664765882878noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7402289313850824579.post-46432008083679920392012-08-29T19:25:00.001-07:002012-08-29T19:26:44.028-07:00"Lost in the Supermarket" - The Clash<i>[under construction]</i><br />
<a name='more'></a><i><br /></i>Adam Jones, Ph.D.http://www.blogger.com/profile/02040417664765882878noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7402289313850824579.post-13231615636459843982012-08-26T14:06:00.001-07:002019-01-06T16:00:09.662-08:00"Wind of Change" - Scorpions<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiLd-2uL4ZDlH5Xuv1TfdsoQsBtmUDrLJ51HD0rtVZuxfa5yidrcFnFUXA5UY0vzEx4T69yIPPg1tSR_OW6qE_ZgmWPyhNNRRm7hsFS0DVqQ9faXYA1DgiX0C9EIWJCdcu9s2fJfeoFcmQ/s1600/Scorpions1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="266" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiLd-2uL4ZDlH5Xuv1TfdsoQsBtmUDrLJ51HD0rtVZuxfa5yidrcFnFUXA5UY0vzEx4T69yIPPg1tSR_OW6qE_ZgmWPyhNNRRm7hsFS0DVqQ9faXYA1DgiX0C9EIWJCdcu9s2fJfeoFcmQ/s400/Scorpions1.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
<br />
It's a funny thing, the iconic reach of this song. Written by Scorpions vocalist Klaus Meine, it's one of the premier power ballads of all time -- one of the few globally successful ones sung by a continental European band. You're as likely to hear its whistled opening refrain in Argentina as in Uzbekistan, in St. Petersburg as in Johannesburg.<br />
<br />
"Wind of Change" is remembered as the theme song of arguably the last great political-cultural moment in world politics -- the collapse of communism in Central Europe and the former USSR in 1989-90. It was indeed inspired by those events: Scorpions played in Moscow in 1989, at the height of Mikhail Gorbachev's campaign of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glasnost"><i>glasnost </i>(openness)</a>. But the song wasn't released until November 1990, and didn't become an international hit until well into 1991. It went on to be voted "Song of the Century" in a German ZDF network poll. As I say, you hear it damn near everywhere.<br />
<br />
Adorable and just a little kitsch, "Wind of Change" draws its central motif not from Central Europe, but from Africa. The British Prime Minister Harold Macmillan, addressing a recalcitrantly racist parliament in South Africa in February 1960, declared that <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wind_of_Change_(speech)">a "wind of change" was sweeping the African continent</a> -- one of national liberation and political independence. (His speech ever since has been remembered as the "Wind<u>s</u> of Change" speech, but it was WIND, and Scorpions got it right.)<br />
<br />
The direct references in "Wind of Change", however, are not to Africa but to post-Soviet Russia -- as the video (below) also makes clear. The Moskva river and Gorky Park are mentioned at the outset, establishing an ambience of intoxicated emancipation that carries through the anthemic and only slightly cringe-inducing chorus ("the magic of the moment / On a glory night ..."):<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>Follow the Moskwa</i></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>Down to Gorky Park</i></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>Listening to the wind of change</i></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>An August summer night</i></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>Soldiers passing by</i></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>Listening to the wind of change</i></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-style: italic;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>The world is closing in</i></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>Did you ever think</i></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>That we could be so close, like brothers</i></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>The future's in the air</i></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>Can feel it everywhere</i></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>Blowing with the wind of change</i></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-style: italic;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>Take me to the magic of the moment</i></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>On a glory night</i></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>Where the children of tomorrow dream away</i></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>In the wind of change ...</i></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<br />
<a name='more'></a></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>The wind of change</i></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>Blows straight into the face of time</i></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>Like a storm wind that will ring the freedom bell</i></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>For peace of mind</i></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>Let your balalaika sing</i></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>What my guitar wants to say</i></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-style: italic;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>Take me to the magic of the moment</i></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>On a glory night</i></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>Where the children of tomorrow share their dreams</i></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>With you and me</i></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-style: italic;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>Take me to the magic of the moment</i></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>On a glory night</i></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>Where the children of tomorrow dream away</i></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>In the wind of change</i></div>
<i><br /></i>
Inseparably connected as "Wind of Change" now is with perhaps the greatest mass-freedom movement of the past four or five decades, one would expect to see it deployed where activists are pressing for their own national liberation and/or democratization. (I just bet this was a popular song in North Africa and the Middle East during the Arab Spring.) Anyone wishing to express their support for such movements could do far worse than look to Scorpions' epic ballad.<br />
<br />
Here's the original video of "Wind of Change":<br />
<br />
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<iframe allowfullscreen='allowfullscreen' webkitallowfullscreen='webkitallowfullscreen' mozallowfullscreen='mozallowfullscreen' width='320' height='266' src='https://www.youtube.com/embed/n4RjJKxsamQ?feature=player_embedded' frameborder='0'></iframe></div>
<br />
And a live version with symphonic backing:<br />
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<iframe allowfullscreen='allowfullscreen' webkitallowfullscreen='webkitallowfullscreen' mozallowfullscreen='mozallowfullscreen' width='320' height='266' src='https://www.youtube.com/embed/4E8JHifO5qg?feature=player_embedded' frameborder='0'></iframe></div>
<br />
Scorpions have also recorded <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RvZf4CLEflM">Spanish</a> and <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GRVsYvFx2Ss">Russian</a>-language versions of the song.<br />
<i><br /></i>
<b><span style="font-size: large;">Other Resources</span></b><br />
<span style="text-align: center;"><br /></span>
<a href="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/f/f0/ScorpionsCrazyWorld.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/f/f0/ScorpionsCrazyWorld.jpg" width="200" /></a><span style="text-align: center;">Available on Scorpions, </span><i style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crazy_World_(Scorpions_album)">Crazy World</a> </i><span style="text-align: center;">(1991).</span><br />
<br />
<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wind_of_Change_(Scorpions_song)">Wikipedia page</a> for "Wind of Change."<br />
<br />
Scorpions played the song at <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mXIU4ajFGqs">Mikhail Gorbachev's 80th birthday party</a> in 2011!</div>
Adam Jones, Ph.D.http://www.blogger.com/profile/02040417664765882878noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7402289313850824579.post-57213152892051727832012-08-25T17:43:00.002-07:002019-01-06T15:04:34.454-08:00"Wavin' Flag" - K'naan<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiIfz0CB51X2Ol8P3NccakuErXsAogce08x2Gyk8ieMHna2wT2Yr-s6cRVwAy-fZ0CVpdZ2-AwO_M1c6NPn66ZOQVdU9EDNa1vtSqSsLrqybNHeEvvby3aF6xCBDZdVsB4kJYOHCMI7pR9A/s400/knaan.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="252" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiIfz0CB51X2Ol8P3NccakuErXsAogce08x2Gyk8ieMHna2wT2Yr-s6cRVwAy-fZ0CVpdZ2-AwO_M1c6NPn66ZOQVdU9EDNa1vtSqSsLrqybNHeEvvby3aF6xCBDZdVsB4kJYOHCMI7pR9A/s400/knaan.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
<br />
I made a point of being in Africa during the entire 2010 World Cup -- mostly in Ghana, whose team was the only African one that ended up doing much in the tournament, advancing to within a struck crossbar of the semi-finals. The official song for the 2010 tournament was Shakira's <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pRpeEdMmmQ0">"Waka Waka: This Time for Africa"</a>, which was promoted at every opportunity.<br />
<br />
It was striking to observe, however -- as I traveled in cramped minibuses around Ghana and Burkina Faso and Benin -- that while the reaction to Shakira's tune was tepid at best, whenever the Coca-Cola-sponsored "Celebration Mix" of "Wavin' Flag", by the Somali-Canadian singer K'naan, came over the radio, a great many people started grooving to it and singing along, like something out of a goddam Coca-Cola advertisement.<br />
<br />
This "Celebration Mix" ruled the world in the summer of 2010, hitting the top 10 in no fewer than 19 countries, and establishing itself as a bona fide anthem:<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>Give me freedom, give me fire</i></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>Give me reason, take me higher</i></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>See the champions take the field now</i></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>You define us, make us feel proud</i></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i><br /></i></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>In the streets our heads are liftin'</i></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>As we lose our inhibition</i></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>Celebration, it surrounds us</i></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>Every nation, all around us</i></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i><br /></i></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>Saying forever young</i></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>Singing songs underneath the sun</i></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>Let's rejoice in the beautiful game</i></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>And together at the end of the day, we all say</i></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i><br /></i></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>When I get older I will be stronger</i></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>They'll call me freedom just like a wavin' flag</i></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>When I get older I will be stronger</i></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>They'll call me freedom just like a wavin' flag</i></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i><br /></i></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>So wave your flag, now wave your flag</i></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>Now wave your flag ...</i></div>
<br />
<a name='more'></a>Compare this with the much more streetwise, and certainly not <i>nationalistically </i>flag-waving, original:<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>Born to a throne, stronger than Rome</i></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>A violent prone, poor people zone</i></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>But it's my home, all I have known</i></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>Where I got grown, streets we would roam</i></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i><br /></i></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>Out of the darkness, I came the farthest</i></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>Among the hardest survival</i></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>Learn from these streets, it can be bleak</i></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>Accept no defeat, surrender, retreat</i></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i><br /></i></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>So we struggling, fighting to eat</i></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>And we wondering when we'll be free</i></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>So we patiently wait for that fateful day</i></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>It's not far away, but for now we say</i></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i><br /></i></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>When I get older I will be stronger</i></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>They'll call me freedom just like a wavin' flag</i></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>And then it goes back, and then it goes back</i></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>And then it goes back, oh ...</i></div>
<br />
Herein lay the controversy over the reworking of "Wavin' Flag" as a corporate-sponsored "Celebration Mix" for World Cup 2010. Many argued that the song lost its true anthemic appeal in the process of becoming "Coked-out" theme music. Blogger Aristotle's Lackey, for example, <a href="http://aristotleslackey.wordpress.com/2010/06/23/the-sad-irony-of-knaans-waving-flag/">accused</a> K'naan of "promoting, ultimately, nationalism in a sport which is actually used, often successfully, also for rehabilitation for children in post-conflict zones as well for bridging differences between different ethnic groups. ... The very thing that has helped tear Africa and many other peoples apart informed the new lyrics to a song which first spoke of the struggles of never-ending war and poverty. The irony struck me."<br />
<br />
Against such concerns, I set the unaffected joy with which Africans and others in the Global South (and North) embraced the rebranded song. I'll stick with the "Celebration Mix," both for its greater simplicity and its obvious populist appeal. (It's probably the most significant -- only? -- contribution the Coca-Cola company has made to popular music since its appropriation of <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ib-Qiyklq-Q">"I'd Like to Teach the World to Sing"</a> <i>circa</i> 1970.)<br />
<br />
For activist purposes, however, both the original, wordier, and angrier version of "Wavin' Flag" and the soccerfied remake can be considered, or blended, or adjusted -- why not tweak some lyrics for your own purposes?<br />
<br />
Here's the official video for the version that took the world by storm in summer 2010:<br />
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<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<iframe allowfullscreen="" class="YOUTUBE-iframe-video" data-thumbnail-src="https://i.ytimg.com/vi/tMophHw6iX4/0.jpg" frameborder="0" height="266" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/tMophHw6iX4?feature=player_embedded" width="320"></iframe></div>
<br />
And here's K'naan's original:<br />
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<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<iframe allowfullscreen="" class="YOUTUBE-iframe-video" data-thumbnail-src="https://i.ytimg.com/vi/WTJSt4wP2ME/0.jpg" frameborder="0" height="266" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/WTJSt4wP2ME?feature=player_embedded" width="320"></iframe></div>
<br />
<b><span style="font-size: large;">Further Resources</span></b><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
</div>
<br />
Original version available on K'naan, <i><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Troubadour_(K%27naan_album)">Troubadour</a> </i>(2009), track 7. <i>Troubadour: Champion Edition </i>was released in 2010, and included the "Celebration Mix" of "Wavin' Flag" together with the original.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/812x59Y%2BT%2BL._SX522_.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="522" data-original-width="522" height="200" src="https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/812x59Y%2BT%2BL._SX522_.jpg" width="200" /></a></div>
Full lyrics of the original <a href="http://www.elyrics.net/read/k/k_naan-lyrics/wavin_-flag-lyrics.html">here</a>.<br />
<br />
Full lyrics of the Coca-Cola version <a href="http://lyrics.wikia.com/K'naan:Wavin'_Flag_(Coca-Cola_Version)">here</a>.<br />
<br />
The <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wavin'_Flag">Wikipedia page</a> for "Wavin' Flag."<br />
<br />
Various bilingual versions are available -- more than for any song in recent memory, actually. See the Wikipedia page (above) for details, and for a sample, <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6wPT0k309yM">the Spanish version by David Bisbal</a>.<br />
<br />
<a href="https://yaledailynews.com/blog/2011/09/20/rap-star-knaan-waves-a-flag-for-humanity/">"Rap Star K'naan Waves a Flag for Humanity"</a>, by Katerina Karatzia. <i>Yale Daily News</i>, September 20, 2011.</div>
Adam Jones, Ph.D.http://www.blogger.com/profile/02040417664765882878noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7402289313850824579.post-60587793774811343302012-08-22T12:20:00.002-07:002019-01-06T15:19:35.678-08:00"(What's So Funny 'Bout) Peace, Love, and Understanding" - Nick Lowe / Elvis Costello<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://farm6.static.flickr.com/5006/5376767453_66b3b1ae8a.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="266" src="https://farm6.static.flickr.com/5006/5376767453_66b3b1ae8a.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><b><i>Nick Lowe (left) with Elvis Costello.</i></b></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
Nick Lowe wrote "(What's So Funny 'Bout) Peace, Love, and Understanding," and released it on a 1974 album by his band Brinsley Schwarz. Elvis Costello and his lethal band The Attractions recorded it as the B-side of a now-forgotten Lowe single (which Lowe produced but did not play on). Its popularity led to its drafting in the US as the final track on Costello's incendiary 1979 album, <i>Armed Forces</i>, where it replaced "Sunday's Best," which was apparently deemed insufficiently epic. The <i>Armed Forces </i>shuffle over time established the song as a bona fide New Wave anthem.<br />
<br />
Power-pop of this kind, including Lowe's and Costello's variants, often had a posy feel to it, and "(What's So Funny ...)" comes across as a kind of postmodern protest song, a posture captured perfectly in its title -- defensive, self-absorbed, yet also gloriously defiant. "I believe that Nick wrote the song as an affectionate parody of various pious '60s peace anthems," Costello recalled in the <a href="http://www.elviscostello.info/wiki/index.php/Armed_Forces_(1993)_liner_notes">liner notes</a> to the Rykodisc reissue of <i>Armed Forces</i>.<br />
<br />
The lyrics also have a <i>premodern </i>quality, though -- "this wicked world," "is all hope gone," "the strong and ... the trusting," "downhearted ... spirit" -- and their structure is as simple and sturdy as an Elizabethan folk ballad:<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>As I walk this wicked world</i></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>Searching for light in the darkness of insanity</i></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>I ask myself is all hope gone</i></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>Is there only pain and hatred and misery</i></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i><br /></i></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>And each time I feel like this inside</i></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>There's one thing I want to know</i></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>What's so funny 'bout peace, love and understanding</i></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>What's so funny 'bout peace, love and understanding</i><br />
<i></i>
<br />
<a name='more'></a><i>And as I walk on through troubled times</i></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>My spirit gets so downhearted sometimes</i></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>Where are the strong and who are the trusting</i></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>And where is the harmony, sweet harmony</i></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i><br /></i></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>And each time I feel like this inside</i></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>There's one thing I want to know</i></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>What's so funny 'bout peace, love and understanding</i></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>What's so funny 'bout peace, love and understanding </i></div>
<br />
The song's pummeling assault, with The Attractions' drummer Pete Thomas driving home the groove, banishes any descent into smug self-referentiality. Says Costello: "We certainly attacked the song with little sense of irony and as if it were obvious that no one knew the answer to the question that the song posed." It seems an ideal anthem for this complex age of pro-peace activism, posing a core pacifist question and challenge in a way that miraculously avoids mawkishness.<br />
<br />
Here's the original 1974 version of "(What's So Funny 'Bout) Peace, Love, and Understanding" as rocked by Lowe's Brinsley Schwarz outfit:<br />
<br />
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<iframe allowfullscreen='allowfullscreen' webkitallowfullscreen='webkitallowfullscreen' mozallowfullscreen='mozallowfullscreen' width='320' height='266' src='https://www.youtube.com/embed/ZkuEBHMCOyY?feature=player_embedded' frameborder='0'></iframe></div>
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
Check out also the substantially more raucous 1974 live version for the BBC <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_l_lPhUcBR8">here</a>. Now here's Elvis's version from <i>Armed Forces</i>:</div>
<br />
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Wikipedia reports: "In 2004, '(What’s So Funny 'bout) Peace, Love and Understanding' was regularly performed as an all-star jam on the 'Vote for Change' tour, which featured a rotating cast of headliners. The October 11 concert at the MCI Centre in Washington DC was broadcast live on the Sundance Channel and on radio. This version of the song featured Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band, the Dixie Chicks, Eddie Vedder, Dave Matthews, and John Fogerty with Michael Stipe, Bonnie Raitt, Keb' Mo', and Jackson Brown[e]."<br />
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See also a recent <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3yIUYuGhPJQ">live performance</a> by Elvis.<br />
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<b><span style="font-size: large;">Other Resources</span></b><br />
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Song available on Brinsley Schwarz, <i>The New Favourites of Brinsley Schwarz </i>(1974), and on Nick Lowe, <i><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quiet_Please..._The_New_Best_of_Nick_Lowe">Quiet Please: The New Best of Nick Lowe</a> </i>(2009), track 1.<br />
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See Rob Jones, <a href="http://thedeletebin.com/2010/12/30/brinsley-schwarz-plays-whats-so-funny-bout-peace-love-and-understanding/">"Brinsley Schwarz Plays '(What's So Funny 'Bout) Peace, Love and Understanding"</a>.<br />
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<a href="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/f/fa/Elvis_costello_armed_forces_1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/f/fa/Elvis_costello_armed_forces_1.jpg" width="200" /></a></div>
Song available on Elvis Costello and the Attractions, <i><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Armed_Forces_(album)">Armed Forces</a> </i>(1979), track 13 (Rykodisc remaster).<br />
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The best-known cover version of the song after Costello's is <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QtrNlAJQ94M">a jazz interpretation by Curtis Stigers</a>, which appeared on the soundtrack for <i>The Bodyguard</i>, Whitney Houston's best-known film vehicle. This was also by far the best-selling version of the song; Lowe had the kind of windfall enjoyed by Dolly Parton when Whitney recorded her <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3JWTaaS7LdU">"I Will Always Love You"</a> for the same soundtrack album, which has sold well over ten million copies.<br />
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The Australian group Midnight Oil, who place <a href="http://newanthems.blogspot.ca/2012/02/short-memory-midnight-oil.html">two</a> <a href="http://newanthems.blogspot.ca/2012/01/beds-are-burning-midnight-oil.html">songs</a> on this list, also frequently included "(What's So Funny ...)" as a delirious encore in their eighties and early nineties concert performances. Their version was only ever released as a live B-side for the <a href="http://rateyourmusic.com/release/single/midnight_oil/put_down_that_weapon____whats_so_funny_bout__peace__love_and_understanding/buy">"Put Down That Weapon" single</a>: check out the audio <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FO6wPlqrFno">here</a>.<br />
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There's a <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/(What%27s_So_Funny_%27Bout)_Peace,_Love,_and_Understanding">Wikipedia page</a> for the song.</div>
Adam Jones, Ph.D.http://www.blogger.com/profile/02040417664765882878noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7402289313850824579.post-24726813767102644282012-08-21T14:37:00.002-07:002019-01-06T11:22:46.477-08:00"Talkin' 'Bout a Revolution" - Tracy Chapman<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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For what proved to be a brief cultural moment in the late 1980s, Tracy Chapman held center-stage in the global pop landscape. Her eponymous debut album (1988) was a multimillion-selling sensation. Her distinctive voice and progressive persona vaulted her to the forefront of projects like the groundbreaking <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_Rights_Now!">Human Rights Now tour</a> for Amnesty International, where Chapman shared a global stage with Bruce Springsteen, Sting, Peter Gabriel, and Youssou N'Dour.<br />
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Though she has continued to release albums and perform internationally, Chapman perhaps never went on to attain true folk-pop diva status. For radio purposes, her legacy rests heavily on two songs, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fast_Car">"Fast Car"</a> and "Talkin' Bout a Revolution". But while that is far too limiting, it should be recognized that both songs still sound fresh and inspired.<br />
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"Revolution", in particular, is a richly melodic song driven by a vigorous groove once the rhythm section kicks in. It calls on popular forces to be sensitive to those moments when "finally the tables are starting to turn," even if at first "it sounds like a whisper." The lyrics have a pristine and timeless quality worthy of Woody Guthrie:<br />
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<i>Don't you know</i></div>
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<i>They're talkin' about a revolution</i></div>
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<i>It sounds like a whisper</i></div>
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<i>Don't you know</i></div>
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<i>They're talkin' about a revolution</i></div>
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<i>It sounds like a whisper</i></div>
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<i><br /></i></div>
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<i>While they're standing in the welfare lines</i></div>
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<i>Crying at the doorsteps of those armies of salvation</i></div>
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<i>Wasting time in the unemployment lines</i></div>
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<i>Sitting around waiting for a promotion</i></div>
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<i>Poor people gonna rise up</i></div>
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<i>And get their share</i></div>
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<i>Poor people gonna rise up</i></div>
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<i>And take what's theirs</i></div>
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<i>Don't you know</i></div>
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<i>You better run, run, run ...</i></div>
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<i>Oh I said you better run, run, run ...</i></div>
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<i>Finally the tables are starting to turn</i></div>
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<i>Talkin' 'bout a revolution</i></div>
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/5/5e/Tracy_Chapman_3.jpg/449px-Tracy_Chapman_3.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/5/5e/Tracy_Chapman_3.jpg/449px-Tracy_Chapman_3.jpg" width="239" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><b>Tracy Chapman performing in 2009.</b></td></tr>
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It's a good all-purpose social-justice anthem, and with its motifs of running and rising up, it's a good accompaniment to some of the more upwardly-mobile numbers on our list, like The Parachute Club's <a href="http://newanthems.blogspot.ca/2012/01/rise-up-parachute-club.html">"Rise Up"</a> and Muse's <a href="http://newanthems.blogspot.ca/2012/01/uprising-muse.html">"Uprising"</a>.<br />
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Here's the original recording of "Talkin' 'Bout a Revolution", from <i>Tracy Chapman </i>(1988):<br />
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And a soulful live rendering by Chapman from the Amnesty International Human Rights Now tour in 1988:<br />
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<b><span style="font-size: large;">Further Resources</span></b><br />
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Available on Tracy Chapman, <i><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tracy_Chapman_(album)">Tracy Chapman</a> </i>(1988).<br />
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A Wikipedia stub for <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talkin'_'bout_a_Revolution">"Talkin' 'Bout a Revolution"</a>.<br />
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<a href="https://www.newstatesman.com/music/2010/03/talking-revolution-tracy-chapman">"Top Twenty Political Songs: Talkin' 'Bout a Revolution"</a>, <i>New Statesman </i>(2010).<br />
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The Israeli band Shmemel updated the song with an extra verse to cover the events of the Arab Spring, retitling it <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qx7PR8sjRhs">"Talking about an Arab Revolution"</a>. See what you think.</div>
Adam Jones, Ph.D.http://www.blogger.com/profile/02040417664765882878noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7402289313850824579.post-51649911095577273912012-08-21T11:56:00.001-07:002019-01-05T18:08:18.445-08:00"If I Had a Rocket Launcher" - Bruce Cockburn<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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I well remember the shock -- both gleeful and guilty -- that I felt upon hearing Bruce Cockburn's "If I Had a Rocket Launcher" back in 1984. An iconic Canadian folk singer, Cockburn was known as an intellectual poetic stylist and a Christian humanist and pacifist. Kind of a thinking person's Gordon Lightfoot. The pugnacious tone of "If I Had ...", and the blunt lyrics -- especially that final line, surely one of the great stings-in-the-tail in rock -- produced excitement and unease alike.<br />
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Many progressives could identify -- especially those of us who had slogged in the activist trenches of the movement against Yankee intervention in Central America -- with a desire to see real harm done to the perpetrators of the mass crimes in Guatemala, El Salvador, and Nicaragua. Elsewhere on his classic album <i>Stealing Fire</i>, Cockburn would pay eloquent tribute to the people of <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UGdoN8pgjaU">"Nicaragua"</a> in their struggle against Contra terrorists and the US superpower.<br />
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"If I Had a Rocket Launcher", with its darkly ironic updating of Pete Seeger's '60s anthem <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VO39e5Uznu4">"If I Had a Hammer"</a>, was born from a different theater of the Central American wars in the early 1980s: Guatemala, where popular, mostly indigenous forces were under attack by a genocidal government and army. The campaign of mass atrocity was at its peak just as Cockburn prepared his indictment. As bombs rained done and helicopter gunships roamed, who with an ounce of empathy for terrorized populations would not have wished for a rocket-launcher, to bring down those aloof and tormenting symbols of state violence?<br />
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<i>Here comes the helicopter -- second time today</i></div>
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<i>Everybody scatters and hopes it goes away</i></div>
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<i>How many kids they've murdered only God can say</i></div>
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<i>If I had a rocket launcher ... I'd make somebody pay.</i></div>
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<i>I don't believe in guarded borders and I don't believe in hate</i></div>
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<i>I don't believe in generals or their stinking torture states</i></div>
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<i>And when I talk with the survivors of things too sickening to relate</i></div>
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<i>If I had a rocket launcher ... I would retaliate.</i></div>
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<a name='more'></a>Cockburn's personal experience was with Guatemalan refugees who had fled across the border to rudimentary camps in Mexico, where they were still subject to Guatemalan army harassment and murderous incursions:<br />
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<i>On the Rio Lacantun, one hundred thousand wait</i></div>
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<i>To fall down from starvation -- or some less humane fate</i></div>
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<i>Cry for Guatemala, with a corpse in every gate</i></div>
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<i>If I had a rocket launcher ... I would not hesitate.</i></div>
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Then came the gut-punch of the final verse:<br />
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<i>I want to raise every voice -- at least I've got to try</i></div>
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<i>Every time I think about it water rises to my eyes.</i></div>
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<i>Situation desperate, echoes of the victims cry</i></div>
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<i>If I had a rocket launcher ... Some son of a bitch would die.</i></div>
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How one receives this emotion, and its open proclamation in song, will depend on whether one not only recognizes a right of self-defense, but can acknowledge a vengeful personal desire to see the tormentor routed. It's a sentiment not that far removed from "Fuck Tha Police", really. Cockburn <a href="http://cockburnproject.net/songs&music/iiharl.html">reports</a> that some his more avowedly pacifist Christian followers were thrown by "Rocket Launcher": "a lot of people wrote letters urging me, exhorting me, not to lose the way. At no point was I threatened with excommunication, but there was definitely a kind of standing back and going, 'What is this?' on the part of a lot of people." (<i>Baltimore Sun</i>, March 18, 1988)<br />
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There is also a whole constituency, among whom this listener may be counted, whose response to the idea of a son-of-a-bitch dying in this context was, and is, "Damn right." Clearly, "Rocket Launcher" is an anthem that's appropriate only when the right to armed self-defense is proclaimed, perhaps especially in a western hemispheric context. But it would be foolish to think that this issue is less relevant, in the Americas and elsewhere, than it was when Cockburn issued his scathing jeremiad.<br />
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Here's the original recording of "If I Had a Rocket Launcher" as released on <i>Stealing Fire </i>(1984):<br />
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A potent, stripped-down acoustic performance of the song on <i>Austin City Limits</i>:<br />
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<b><span style="font-size: large;">Other Resources</span></b><br />
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Available on Bruce Cockburn, <i><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stealing_Fire_(Bruce_Cockburn_album)">Stealing Fire</a> </i>(1984), track 8. The full lyrics are given above.<br />
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<a href="http://brucecockburn.com/wp-content/uploads/1984-A_stealingfire.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="288" data-original-width="288" height="200" src="https://brucecockburn.com/wp-content/uploads/1984-A_stealingfire.jpg" width="200" /></a><br />
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If you only buy one Bruce Cockburn album, buy the luminous double-CD compilation <i><a href="http://brucecockburn.com/music/waiting-for-a-miracle/">Waiting for a Miracle: Singles 1970-1987</a> </i>(1987), which also includes "If I Had a Rocket Launcher" (track 25).<br />
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There's a <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/If_I_Had_a_Rocket_Launcher">Wikipedia stub</a> for the song.</div>
Adam Jones, Ph.D.http://www.blogger.com/profile/02040417664765882878noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7402289313850824579.post-87559030353079977822012-08-21T09:46:00.003-07:002019-01-06T11:20:33.066-08:00"Sunday Bloody Sunday" - U2<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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Driven by a ferocious martial drumbeat and a hauntingly universal refrain -- <i>"I can't believe the news today / I can't close my eyes and make it go away" -- </i>"Sunday Bloody Sunday" is one of U2's imperishable anthems. Like another song on this list, The Cranberries' <a href="http://newanthems.blogspot.ca/2012/01/zombie-cranberries.html">"Zombie"</a>, it's inspired by the Irish Troubles: <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bloody_Sunday_(1972)">"Bloody Sunday"</a> references the British massacre of 14 demonstrators in Derry on January 30, 1972. But like "Zombie," it also rejects the terrorism of the Irish Republic Army (IRA). The lyrics anyway are general and allusive, and the song has proved readily adaptable in U2 concerts over the years, as a call to resist battle calls and bear aloft a standard of peace.<br />
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Like many of U2's great anthems -- think of <a href="http://newanthems.blogspot.ca/2012/01/i-still-havent-found-what-im-looking.html">"I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For"</a> on this list, or <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ftjEcrrf7r0">"One"</a> -- "Sunday Bloody Sunday" has a clear spiritual dimension. It's implicit in the title, but only becomes explicit at the end: <i>"The real battle just begun to claim the victory Jesus won / On Sunday, bloody Sunday ..." </i>Secular progressives may want to snip the entire last verse, which includes those lines, and concentrate on the song's epic essence:<br />
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<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>I can't believe the news today</i></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>Oh, I can't close my eyes </i></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>And make it go away</i></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>How long...</i></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>How long must we sing this song</i></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>How long, how long ...</i></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>'Cause tonight ... we can be as one</i></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>Tonight ...</i></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i><br /></i></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>Broken bottles under children's feet</i></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>Bodies strewn across the dead end street</i></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>But I won't heed the battle call</i></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>It puts my back up</i></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>Puts my back up against the wall</i></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i><br /></i></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>Sunday, bloody Sunday</i></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>Sunday, bloody Sunday</i></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>Sunday, bloody Sunday</i></div>
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<i><br /></i></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>And the battle's just begun</i></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>There's many lost, but tell me who has won</i></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>The trench is dug within our hearts</i></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>And mothers, children, brothers, sisters </i></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>Torn apart</i></div>
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<i><br /></i></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>Sunday, bloody Sunday</i></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>Sunday, bloody Sunday ...</i></div>
<i><br /></i>
Here's the original version of "Sunday Bloody Sunday," leading off U2's breakthrough third album, 1983's <i>War</i>:<br />
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<a name='more'></a>The version at Red Rocks recorded for the <i>Under a Blood Red Sky </i>live video and album is a barnstormer, with Bono famously declaring: "This song is <i>not </i>a rebel song":<br />
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Undoubtedly the most emotional live performance of the song was filmed in Denver, Colorado for the <i>Rattle and Hum </i>movie and CD, on November 8, 1987 -- the same day that IRA terrorists killed thirteen civilians in a bombing at Enniskillen in Northern Ireland, evoking one of Bono's most passionate declamations from the stage.<br />
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The radiant final cut on the <i>War </i>album, <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AjtpplE39_g">"40"</a>, was a singalong concert-closer during this period. It echoes the opening lyric of "Sunday Bloody Sunday" with its "How long to sing this song?" refrain. However, its anthemic potential is restricted for secular activists, since the lyrics are so openly religious, drawn from Psalm 40 of the Old Testament.<br />
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<b><span style="font-size: large;">Other Resources</span></b><br />
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<a href="http://emilysalbumsatoz.files.wordpress.com/2012/03/album-u2-war.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://emilysalbumsatoz.files.wordpress.com/2012/03/album-u2-war.jpg" width="200" /></a></div>
Available on U2, <i><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_(U2_album)">War</a> </i>(1983), Track 1.<br />
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Full lyrics <a href="http://www.lyricsfreak.com/u/u2/sunday+bloody+sunday_20141428.html">here</a>.<br />
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<a href="http://grammar.about.com/od/essayassignments/a/Rhetorical-Analysis-Of-U2s-Sunday-Bloody-Sunday.htm">"The Rhetoric of U2's Sunday Bloody Sunday"</a>, by Mike Rios.<br />
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<a href="https://www.newstatesman.com/music/2010/03/u2-sunday-bloody-political">"Top 20 Political Songs: Sunday Bloody Sunday"</a>, <i>New Statesman </i>(2010).</div>
Adam Jones, Ph.D.http://www.blogger.com/profile/02040417664765882878noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7402289313850824579.post-37469894852144469122012-08-21T09:46:00.000-07:002019-01-05T18:30:57.462-08:00"Love's in Need of Love Today" - Stevie Wonder<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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The first words are "Good morn," but they might as well be "Good mourn." This is one of Stevie Wonder's most mournful, slow-building, and hypnotic tunes, beginning with dirgey <i>a cappella</i> choral riffs, and continuing through Stevie's lovelorn lament for a world possessed by hate.<br />
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The leadoff cut for Stevie's monumental musical feast, the double-album-plus <i>Songs in the Key of Life </i>(1976), "Love's in Need of Love Today" seems to last forever. It's actually only a little over seven minutes long. But while the opening bars, and the excursions in the latter half of the song, offer clues as to how vocal jams and improvisations might be crafted, the heart of the lyrics and melody is fairly compact:<br />
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<i>Good morn or evening friends </i></div>
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Here's your friendly announcer </div>
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I have serious news to pass on to everybody </div>
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What I'm about to say </div>
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Could mean the world's disaster </div>
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Could change your joy and laughter to tears and pain </div>
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It's that </div>
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Love's in need of love today </div>
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Don't delay </div>
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Send yours in right away </div>
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Hate's goin' round </div>
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Breaking many hearts </div>
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Stop it please </div>
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Before it's gone too far </div>
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The force of evil plans </div>
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To make you its possession </div>
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And it will if we let it </div>
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Destroy everybody </div>
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We all must take </div>
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Precautionary measures </div>
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If love and please you treasure </div>
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Then you'll hear me when I say </div>
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Oh that </div>
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Love's in need of love today </div>
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love's in need of love today </div>
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Don't delay </div>
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don't delay </div>
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<i>Send yours in right away </i>...</div>
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It's a great all-purpose anthem, uplifting but cautionary, urgent but reflective. Basically, it's made for any evening scene illuminated by candlelight. But it would also be a motivating first-thing-in-the-morning tune for sleepy activists: <i>"Love's in need of love today / Don't delay ..."</i>, now brush your teeth and go out and fix things.<br />
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<a name='more'></a>Here's Stevie's original version of "Love's in Need ..." from <i>Songs in the Key of Life</i>, released in September 1976 and entrenched ever since among my desert-island records:<br />
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Criticized by some as too rambling and diffuse when it first appeared -- a mere stepping-stone en route to buoyant <i>Songs in the Key of Life </i>classics like "Sir Duke" and "I Wish" -- "Love's in Need of Love Today" has aged exceedingly well. It was assisted, and its anthemic potential confirmed, by George Michael's decision to adopt the song as a concert showpiece -- perhaps most memorably at the 1987 Stand By Me AIDS benefit, later released as a B-side on the "Father Figure" 12-inch single:<br />
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The connection now forged with the cause of AIDS sufferers, through Michael's renditions of "Love's in Need ..." at this and subsequent benefits, would likely influence its deployment as a progressive anthem as well.</div>
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<b><span style="font-size: large;">Other Resources</span></b><br />
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<a href="http://i4.photobucket.com/albums/y109/jouwboris/Boris3/songskeyfolder.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://i4.photobucket.com/albums/y109/jouwboris/Boris3/songskeyfolder.jpg" width="200" /></a></div>
Song available on Stevie Wonder, <i><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Songs_in_the_Key_of_Life">Songs in the Key of Life</a> </i>(1976), Track 1.<br />
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Full lyrics <a href="https://www.lyrics.com/lyric/3545684/Stevie+Wonder/Love%27s+in+Need+of+Love+Today">here</a>.<br />
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A <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=paZEqzrrO-4&feature=related">live version</a> by Stevie.<br />
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Stevie and George Michael <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=paZEqzrrO-4&feature=related">duet on the tune</a>!<br />
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Kudos to the great bassist <a href="http://bassmusicianmagazine.com/2011/02/bass-musician-magazine-featuring-nathan-watts-february-2011-issue/">Nathan Watts</a>, who does sublime work here and elsewhere on <i>Songs in the Key of Life</i>.<br />
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<a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/david-wild/loves-in-need-of-love-tod_b_955975.html">"'Love's in Need of Love Today': A Song For the Tenth Anniversary of 9/11"</a>, by David Wild.</div>
Adam Jones, Ph.D.http://www.blogger.com/profile/02040417664765882878noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7402289313850824579.post-6633805703939662672012-02-13T20:14:00.001-08:002012-02-14T07:46:13.582-08:00"Into the Fire" - Bruce Springsteen<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhvDq6q1UMBSJuRl1IsIASNRE8VARh-wbABFsXlUP19TAiGA4v6_STlL3gZbk_4XM6NyHkJX9herf2aYD5KWb72Zpaqyyq7PYNfBinDXlbNnCAgvuNiuv5SjHKgJi3B1tBehhKoyovIAOOq/s1600/david_simon.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhvDq6q1UMBSJuRl1IsIASNRE8VARh-wbABFsXlUP19TAiGA4v6_STlL3gZbk_4XM6NyHkJX9herf2aYD5KWb72Zpaqyyq7PYNfBinDXlbNnCAgvuNiuv5SjHKgJi3B1tBehhKoyovIAOOq/s200/david_simon.jpg" width="167" /></a></div><b><span style="font-size: large;">Guest blog by <a href="http://www.yale.edu/polisci/people/dsimon.html">David Simon</a></span></b><br />
<b>Yale University</b><br />
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<i>[Note: I'm pleased to inaugurate this new section of "Anthems for a New Generation," with David Simon's in-depth contribution. Visitors who would like to guest-blog an anthem are invited to </i><a href="mailto:adamj_jones@hotmail.com">contact me</a><i> about their song choice. This could be a very constructive addition to the site, so thanks to David for prompting it with his fine essay!]</i><br />
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Bruce Springsteen is at once an obvious choice and a too obvious choice to contribute a song to this list of anthems. "Thunder Road", "Born to Run", and "Hungry Heart" are anthemic to their core. "Glory Days" ought to be the official anthem of the onset of middle age. And while "Born in the U.S.A." is not the patriotic anthem many took it to be, Bruce himself was hard-pressed convince George Will, apparently believed Springsteen would give his blessing to have Ronald Reagan could adopt it as a campaign theme in 1984. And the way that Springsteen belts out "Santa Claus Is Coming to Town" (with more than a little help from the E Street Band), what you get is less of a carol and more of a Christmas anthem.<br />
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For me, however, Bruce's single greatest anthemic contribution is "Into the Fire," the second song on his 2002 9/11 response album <i>The Rising</i>. Across the album's 14 songs, Springsteen evokes a spectrum of emotions, each of them specifically identifiable, and most of them searing. (Some of the song titles: "Empty Sky", "You're Missing", "My City of Ruins"). Even "Let's Be Friends (Skin to Skin)" and "The Fuse" manage to evoke a strange, powerful sexual confusion in the wake of the tragedy, deftly identifying the tension between "now more than ever is the time for intimacy, because life is too short and unpredictable to deal with the walls we build" and "I'm too fucked up to handle intimacy." (Line from the latter: "Devil's on the horizon line / Your skin and I'm alive.")<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://media.mlive.com/music_impact/photo/bruce-springsteen-a2e8b2781d3d1832.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="http://media.mlive.com/music_impact/photo/bruce-springsteen-a2e8b2781d3d1832.jpg" width="278" /></a></div>The title song on the album is an anthem unto itself. "The Rising" is a solid "Anthem for a New Generation" candidate in its own right, what with its sing-along "Lie, Lie, Lie, La, La, La, Lie, Lie" chorus, the call-and-response "dream of life" bridge, its swelling melody, and the imagery of a wounded city rising up to greater things (along with the souls of the police and firefighter who died on September 11th).<br />
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Yet it is in "Into the Fire" in which Springsteen unleashes the themes of sacrifice and surviving. The song -- and with it, the entire album -- begins with the chilling identification of the subject matter: "The sky was falling and streaked with blood." With a spare, countryish guitar accompaniment, Bruce's voice curls around this line, pained not far below the scratchy surface.<br />
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The vocals quickly drift toward a more sorrowful tone, and the lyrics take a turn for the personal: "I heard you calling me, and then you disappeared into the dust / upstairs, into the fire (x2)/ I need your kiss, but love and duty were calling somewhere higher / up the stairs and into the fire." Not just any stairs, and not metaphorical stairs: up the stairs -- and we all know what he's talking about. (Meanwhile, kudos to Springsteen, surely one of the most masculine men on the planet, for pulling off the presumptive perspective of a working class New York female.)<br />
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The stanza ends with a prayer-like incantation: "May your strength give us strength / May your faith bring us faith / May your hope bring us hope / May your love bring us love." This will become the crux of the anthem, but not yet. For now, it is a poignant plea from a survivor to a lost loved one for light to come from tragedy.<br />
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Then, with an orchestral crash, the song turns. Springsteen sings the second stanza faster and more aggressively. The lines are arguably no less personal ("You gave your love to see in fields of autumn red and brown / you gave your love to me and lay your young body down"; meanwhile, "I need your kiss" becomes "I need you near"), but the chorus changes from a private lament to a public pledge, sung with a harder, less wistful edge. A third verse -- "It was dark, too dark to see / you held me in the light you gave / you lay your hand on me/ then you walked into the darkness of your smoky grave" -- offers a perspective switch: what we initially think is the image of the firefighter leaving home -- for the last time -- before dawn to start the morning shift becomes that of someone rescued from inside the burning towers, and watching his/her rescuer go back for more.<br />
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Either way, four more recitations of the chorus turn lament into exaltation. The performance offers inspiration drawn from devastation. The song finds strength -- and faith, hope, and love -- from the courage of those who sacrifice their lives in the name of public duty. While the words may strike some as religious, they are equally identifiable in secular terms (as was the case with many of the anthems of the old generation). The faith the rescue workers had was a faith in their nation, and in its principles and identity. The hope (not yet the mantra of a certain galvanizing presidential campaign) was a hope that they could save lives through their actions. The love was a love not necessarily given to a specific object, but to humanity.<br />
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It's undeniably a powerful song. But what makes it a "progressive"? The first reason requires the embrace of a particular strand of "progressivism" (although it arguably ought to be the predominant one). The song evokes the spirit of an enlightenment-informed definition of progressivism -- i.e., public service instead of an anarchical rejection of it. With Ayn Rand-devoted Tea Partiers seeking to delegitimize any and all common efforts to serve the common good, I hope it is not too out-of-fashion to uphold that state as an instrument for realizing a better society. In "Into the Fire," the men and women who died going up the stairs of twin towers were public servants. They weren't seeking glory or self-aggrandizement. They weren't Randian self-interest maximizers. They were acted out of the duty to the state erected to protect and (as it says on the squad car doors) serve that society. In one song, and throughout the album that followed it, Springsteen establishes two key tenets -- or perhaps merely aspirations. First, that his country can be redeemed by the faith, hope, and love of its people, and second, that sacrificial heroes of 9/11 provide an enduring example of how to make that happen.<br />
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The second reason why "Into the Fire" is, for me, a progressive anthem, requires a minor digression:<br />
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After 9/11, an unfortunate battle of the anthems -- of the national kind -- emerged. For me, that awkward, atonal poem by Francis Scott Key (from a war, now 200 years ago, that we effectively lost) became suddenly and unexpectedly relevant. "Does that star spangled banner yet wave" even after the British kicked us in the teeth and burned down our capital? Yes, yes it does -- o'er the land of the free and the home of the brave. The United States took the Brits' best hit and somehow emerged spiritually intact; arguably, much stronger for it.<br />
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Admittedly, after 189 years, the theme had grown a little quaint. Perhaps racial divisions, unfettered economic liberalism, and, by the end of the twentieth century, a culture of consumerism has undermined the spiritual intact-ness. Singing "The Star Spangled Banner" was for right wing politicians appealing for the commitment to both. If you were progressive, the national anthem was a thorny reminder of unreflective patriotism run amok. (And damned hard to sing at that.)<br />
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But then the United States got kicked in the teeth again. When those towers went down, all of a sudden the poem of resilience in the face of an assault -- an assault that took an awful human toll, but was ultimately one waged against the things, for better or for worse, America stood for -- had deep, resonant meaning. So some cowardly bastards figured out how to turn an airplane into a bomb and used it to take down America's tallest buildings and kill thousands of Americans (as "we all" were that day). Among the myriad reasons they might have had for doing so, the fact that they did because they had no respect for the openness, the freedom, the community -- the lives, dammit -- that made the country what it was. So yes, a statement about American resilience, well, that was relevant in way I had never dreamed it could be on September 10, 2001. What's more, the national anthem started to make us ask ourselves just what were those values really were -- not just those values that led some zealots to fly planes into buildings; but more importantly those values that led hundreds of police and firefighters to charge into those buildings as they were collapsing into dust. (The subsequent betrayal of those values gave rise to Springsteen's equally masterful follow-up, <i>Devils and Dust</i>, as well as his public support for the Kerry campaign in 2004.)<br />
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But a funny, terrible thing happened on the way to the re-discovery of the national anthem. "God Bless America" became the signature post-9/11 tune. For many, the lesson of 9/11 was apparently that one needed to respond to religious fanatics by claiming that God loved us more than them. (Never mind the implication that we might now be playing the game of religious fanaticism ourselves.) Congress took the lead, assembling on the steps of the Capitol on the evening of September 11. I've got practically nothing to add to George Carlin's take on the phrase, except to say that his objections are amplified tenfold when the phrase makes the transition from political tagline to ostentatiously warbled pseudo-hymn.<br />
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And so it was. At least as the battle of the anthems played out, we rejected the opportunity to rediscover what it means to be a nation of ideals, and just went with a literally "Holier than thou" boast/taunt that actually defied one of the core principles (religious freedom) on which the country is based.<br />
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For me, then, "Into the Fire" succeeds as the progressive alternative because it picks up upon the themes of resilience -- and of implicit reverence for founding values established by redeemed-but-rejected national anthem. Indeed, "Into the Fire" even elucidates the meaning behind the "the Star Spangled Banner's" admittedly convoluted language. What's more, as with its star-spangled antecedent, it is a heckuva lot better than the alternatives. These were mostly supplied by Toby Keith-inspired country artists, rousting up some good ole boy mischief as if this were about being goaded into some global bar fight in which the good guys win because they are better cowboys. They're laughable in comparison to "Into the Fire" -- but sadly they received exponentially more airtime. (For what it's worth, Alan Jackson's "Where Were You (When the World Stopped Turning)" strikes a nearly identical chord as "Into the Fire." But with all due respect to Alan Jackson, gimme Bruce.)<br />
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"Into the Fire" encourages one to rededicate oneself to a life -- to a society -- based upon principle, upon ideals, and upon dedication to fellow man (and woman). And what could be more progressive than that?<br />
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<b><span style="font-size: large;">Other Resources</span></b><br />
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Song available on Bruce Springsteen, <i><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Rising_(album)">The Rising</a> </i>(2002), track 2.<br />
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Full lyrics <a href="http://www.lyricsfreak.com/b/bruce+springsteen/into+the+fire_20025188.html">here</a>.<br />
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Two live performances of the song by Bruce Springsteen:<br />
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<a href="http://wqyk.radio.com/music-videos/Toby+Keith/Courtesy+Of+The+Red,+White+And+Blue+(The+Angry+American)/USDWV0300033">Toby Keith</a> (skip to 1:54 for the money verse).<br />
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Daryl Worley's "Have You Forgotten":<br />
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</div>Adam Jones, Ph.D.http://www.blogger.com/profile/02040417664765882878noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7402289313850824579.post-33527887143690337352012-02-10T13:21:00.000-08:002019-01-05T21:53:02.677-08:00"Short Memory" - Midnight Oil<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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A highlight from Midnight Oil's third album, <i>10-9-8-7-6-5-4-3-2-1 </i>(1982), this is one of rock's most eloquent protests against imperialism, neo-colonialism, and forgetting. The first two verses consist of little more than a litany of passing references to mass atrocities. But the recitation builds in power as lead singer <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Garrett">Peter Garrett</a> reels off the stark syllables -- "Short Memory" perfectly suits his staccato, incantatory vocal style. The second stanza delivers a sardonic broadside against western modernity's homogenizing and deadening nature -- but also against Soviet imperialism (in Afghanistan), an important bit of balance in an otherwise western-focused critique. The overall effect of the song-chant is hypnotic. The chorus and closing call-and-response ("Short memory, must have a ...") is a magnificent self-negation: in singing of historical amnesia, we remember. (See, in a similar vein, the Oils' later classic <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aC4R-i99nlw">"Forgotten Years"</a>, which only barely misses inclusion in this songbook.)<br />
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The Oils' global breakthrough <i>Diesel and Dust </i>(1986) was still several years away, and "Short Memory" never made an international splash as did <a href="http://newanthems.blogspot.com/2012/01/beds-are-burning-midnight-oil.html">"Beds Are Burning"</a>. But it's just as essential an anthem. The melody is as catchy as anything the group recorded, and the playing throughout is sublime. <i>10-9-8 ... </i>found the Oils jelling as the greatest rock and roll unit Australia has produced. Jim Moginie's elegiac keyboards mesh beautifully at the outset with the filigreed guitar work of Martin Rotsey, and the two combine again in the jazzy-dissonant instrumental break. Drummer Rob Hirst provides just the right combination of subtlety and crash throughout.<br />
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The heart of the song's anthemic appeal is in the first two verses and chorus, and one wouldn't want to miss a word when singing it to the forces of empire:<br />
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<i>Conquistador of Mexico, the Zulu and the Navajo</i></div>
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<i>The Belgians in the Congo, short memory</i></div>
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<i>Plantation in Virginia, the Raj in British India</i></div>
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<i>The deadline in South Africa, short memory</i></div>
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<i>The story of El Salvador, the silence of Hiroshima</i></div>
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<i>Destruction of Cambodia, short memory</i></div>
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<i>Short memory, must have a short memory ...</i></div>
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<i>The sight of hotels by the Nile, the designated Hilton style</i></div>
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<i>With running water specially bought, short memory</i></div>
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<i>A smallish man Afghanistan, a watchdog in a nervous land</i></div>
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<i>They're only there to lend a hand, short memory</i></div>
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<i>Wake up in sweat at dead of night</i></div>
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<i>And in the tents new rifles, hey, short memory ...</i><br />
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One could also build a whole scat-singing, drum-thumping improvisation around Garrett's closing polemic: "If you read the history books you'll see the same things happen again and again / Repeat repeat short memory they've all got it / When are we going to play it again / Got a short, got a short ...," et cetera.<br />
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Peter Garrett went on, of course, to become an Australian member of parliament. In 2010, some cited this song in accusing Garrett of having a "short memory" himself, when he declared his support for the US-Australia military alliance that the Oils had once pilloried in songs like <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w29r322jqlY">"US Forces"</a> and <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RsR6yeIxvJ4">"Hercules"</a>. <br />
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The original recording of "Short Memory", from <i>10-9-8-7-6-5-4-3-2-1</i>:<br />
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The Oils performing the song in a 1983 show at the Sydney Entertainment Centre (included on the <i>20,000 Watt R.S.L. </i>DVD):<br />
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My favorite live version is from the "Oils on the Water" surprise show on Goat Island in Sydney Harbour in 1985, kicked off by Garrett's amusingly demented rant:<br />
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<b><span style="font-size: large;">Other resources</span></b><br />
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Originally released on Midnight Oil, <i><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/10,_9,_8,_7,_6,_5,_4,_3,_2,_1">10-9-9-7-6-5-4-3-2-1</a></i> (1982), track 3.<br />
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Full lyrics <a href="https://www.lyrics.com/lyric/2453424/Midnight+Oil/Short+Memory">here</a>.<br />
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Superjesus have a cover version of "Short Memory" on the Oils tribute album, <i>The Power and the Passion</i>:<br />
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Adam Jones, Ph.D.http://www.blogger.com/profile/02040417664765882878noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7402289313850824579.post-67928282240951473272012-02-09T17:58:00.001-08:002019-01-05T18:44:59.694-08:00"Philadelphia Freedom" - Elton John<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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At the mid-seventies peak of his career, Elton John -- aided by his American lyricist, Bernie Taupin -- was so prolific that he could deliver a studio album every six or eight months, and still save a stupendous cut like "Philadelphia Freedom" for a stand-alone single. John and Taupin's tribute to <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Billie_Jean_King">Billie Jean King</a>'s US <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philadelphia_Freedoms">tennis team</a> -- and to the spirit of freedom that Philadelphia symbolizes for US patriots -- went straight to the top of the charts in 1975, and became a much-played theme song during the bicentennial summer of 1976. A loving nod to Philly soul, "Philadelphia Freedom" also incarnated its spirit. It's the "blackest" of Elton's hits, and the funkiest.<br />
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Progressive activists in the United States often find themselves tarred as "anti-American," with patriotic discourse now largely a right-wing preserve. Moreover, songs evincing a progressive patriotism are always prone to be appropriated and corrupted by the Right -- the fate of Bruce Springsteen's "Born in the USA" under Ronald Reagan being <a href="http://www.overthinkingit.com/2009/07/03/born-in-the-usa-our-most-misappropriated-patriotic-song/">an emblematic example</a>.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhXqibO3Sc2rE1heyYMqpY7c4qqke5oJkoxSszWPQEvC39Ab1QYY0G1WovXHsXX7VwJbqNSe5w-DLPHpRB-kWiQsXUKQZ3WmRIOPSLECOzFY3yFAGV71kUNfnrMnvpP3rGnfvT4Sl5LkL4/s400/EJ+01.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="297" data-original-width="400" height="148" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhXqibO3Sc2rE1heyYMqpY7c4qqke5oJkoxSszWPQEvC39Ab1QYY0G1WovXHsXX7VwJbqNSe5w-DLPHpRB-kWiQsXUKQZ3WmRIOPSLECOzFY3yFAGV71kUNfnrMnvpP3rGnfvT4Sl5LkL4/s400/EJ+01.jpg" width="200" /></a>For this reason, it's worth seeking out songs that tap the purest patriotic wellspring, and can be directed to a progressive purpose -- as, indeed, Billie Jean King was a powerfully progressive figure in the 1970s, breaking barriers for women and openly LGBT public figures. One suspects that Elton, still in the closet at this time, responded personally to this aspect of the "Philadelphia Freedom" tennis squad, and indeed the song would sound great at a gay-rights rally. But with its rollicking and crowd-pleasing flavor, it's worth pulling out to warm up any demo or sit-in, especially one in an iconic public space or outside a government building. <br />
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The lyrics are some of Taupin's best, forsaking his rustic proclivities and literary pretensions for a personable, peppily urban style. John's exuberant vocals, the playing of his crack backing band, and Gene Page's orchestral arrangement -- all lend an indelible punch and swing to what is arguably Elton's crowning moment:<br />
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<i>I used to be a rolling stone you know, if a cause was right</i></div>
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<i>I'd leave to find the answer on the road</i></div>
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<i>I used to be a heart beating for someone, but the times have changed</i></div>
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<i>The less I say the more my work gets done</i></div>
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<i>'Cause I live and breathe this Philadelphia freedom</i></div>
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<i>From the day that I was born I've waved the flag</i></div>
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<i>Philadelphia freedom took me knee high to a man</i></div>
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<i>Yeah, gave me peace of mind my daddy never had</i></div>
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<i>Oh, Philadelphia freedom, shine on me and I love you</i></div>
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<i>Shine the light through the eyes of the ones left behind</i></div>
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<i>Shine the light, shine the light, shine the light, won't you shine the light</i></div>
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<i>Philadelphia freedom, I love you, yes I do!</i></div>
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For anthemic purposes, the second verse could perhaps be skipped, the chorus reprised, and the closing call-and-response of "I love, love, love you, yes I do! -- Philadelphia freedom ..." repeated <i>ad infinitum</i>. Just let the Tea Party try to appropriate the language of liberty after that.<br />
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Here's the original recording of "Philadelphia Freedom":<br />
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Elton's performance of the song on <i>Soul Train </i>in 1975 was a boundary-busting move that reflected the warm reception of the song by African-American audiences. He is clearly singing over a tape, but it's a spirited vocal nonetheless:<br />
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<b><span style="font-size: large;">Other Resources</span></b><br />
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"Philadelphia Freedom" was released as a single in February 1975, backed with Elton's live duet with John Lennon on "I Saw Her Standing There." Its first album appearance was on Elton John, <i><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elton_John's_Greatest_Hits_Volume_II">Greatest Hits Volume II</a></i> (1977), track 6.<br />
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Full lyrics <a href="http://www.songlyrics.com/elton-john/philadelphia-freedom-lyrics/">here</a>.<br />
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<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philadelphia_Freedom_(song)">Wikipedia page</a> for "Philadelphia Freedom."<br />
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There's a book called <i><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Philadelphia-Freedom-Memoir-Rights-Lawyer/dp/0472033107">Philadelphia Freedom: Memoir of a Civil Rights Lawyer</a></i>, by David Kairys.<br />
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Elton performing the song with the Backstreet Boys (!) at the Grammy Awards ceremony in Philadelphia in 2000:<br />
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Who knew Ike & Tina Turner did a cover version of the song?<br />
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There's also a pretty groovy rendition by Hall & Oates for the <i>Two Rooms </i>tribute album:<br />
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Adam Jones, Ph.D.http://www.blogger.com/profile/02040417664765882878noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7402289313850824579.post-20421935294981393022012-01-23T14:01:00.000-08:002012-01-23T14:48:02.388-08:00"Shaking the Tree" - Youssou N'Dour feat. Peter Gabriel<i>[under construction]</i><br />
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The original recording/video of the N'Dour/Gabriel duet:<br />
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Here's Youssou N'Dour and Peter Gabriel duetting on "Shaking the Tree" in a 1998 Amnesty International benefit:<br />
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Gabriel's definitive live version is from the Secret World tour (2003), with the ravishing Paula Cole on vocals:<br />
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</b></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="text-align: -webkit-auto;">Song available on Youssou N'Dour's 1989 album </span><i style="text-align: -webkit-auto;">The Lion</i><span style="text-align: -webkit-auto;">, and Peter Gabriel's collection </span><i style="text-align: -webkit-auto;">Shaking the Tree: Sixteen Golden Greats </i><span style="text-align: -webkit-auto;">(2002).</span> </div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="text-align: -webkit-auto;"><br />
</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="text-align: -webkit-auto;"><a href="http://www.progressive.org/youssou_n_dour.html">A Voice from Senegal: Youssou N'Dour</a> (<i>The Progressive</i>, February 2010)</span></div>Adam Jones, Ph.D.http://www.blogger.com/profile/02040417664765882878noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7402289313850824579.post-7677841641379339152012-01-22T15:40:00.001-08:002019-01-05T20:49:56.710-08:00"Rise Up" - The Parachute Club<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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The funky, joyful "Rise Up," by the Toronto band The Parachute Club, is a little-known early-eighties gem ripe for a revival. As a pro-peace, pro-feminist, pro-LGBT anthem, it's hard to beat -- one of those songs that welcomes everyone to the party. At heart, it's a hymn to diversity and the power of solidarity, easily adaptable to diverse progressive circumstances:<br />
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<i>(Rise up rise up)</i></div>
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<i>Oh rise and share your power</i></div>
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<i>(Rise up rise up)</i></div>
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<i>Were dancing into the sun</i></div>
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<i>(Rise up rise up)</i></div>
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<i>It's time for celebration</i></div>
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<i>(Rise up rise up)</i></div>
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<i>Spirit's time has come</i></div>
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<i>We want lovin' we want laughter again</i></div>
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<i>We want heartbeat</i></div>
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<i>We want madness to end</i></div>
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<i>We want dancin'</i></div>
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<i>We want to run in the streets</i></div>
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<i>We want freedom to live in this peace</i></div>
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<i>We want power</i></div>
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<i>We want to make it ok</i></div>
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<i>Want to be singin' at the end of the day</i></div>
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<i>Children to breathe a new life</i></div>
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<i>We want freedom to love who we please</i><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/1694008042/IMG_3518_400x400.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="400" data-original-width="400" height="320" src="https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/1694008042/IMG_3518_400x400.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i><b>A recent photo of Lorraine Segato,</b></i><br />
<i><b>lead singer of The Parachute Club.</b></i></td></tr>
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<i>Talkin' 'bout the right time to be workin' for peace</i></div>
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<i>Wantin' all the tension in the world to ease</i></div>
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<i>This tightrope's gotta learn how to bend</i></div>
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<i>We're makin' new plans</i></div>
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<i>Gonna start it again</i></div>
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<i>(Rise up rise up)</i></div>
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<i>Oh rise and share your power</i></div>
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<i>(Rise up rise up)</i></div>
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<i>Were dancing into the sun</i></div>
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<i>(Rise up rise up)</i></div>
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<i>It's time for celebration</i></div>
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<i>(Rise up rise up)</i></div>
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<i>Spirit's time has come</i></div>
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For Canadian progressives, "Rise Up" has additional and somewhat melancholy connotations. It was the favorite song of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_Layton">Jack Layton</a>, late leader of the center-left New Democratic Party, one of Canada's most (read: only) respected and beloved politicians. Layton used it as his campaign song, as well as at his wedding to Toronto NDP member of Parliament <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olivia_Chow">Olivia Chow</a>. And it was the song that Parachute Club singer Lorraine Segato performed at <a href="http://digitaljournal.com/article/310861">his state funeral</a> in Toronto in October 2011.<br />
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Here's the original version of "Rise Up," from <i>Parachute Club </i>(1983):<br />
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<iframe allowfullscreen='allowfullscreen' webkitallowfullscreen='webkitallowfullscreen' mozallowfullscreen='mozallowfullscreen' width='320' height='266' src='https://www.youtube.com/embed/IW2OJMXu0ns?feature=player_embedded' frameborder='0'></iframe></div>
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The video for "Rise Up," filmed on Toronto streets:<br />
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<iframe allowfullscreen="" class="YOUTUBE-iframe-video" data-thumbnail-src="https://i.ytimg.com/vi/JcC-SbcihKI/0.jpg" frameborder="0" height="266" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/JcC-SbcihKI?feature=player_embedded" width="320"></iframe></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: large;">Other Resources</span></b><br />
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Thanks to my friend Catherine Novak for suggesting this song.<br />
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Available on The Parachute Club's self-titled album (1983), which appears to be out of print, and on <i>Wild Zone: The Essential Parachute Club</i> (2006), track 1.<br />
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<a href="https://is1-ssl.mzstatic.com/image/thumb/Music/91/a7/d8/mzi.kdlajsxi.jpg/600x600bf.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="600" data-original-width="600" height="200" src="https://is1-ssl.mzstatic.com/image/thumb/Music/91/a7/d8/mzi.kdlajsxi.jpg/600x600bf.png" width="200" /></a></div>
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<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rise_Up_(Parachute_Club_song)">Wikipedia page</a> for "Rise Up."<br />
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Here's the disco remix of "Rise Up":<br />
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<iframe allowfullscreen='allowfullscreen' webkitallowfullscreen='webkitallowfullscreen' mozallowfullscreen='mozallowfullscreen' width='320' height='266' src='https://www.youtube.com/embed/ntzlsrjrnmU?feature=player_embedded' frameborder='0'></iframe></div>
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The Parachute Club performing the song to close the Toronto Pride concert (2008):<br />
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<iframe allowfullscreen='allowfullscreen' webkitallowfullscreen='webkitallowfullscreen' mozallowfullscreen='mozallowfullscreen' width='320' height='266' src='https://www.youtube.com/embed/S3Rc7A4dE2k?feature=player_embedded' frameborder='0'></iframe></div>
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In 1999, McCain somehow secured rights to use "Rise Up" in (gasp) a pizza commercial. Here's an entertaining account of <a href="http://afewtastefulsnaps.wordpress.com/2011/04/18/rise-up-you-know-who-else-likes-gay-protest-anthems/">how Lorraine Segato then kicked ass</a>. In it, Segato describes the song as "about sexual diversity and sexual equality." "'Rise Up', she explains, grew out of Toronto's multiracial gay and lesbian community of the early '80s. In a time of bathhouse raids and emerging fears about a new, deadly, sexually transmitted disease, Queen Street West formed the nexus of the hip gay music scene. Parachute Club opened the Bamboo Club across the street from the new MuchMusic and the band's poppy tune quickly became an anthem for the gay community, often identified with coming out of the closet. Its catchy hook, however, would also make it an anthem for political groups unaware that the rousing refrain was not a call to arms, but rather, well, a call to arms. As the song goes, 'We want freedom, to love who we please'. Ms. Segato has heard Rise Up played at Liberal party conventions, at marches to protest Chinese human-rights abuses, abortion rallies, and even on Christian radio stations in Europe."</div>
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Adam Jones, Ph.D.http://www.blogger.com/profile/02040417664765882878noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7402289313850824579.post-46624292737169680742012-01-22T13:54:00.000-08:002019-01-05T11:36:30.926-08:00"Freedom '90" - George Michael<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<a href="https://storiescdn.hornet.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/23134746/george-michael-politics-1000x500.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="400" data-original-width="800" height="200" src="https://storiescdn.hornet.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/23134746/george-michael-politics-1000x500.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
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Was George Michael (1963 - 2016) the greatest white male pop singer since Presley and Sinatra? He had his creative ups and downs over the years, but that golden voice rarely wavered, whether on record or in his festive live shows.</div>
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<a href="http://t3.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcTrI8zKIDA7CVyGbOU10z0NWzTXzt-a8DFimsbMpB6pG6zB4e46JmkU44R8cQ" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://t3.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcTrI8zKIDA7CVyGbOU10z0NWzTXzt-a8DFimsbMpB6pG6zB4e46JmkU44R8cQ" /></a></div>
"Freedom '90" matches <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=izGwDsrQ1eQ">"Careless Whisper"</a> as one of Michael's signature songs. It's a rapturous and rather obvious anthem, with a lyric of independence from corporate chains and a world of glamorous surfaces.<br />
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The irony, of course, and why "Freedom '90" might be a controversial choice for some, is that George Michael was one of the most glamorous and sartorially-conscious figures in pop, and the equally iconic video features an endless parade of lip-synching supermodels. Exploitative? Kitschy? Possibly. But it's also hauntingly resonant, for me -- somehow both self-referential and self-effacing.<br />
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<span style="text-align: center;">To trim the song for anthem purposes, eliminating the MTV and boy-band references and such, I propose the following text:</span><br />
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<i>I won't let you down<br />
I will not give you up<br />
Gotta have some faith in the sound<br />
It's the one good thing that I've got<br />
I won't let you down<br />
So please don't give me up<br />
cause I would really, really love to stick around, oh yeah<br />
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Heaven knows I was just a young boy<br />
Didn't know what I wanted to be<br />
I was every little hungry schoolgirl's pride and joy<br />
And I guess it was enough for me<br />
To win the race? A prettier face!<br />
Brand new clothes and a big fat place<br />
On your rock and roll TV<br />
But today the way I play the game is not the same <br />
No way<br />
Think I'm gonna get myself happy<br />
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I think there's something you should know<br />
I think it's time I told you so<br />
There's something deep inside of me<br />
There's someone else I've got to be<br />
Take back your picture in a frame<br />
Take back your singing in the rain<br />
I just hope you understand<br />
Sometimes the clothes do not make the man</i></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjBglAw-rtka8mR9Bmlef8CArjpdfQLO6MzDb1ND1_ggSNmKuxrrimbWPW0cJK7-gBOnh7jD2YWvjFskNjUzkmuJYdRHL97NmqU1Gh4SVWdFWbmFr824zY2BgCUDRqtLr3LmaC-peTT90WE/s1600/99b-george-michael-freedom-90.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" height="254" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjBglAw-rtka8mR9Bmlef8CArjpdfQLO6MzDb1ND1_ggSNmKuxrrimbWPW0cJK7-gBOnh7jD2YWvjFskNjUzkmuJYdRHL97NmqU1Gh4SVWdFWbmFr824zY2BgCUDRqtLr3LmaC-peTT90WE/s320/99b-george-michael-freedom-90.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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<i>All we have to do now</i></div>
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<i> Is take these lies and make them true somehow<br />
All we have to see<br />
Is that I don't belong to you<br />
And you don't belong to me yea yea<br />
Freedom,<br />
Freedom,<br />
Freedom<br />
You've gotta give for what you take<br />
Freedom,<br />
Freedom,<br />
Freedom<br />
You've gotta give for what you take<br />
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I think there's something you should know<br />
I think it's time I stopped the show<br />
There's something deep inside of me<br />
There's someone I forgot to be<br />
Take back your picture in a frame<br />
Don't think that I'll be back again<br />
I just hope you understand <br />
Sometimes the clothes do not make the man</i><br />
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<span style="text-align: left;">Even that grand gospel refrain, standing alone -- <i>"Freedom ... Freedom ... Freedom ... You've gotta give for what you take"</i> -- is an excellent chant for anyone demanding, e.g., the liberty of a prisoner or detainee. The longer version could be deployed in an anti-corporate context, particularly when the targeted corporation is identified with more consumerist or cosmetic brands. It also has strong feminist overtones, and can be sung together with Nirvana's <a href="http://newanthems.blogspot.com/2012/01/been-son-nirvana.html">"Been A Son"</a> to protest the physical burdens and expectations placed on females. Lastly, Michael is one of the most prominently "out" gay artists, and activists might make the song their own when denouncing destructive anti-LGBT stereotypes, harassment, and violence.</span><br />
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Here's the original version of "Freedom '90," from <i>Listen Without Prejudice, Vol. 1 </i>(1990):<br />
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<iframe allowfullscreen="" class="YOUTUBE-iframe-video" data-thumbnail-src="https://i.ytimg.com/vi/GbgO_PzPExE/0.jpg" frameborder="0" height="266" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/GbgO_PzPExE?feature=player_embedded" width="320"></iframe></div>
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The famous/notorious video (directed by David Fincher!):<br />
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<iframe allowfullscreen="" class="YOUTUBE-iframe-video" data-thumbnail-src="https://i.ytimg.com/vi/diYAc7gB-0A/0.jpg" frameborder="0" height="266" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/diYAc7gB-0A?feature=player_embedded" width="320"></iframe></div>
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A thrilling "unplugged" performance for MTV (1991):<br />
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<iframe allowfullscreen='allowfullscreen' webkitallowfullscreen='webkitallowfullscreen' mozallowfullscreen='mozallowfullscreen' width='320' height='266' src='https://www.youtube.com/embed/QulBUdp-SAQ?feature=player_embedded' frameborder='0'></iframe></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: large;">Other Resources</span></b><br />
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Song available on George Michael, <i><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Listen_Without_Prejudice_Vol._1">Listen Without Prejudice, Vol. 1</a> </i>(1990), track 2.</div>
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<a href="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/e/e0/George_Michael-Listen_Without_Prejudice,_Vol._1_(album_cover).jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/e/e0/George_Michael-Listen_Without_Prejudice,_Vol._1_(album_cover).jpg" width="200" /></a></div>
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Full lyrics <a href="https://www.lyrics.com/lyric/2597044/George+Michael/Freedom+90">here</a>.</div>
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<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom!_%2790">Wikipedia page</a> for "Freedom '90."<br />
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<i>Vanity Fair </i>paid the video <a href="https://www.vanityfair.com/style/2016/12/george-michael-freedom-video">a fine tribute</a> after Michael's death in 2016.<br />
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Michael performing "Freedom '90" live at Wembley Stadium, 2007: "This song is the most important word in the world right now ... Don't let anyone take this away from you":<br />
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<iframe allowfullscreen='allowfullscreen' webkitallowfullscreen='webkitallowfullscreen' mozallowfullscreen='mozallowfullscreen' width='320' height='266' src='https://www.youtube.com/embed/QXaHbUkCpP4?feature=player_embedded' frameborder='0'></iframe></div>
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Adam Jones, Ph.D.http://www.blogger.com/profile/02040417664765882878noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7402289313850824579.post-35613479500255150282012-01-20T10:39:00.001-08:002019-01-05T11:19:17.932-08:00"Fearless" - Pink Floyd<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://pastdaily.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/Pink-Floyd-resize-1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="534" data-original-width="800" height="266" src="https://pastdaily.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/Pink-Floyd-resize-1.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><b><i>Pink Floyd around the time of the release of </i>Meddle <i>(1971).</i></b></td></tr>
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This obscure but beloved Pink Floyd number, from perhaps their first fully-realized record, also possesses one of the most gorgeous gossamer melodies in the Floyd canon -- up there with <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IXdNnw99-Ic">"Wish You Were Here"</a> and <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TFjmvfRvjTc">"Hey You"</a>. As sensitively sung and strummed by lead guitarist David Gilmour (second from left above), it's not an obvious anthem in the way of <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=34ZmKbe5oG4">"Another Brick in the Wall, Pt. 2"</a> (which I exclude from this list, because I'm not sure the message of "we don't need no education" has much progressive potential). On closer examination, though, the lyrics of "Fearless" -- apart from being exquisitely crafted -- contain considerable athemic potential:<br />
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<i>You say the hill's too steep to climb,<br />
Chiding!<br />
You say you'd like to see me try,<br />
Climbing!<br />
You pick the place and I'll choose the time<br />
And I'll climb<br />
The hill in my own way<br />
Just wait a while, for the right day<br />
And as I rise above the treeline and the clouds<br />
I look down hear the sound of the things you said today.</i><br />
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<i>Fearlessly the idiot faced the crowd, smiling</i><br />
<i> Merciless, the magistrate turns 'round, frowning<br />
And who's the fool who wears the crown?<br />
Go down in your own way<br />
And everyday is the right day<br />
And as you rise above the fearlines in his frown<br />
You look down<br />
Hear the sound of the faces in the crowd.</i></div>
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Unlike later, more aggressive Floyd cuts from the Roger Waters-dominated period (notably on the albums <i><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Animals_(Pink_Floyd_album)">Animals</a> </i>and <i><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Wall">The Wall</a></i>), authority figures are here <i>personified</i> (in the form of the "merciless" magistrate -- can't you just see the "fearlines in his frown"?), rather than (brilliantly) caricatured, <i>à la</i> the lawyer and judge in Waters's <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FCMHmDnfD6I">"The Trial"</a>.<br />
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<a name='more'></a>The idiot/fool makes a perfect counterpoint to the magistrate -- when "fearlessly [he] face[s] the crowd, smiling," it's hard not to smile with him. He reminds us of the Foolish spirit that has imbued so much sociocultural transformation and progressive activism, from the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surrealism">surrealists</a> and <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Situationist_International">situationists</a>, through the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beat_Generation">Beats</a>, to Johnny Rotten and the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guerrilla_Girls">Guerrilla Girls</a>. The subversive unmasking of power -- <i>"And who's the fool who wears the crown?" -- </i>is a final, delightful conceit.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhbElSN3vyCl-4cWYKWKoRXH7LcuH44g6vPSzczcdW9ZxEBnzHFAEuyeacoiS2atXr5cjZgWVCR6XBaerV0K9lN-MK0JZxLojV5tvxXQyHZgVKE2CoqeeJMKU7r-3GE_DUGYrQlGjvypBD9/s1600/fearless.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="340" data-original-width="340" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhbElSN3vyCl-4cWYKWKoRXH7LcuH44g6vPSzczcdW9ZxEBnzHFAEuyeacoiS2atXr5cjZgWVCR6XBaerV0K9lN-MK0JZxLojV5tvxXQyHZgVKE2CoqeeJMKU7r-3GE_DUGYrQlGjvypBD9/s320/fearless.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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Like other songs on our list, "Fearless" charts an upward and uplifting trajectory (see <a href="http://newanthems.blogspot.com/2012/01/rise-up-parachute-club.html">"Rise Up"</a>, <a href="http://newanthems.blogspot.com/2012/01/things-can-only-get-better-howard-jones.html">"Things Can Only Get Better"</a>, <a href="http://newanthems.blogspot.com/2012/01/uprising-muse.html">"Uprising"</a>). Here, though, the lyrics take us to the summit and beyond, offering a bird's-eye view that somehow celebrates humanity as it lightly mocks its foibles and figureheads.<br />
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<span style="text-align: left;">Here's the original recording of "Fearless," from the 1971 album </span><i style="text-align: left;">Meddle </i><span style="text-align: left;">(also known as "the one before </span><i style="text-align: left;"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Dark_Side_of_the_Moon">The Dark Side of the Moon</a></i><span style="text-align: left;">"). The delirious crowd singalong and chanting at the end ("You'll Never Walk Alone," recorded live at Liverpool FC's football stadium) bolsters the anthemic feel:</span><br />
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<iframe allowfullscreen="" class="YOUTUBE-iframe-video" data-thumbnail-src="https://i.ytimg.com/vi/sl_apx8JoMw/0.jpg" frameborder="0" height="266" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/sl_apx8JoMw?feature=player_embedded" width="320"></iframe></div>
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I know of no live performance or recording of the song by Pink Floyd.<br />
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<b><span style="font-size: large;">Other Resources</span></b><br />
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Available on Pink Floyd, <i><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meddle">Meddle</a> </i>(1971), track 3.<br />
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<a href="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/d/d4/MeddleCover.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="196" src="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/d/d4/MeddleCover.jpeg" width="200" /></a></div>
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A <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fearless_(Pink_Floyd_song)">Wikipedia stub</a> for "Fearless".<br />
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A reggified remix by The Orb/DJ Fish:<br />
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<iframe allowfullscreen='allowfullscreen' webkitallowfullscreen='webkitallowfullscreen' mozallowfullscreen='mozallowfullscreen' width='320' height='266' src='https://www.youtube.com/embed/kX32GUge-1c?feature=player_embedded' frameborder='0'></iframe></div>
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A live cover version by The Black Crowes (2010):</div>
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When I think of the Fool figure in contemporary society and culture, I can't help thinking of Greil Marcus's <i><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lipstick_Traces:_A_Secret_History_of_the_20th_Century">Lipstick Traces: A Secret History of the 20th Century</a> -- </i>one of that century's essential works of cultural criticism. Its exploration of the situationist/surrealist strand, and its deployment of Johnny Rotten/John Lydon as a central "character," is quite revelatory.</div>
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Adam Jones, Ph.D.http://www.blogger.com/profile/02040417664765882878noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7402289313850824579.post-60933058117707697582012-01-18T12:54:00.001-08:002019-01-05T22:02:33.765-08:00"Southern Man" - Neil Young<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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Lord knows I love my southern friends. Lord knows things there have improved a lot since the sixties. But Lord also knows this part of the United States remains a redoubt of Confederacy nostalgists, deep-fried wingnuts, shrieking fundamentalists, and all-round rednecks. So Lord knows we still need "Southern Man," the hard-charging warhorse from Neil Young's third solo album, <i>After the Gold Rush</i>. It's one of two 1970 tunes by the Canadian singer-songwriter to squeak onto our 1970-and-after list, alongside Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young's timeless protest anthem, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l1PrUU2S_iw">"Ohio"</a>.<br />
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The lyrics have something of the sting of the "bullwhips cracking" in the chorus:<br />
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<i>Southern man</i><br />
<i>better keep your head</i><br />
<i>Don't forget</i><br />
<i>what your good book said</i><br />
<i>Southern change</i><br />
<i>gonna come at last</i><br />
<i>Now your crosses</i><br />
<i>are burning fast</i><br />
<i>Southern man</i></div>
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<i>I saw cotton</i><br />
<i>and I saw black</i><br />
<i>Tall white mansions</i><br />
<i>and little shacks.</i><br />
<i>Southern man</i><br />
<i>when will you</i><br />
<i>pay them back?</i><br />
<i>I heard screamin'</i><br />
<i>and bullwhips cracking</i><br />
<i>How long? How long?</i></div>
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<a name='more'></a>At which point, given the more oblique lyrics that follow, one can go back to the beginning, or maybe play an air guitar solo in tribute to Neil. It's a good refrain for anti-racist, anti-fundamentalist, and anti-redneck demos of all stripes -- particularly those with a southern location, or protesting a southern policy/atrocity (attacks on undocumented migrants, KKK/neo-nazi activity, and so on).<br />
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Here's the studio original of "Southern Man," from <i>After the Gold Rush </i>(1970):<br />
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<iframe allowfullscreen="" class="YOUTUBE-iframe-video" data-thumbnail-src="https://i.ytimg.com/vi/m5FCcDEA6mY/0.jpg" frameborder="0" height="266" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/m5FCcDEA6mY?feature=player_embedded" width="320"></iframe></div>
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A strong, long live version by Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young, from <i>Four-Way Street </i>(1971; concert 1970), with a lot of guitar duelling between Neil and Stephen Stills:<br />
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<iframe allowfullscreen="" class="YOUTUBE-iframe-video" data-thumbnail-src="https://i.ytimg.com/vi/iX5IEd15u5A/0.jpg" frameborder="0" height="266" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/iX5IEd15u5A?feature=player_embedded" width="320"></iframe></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: large;">Other Resources</span></b><br />
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Song available on Neil Young, <i><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/After_the_Gold_Rush">After the Gold Rush</a> </i>(1970), track 4.<br />
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Full lyrics <a href="https://genius.com/Neil-young-and-crazy-horse-southern-man-lyrics">here</a>.<br />
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<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southern_Man_(song)">Wikipedia page</a> for "Southern Man."<br />
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Lynyrd Skynyrd's "Sweet Home Alabama" (1974), with its line "I hope Neil Young will remember / A southern man don't need him around anyhow." Probably they'll sing this back at us, so we'd better be ready. Neil's response was more than diplomatic, according to Wikipedia: "Young has said that he is a fan of both 'Sweet Home Alabama' and Ronnie Van Zant, the lead vocalist for Lynyrd Skynyrd. 'They play like they mean it,' Young said in 1976. 'I'm proud to have my name in a song like theirs.' Young has also been known to play 'Sweet Home Alabama' in concert occasionally."<br />
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Adam Jones, Ph.D.http://www.blogger.com/profile/02040417664765882878noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7402289313850824579.post-26887375255375064092012-01-18T12:47:00.000-08:002019-01-06T18:19:34.160-08:00"Zombie" - The Cranberries<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<a href="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/1/16/The_Cranberries_-_Zombie.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><br />
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<a href="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/1/16/The_Cranberries_-_Zombie.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" height="188" src="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/1/16/The_Cranberries_-_Zombie.jpg" width="200" /></a><a href="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/1/16/The_Cranberries_-_Zombie.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em; text-align: center;"> </a>I confess when I first heard this song in the mid-'90s, I found it a little grating. So: from grate to great. "Zombie," The Cranberries' signature hit, has grown and deepened with time. It's striking how often I hear it blaring from radios and stereos when I travel the world, from Africa to Asia to Latin America. This brassy, psychologically insightful hymn to peace has become truly universal.<br />
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We have something of a "Zombie" invasion on this list, with two songs bearing that title (see Fela Kuti's Nigerian anthem for the other). The Cranberries' contribution is also one of two songs, together with U2's "Sunday Bloody Sunday", inspired by the Irish interethnic <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/recent/troubles/the_troubles_article_01.shtml">"Troubles"</a> that began in the 1960s. The only specific reference to the Irish case, however, is to "1916," the year of the Easter Uprising against British rule in Ireland. For our purposes, this could just as easily be incorporated as a reference to the First World War (which witnessed its most infamous and iconic battle in that year, at the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_the_Somme">Somme</a>). Oddly, I always heard the keening chorus as "ee-ar-ay," and interpreted it as a denunciation of the IRA (Irish Republican Army, the main Catholic armed force in the Northern Ireland conflict). But what Dolores O'Riordan is declaiming instead is <i>"In your hea-a-a-d"</i> -- and it's the heart of the song's message, conveying how hatreds and conflicts endure by being inculcated anew in impressionable young minds:<br />
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<i>Another head hangs lowly, </i></div>
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<i>Child is slowly taken. </i></div>
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<i>When the violence causes silence, </i></div>
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<i>Who are we mistaken? </i></div>
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<i>But you see, it's not me, it's not my family. </i></div>
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<i>In your head, in your head they are fighting, </i></div>
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<i>With their tanks and their bombs, </i></div>
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<i>And their bombs and their guns. </i></div>
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<i>In your head, in your head, they are crying ...</i><br />
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<i>In your head, in your head, </i></div>
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<i>Zombie, zombie, zombie, </i></div>
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<i>Hey, hey, hey, what's in your head, </i></div>
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<i>In your head, </i></div>
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<i>Zombie, zombie, zombie? </i></div>
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<i>Another mother's breakin', </i></div>
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<i>Heart is taken over. </i></div>
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<i>When the violence causes silence, </i></div>
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<i>We must be mistaken. </i></div>
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<a name='more'></a><i>It's the same old theme since nineteen-sixteen. </i></div>
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<i>In your head, in your head they're still fighting, </i></div>
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<i>With their tanks and their bombs, </i></div>
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<i>And their bombs and their guns. </i></div>
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<i>In your head, in your head, they are dying... </i></div>
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With its insistent, chanted vocal, and a timeless folk melody that's hard to get out of your head, "Zombie" is an ideal anthem for antiwar demonstrations -- particularly those with a feminist/maternal bent. <br />
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Here's the powerful official video for "Zombie". What a titanic voice Dolores O'Riordan summoned for this song -- surely one of the great female vocal performances of the 1990s, even if it took me a while to appreciate it:<br />
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<iframe allowfullscreen="" class="YOUTUBE-iframe-video" data-thumbnail-src="https://i.ytimg.com/vi/6Ejga4kJUts/0.jpg" frameborder="0" height="266" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/6Ejga4kJUts?feature=player_embedded" width="320"></iframe></div>
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Here's a live version from London in the mid-nineties. Tragically, O'Riordan died in an accidental drowning in January 2018:<br />
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<iframe allowfullscreen="" class="YOUTUBE-iframe-video" data-thumbnail-src="https://i.ytimg.com/vi/8MuhFxaT7zo/0.jpg" frameborder="0" height="266" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/8MuhFxaT7zo?feature=player_embedded" width="320"></iframe></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: large;">Other Resources</span></b><br />
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Thanks to Catherine Novak for suggesting this song.<br />
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Available on<i> </i>The Cranberries, <i><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_Need_to_Argue">No Need to Argue</a> </i>(1994), track 4.<br />
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<a href="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/2/2c/CranberriesNoNeedToArgueAlbumcover.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="193" src="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/2/2c/CranberriesNoNeedToArgueAlbumcover.jpg" width="200" /></a></div>
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Full lyrics <a href="https://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/cranberries/zombie.html">here</a>.<br />
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There's a <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zombie_(song)">Wikipedia stub</a> for "Zombie."</div>
Adam Jones, Ph.D.http://www.blogger.com/profile/02040417664765882878noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7402289313850824579.post-1748447921486598412012-01-18T11:00:00.000-08:002019-01-06T18:09:19.749-08:00"You Haven't Done Nothin'" - Stevie Wonder<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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Over the course of four classic albums in the early and mid-1970s (<i>Talking Book</i>, <i>Innervisions</i>, <i>Fulfillingness' First Finale</i>, and <i>Songs in the Key of Life</i>), Stevie Wonder was simply the king of popular music -- to the point that Paul Simon, accepting his Grammy for album of the year in 1976, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Still_Crazy_After_All_These_Years">reserved his final thanks for Stevie</a>, "for not releasing an album last year." We can refer to this broadly as Stevie's "Pre-I-Just-Called-to-Say-I-Love-You Period," and it's refreshing to remember the funk and snarl that he possessed in the prime of his fecund genius.<br />
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Political Stevie was never more vocal and engaged than on "You Haven't Done Nothin'", from <i>Fulfillingness' First Finale </i>(1974). Working with his crack band Wonderlove, and featuring the fabled Jackson 5 on backing vocals, Stevie launched a personal yet universal barrage against US President Richard Nixon for his manifest failure to arrest social decay in America, especially black America. (The song was issued just as Nixon was falling from power in the climax of the Watergate scandal.)<br />
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These are some of the great social-protest lyrics of the seventies, and virtually the whole song (minus or substituting the Jackson 5 shoutouts) merits singing as a progressive anthem. (Or cut it after the eminently kid-friendly interlude of "Do da walk - co co co - Do da walk - naw naw naw - Do da walk - bum bum bum.") Lacking the Nixon-specific language of <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l1PrUU2S_iw">CSN&Y's "Ohio"</a>, but sharing its sense of raw outrage, it seems an excellent choice for protests aimed at calling politicians to account for their broken promises and their disengagement from popular/progressive concerns. In other words, when we pressure leaders to not just talk the talk, but "Do da walk":<br />
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<i>We are amazed but not amused</i></div>
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<i>By all the things you say that you'll do</i></div>
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<i>Though much concerned but not involved</i></div>
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<i>With decisions that are made by you.</i></div>
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<i>But we are sick and tired of hearing your song</i></div>
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<i>Telling how you are gonna change right from wrong</i></div>
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<i>'Cause if you really want to hear our views</i></div>
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<i>You haven't done nothing!</i></div>
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<a name='more'></a><i>It's not too cool to be ridiculed </i></div>
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<i>But you brought this upon yourself</i></div>
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<i>The world is tired of pacifiers</i></div>
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<i>We want the truth and nothing else.</i></div>
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<i>And we are sick and tired of hearing your song</i></div>
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<i>Telling how you are gonna change right from wrong</i></div>
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<i>'Cause if you really want to hear our views</i></div>
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<i>You haven't done nothing!</i><br />
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<a href="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/54/Stevie_Wonder_1973.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="800" data-original-width="697" height="200" src="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/54/Stevie_Wonder_1973.JPG" width="173" /></a></div>
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<i>Jackson 5 join along with me say</i></div>
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<i>Do da walk - hey hey hey</i></div>
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<i>Do da walk - wow wow wow </i></div>
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<i>Do da walk - co co co </i></div>
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<i>Do da walk - naw naw naw</i></div>
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<i>Do da walk - bum bum bum </i></div>
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<i>Do da walk</i></div>
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<i>We would not care to wake up to the nightmare</i></div>
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<i>That's becoming real life</i></div>
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<i>But when mislead who knows a person's mind</i></div>
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<i>Can turn as cold as ice un hum</i></div>
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<i>Why do you keep on making us hear your song</i></div>
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<i>Telling us how you are changing right from wrong</i></div>
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<i>'Cause if you really want to hear our views</i></div>
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<i>You haven't done nothing!</i></div>
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Here's the original version of "You Haven't Done Nothin'," from <i>Innervisions</i>:</div>
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<iframe allowfullscreen="" class="YOUTUBE-iframe-video" data-thumbnail-src="https://i.ytimg.com/vi/0uQCJ6PzRdA/0.jpg" frameborder="0" height="266" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/0uQCJ6PzRdA?feature=player_embedded" width="320"></iframe></div>
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A fine live version from the Grammy Awards (1975), with lots of rich and well-dressed people clapping, which kind of undermines the point. And I wish that guy at the beginning would shut up. But once Stevie takes over ...</div>
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<b><span style="font-size: large;">Other Resources</span></b><br />
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Song available on Stevie Wonder, <i><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fulfillingness'_First_Finale">Fulfillingness' First Finale</a> </i>(1974), track 6.<br />
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<a href="http://jensenbrazil.files.wordpress.com/2008/09/frontblog541.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://jensenbrazil.files.wordpress.com/2008/09/frontblog541.jpg" width="200" /></a></div>
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<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/You_Haven't_Done_Nothin'">Wikipedia page</a> for "You Haven't Done Nothin'."<br />
<br />
DJDiscoCat has done a <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0CmKhxuwtCE">Funky Purrfection remix</a> of the song.</div>
Adam Jones, Ph.D.http://www.blogger.com/profile/02040417664765882878noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7402289313850824579.post-16744881811982237182012-01-16T13:19:00.000-08:002019-01-06T14:54:23.224-08:00"Uprising" - Muse<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<a href="http://t3.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcQ7ib3MiyVlWAglt91Vj4DoBQUA9YHuMgK0NMUYgpDVTK3rBgq8" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="249" src="https://t3.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcQ7ib3MiyVlWAglt91Vj4DoBQUA9YHuMgK0NMUYgpDVTK3rBgq8" width="400" /></a></div>
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Personally, I give the nod to El Général's tumultuous anthem inaugurating the Arab Spring, <a href="https://newanthems.blogspot.com/2011/01/rais-lebled-to-president-hamada-ben.html">"Rais Lebled"</a>. But for much of the world, "Uprising," by the British band Muse, is probably the leading candidate for anthem of the early 21st century. There's no denying its global reach and crowd-shaking impact. The lyrics, too, are about as unapologetically revolutionary as any rock song in recent memory to hit the upper reaches of the international charts. A slightly truncated version (though still fairly wordy) could be sung as a progressive anthem wherever capitalism, consumerism, media/corporate propaganda, and political passivity are the targets:<br />
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<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>The paranoia is in bloom, the PR</i></div>
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<i>The transmissions will resume</i></div>
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<i>They'll try to push drugs</i></div>
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<i>Keep us all dumbed down and hope that</i></div>
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<i>We will never see the truth around.</i></div>
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<i>(So come on!)</i></div>
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<i><br />
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<i>Another promise, another scene, another</i></div>
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<i>A package not to keep us trapped in greed</i></div>
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<i>With all the green belts wrapped around our minds</i></div>
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<i>And endless red tape to keep the truth confined.</i></div>
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<i>(So come on!)</i></div>
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<i><br />
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<i>They will not force us</i></div>
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<i>They will stop degrading us</i></div>
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<i>They will not control us</i></div>
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<i>We will be victorious</i></div>
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<a href="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/2/26/MuseUprisingCDsingle.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="300" data-original-width="302" height="198" src="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/2/26/MuseUprisingCDsingle.jpg" width="200" /></a></div>
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<i>Interchanging mind control</i></div>
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<i>Come let the revolution take its toll if you could</i></div>
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<i>Flick the switch and open your third eye, you'd see that</i></div>
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<i>We should never be afraid to die.</i></div>
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<i>(So come on!)</i></div>
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<i><br />
</i></div>
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<i>Rise up and take the power back, it's time that</i></div>
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<i>The fat cats had a heart attack, you know that</i></div>
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<i>Their time is coming to an end</i></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>We have to unify and watch our flag ascend.</i></div>
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<i><br />
</i></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>They will not force us</i></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>They will stop degrading us</i></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>They will not control us</i></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>We will be victorious</i><br />
<i><br />
</i></div>
Here's the original (2009) studio version of "Uprising," from the album <i>The Resistance -- </i>a politically charged title in itself:<br />
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<iframe allowfullscreen='allowfullscreen' webkitallowfullscreen='webkitallowfullscreen' mozallowfullscreen='mozallowfullscreen' width='320' height='266' src='https://www.youtube.com/embed/BTDwIN9oLvY?feature=player_embedded' frameborder='0'></iframe></div>
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The official video:</div>
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<iframe allowfullscreen="" class="YOUTUBE-iframe-video" data-thumbnail-src="https://i.ytimg.com/vi/w8KQmps-Sog/0.jpg" frameborder="0" height="266" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/w8KQmps-Sog?feature=player_embedded" width="320"></iframe></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: large;">Other Resources</span></b></div>
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Song available on Muse, <i><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Resistance_(album)">The Resistance</a> </i>(2009), track 1.</div>
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<a href="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/8/8a/Theresistance.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="196" src="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/8/8a/Theresistance.jpg" width="200" /></a></div>
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Full lyrics <a href="https://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/muse/uprising.html">here</a>.</div>
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<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uprising_(song)">Wikipedia page</a> for "Uprising."</div>
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"Uprising" live on Muse's Live home turf of Teignmouth, Devon, in 2009:</div>
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<iframe allowfullscreen='allowfullscreen' webkitallowfullscreen='webkitallowfullscreen' mozallowfullscreen='mozallowfullscreen' width='320' height='266' src='https://www.youtube.com/embed/8gSVks1TZbs?feature=player_embedded' frameborder='0'></iframe></div>
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Live at Wembley Stadium in 2010, with a very political opening:</div>
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<iframe allowfullscreen="" class="YOUTUBE-iframe-video" data-thumbnail-src="https://i.ytimg.com/vi/6I9QSbWU2X0/0.jpg" frameborder="0" height="266" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/6I9QSbWU2X0?feature=player_embedded" width="320"></iframe></div>
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And at the 2011 Grammy Awards in Los Angeles (audio only):</div>
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<iframe allowfullscreen="" class="YOUTUBE-iframe-video" data-thumbnail-src="https://i.ytimg.com/vi/fD3ptZ0hG1A/0.jpg" frameborder="0" height="266" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/fD3ptZ0hG1A?feature=player_embedded" width="320"></iframe></div>
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Adam Jones, Ph.D.http://www.blogger.com/profile/02040417664765882878noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7402289313850824579.post-38813326811414603712012-01-16T11:47:00.000-08:002019-01-04T21:30:23.774-08:00"Been A Son" - Nirvana<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_QzdUvyDN87g/SzgGVTx1usI/AAAAAAAACcE/Squj9wq4klQ/nirvana-header.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="218" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/_QzdUvyDN87g/SzgGVTx1usI/AAAAAAAACcE/Squj9wq4klQ/nirvana-header.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
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The Nirvana deep cut "Been A Son" is one of the power trio's buried gems. It's a short, taut, punky tune that I believe stands as one of the great feminist anthems in popular music. Kurt Cobain was notoriously sensitive as a youth, blond and slightly-built and bullied, with a tormented home life. Being targeted as "effeminate" seems to have given him a kind of visceral identification with females (think of <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pdXy75VrQho">"Polly"</a>, <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ync1u2Qw5c8">"Rape Me"</a>, and <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5wev8W9PDAg">"Frances Farmer Will Have Her Revenge on Seattle"</a>). There is a cutting, even chilling quality to his evocation in "Been A Son" of the burdens and oppressions imposed on girls and women:<br />
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<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>She should have had stayed away from friends</i></div>
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<i>She should have had more time to spend</i></div>
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<i>She should have died when she was born</i></div>
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<i>She should have worn the crown of thorns.</i></div>
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<i><br />
</i></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>She should have been a son</i></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>She should have been a son</i></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>She should have been a son</i></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>She should have been a son</i></div>
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<i><br />
</i></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>She should have stood out in the crowd</i></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>She should have made her mother proud</i></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>She should have fallen on her stance</i></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>She should have had another chance.</i></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i><br />
</i></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>She should have been a son</i></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>She should have been a son</i></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>She should have been a son</i></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>She should have been a son</i></div>
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<a name='more'></a>The acerbic irony of the lyrics, combined with the nursery-rhyme repetitions and melodic lilt, makes this a promising choice for feminist-themed activism. As with a couple of our other anthems (see "Shaking the Tree" and "They Dance Alone"), the fact that a man is singing in empathy and solidarity with women may make "Been A Son" an attractive selection when men show up to support their sisters. Sing it for Kurt too, may he rest in peace.<br />
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Here's the studio version of "Been A Son," featured on the <i>Incesticide </i>album of previously-unreleased songs and outtakes (1992). It was recorded during the same UK Maida Vale sessions in 1991 that produced the blistering <a href="http://youtu.be/PvwqSMRtoSI">"Aneurysm"</a>, and finds the band in tight, no-nonsense form after the release of their game-changing <i>Nevermind</i>:<br />
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<iframe allowfullscreen='allowfullscreen' webkitallowfullscreen='webkitallowfullscreen' mozallowfullscreen='mozallowfullscreen' width='320' height='266' src='https://www.youtube.com/embed/T5SC6ITu2Hc?feature=player_embedded' frameborder='0'></iframe></div>
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Kurt's 1990 acoustic demo for the song, from the <i>With the Lights Out </i>compilation (2004):<br />
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<iframe allowfullscreen='allowfullscreen' webkitallowfullscreen='webkitallowfullscreen' mozallowfullscreen='mozallowfullscreen' width='320' height='266' src='https://www.youtube.com/embed/JPPH293PA-I?feature=player_embedded' frameborder='0'></iframe></div>
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The best-known live version of "Been A Son" is from the Reading Festival in the UK (1992):<br />
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<iframe allowfullscreen='allowfullscreen' webkitallowfullscreen='webkitallowfullscreen' mozallowfullscreen='mozallowfullscreen' width='320' height='266' src='https://www.youtube.com/embed/YLrfVAdYuTY?feature=player_embedded' frameborder='0'></iframe></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: large;">Other Resources</span></b><br />
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Original version available on Nirvana, <i><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incesticide">Incesticide</a></i> (1992), track 4.<br />
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<a href="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/8/85/Nirvana-Incesticide.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/8/85/Nirvana-Incesticide.jpg" width="200" /></a></div>
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Full lyrics <a href="http://www.sing365.com/music/lyric.nsf/Been-A-Son-lyrics-Nirvana/0544D4FD88849181482568510011CEB5">here</a> (though I basically just posted them).<br />
<br />
<a href="http://afeministresponsetopopculture.blogspot.com/2008/05/kurt-cobains-interrogation-of-hegemonic.html">"Kurt Cobain's Interrogation of Hegemonic Masculinity"</a>, an article by Cortney.<br />
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An interesting, jug-bluesy cover of "Been A Son" by Manic Street Preachers:<br />
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<iframe allowfullscreen="" class="YOUTUBE-iframe-video" data-thumbnail-src="https://i.ytimg.com/vi/nAhU2Q8Uzws/0.jpg" frameborder="0" height="266" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/nAhU2Q8Uzws?feature=player_embedded" width="320"></iframe></div>
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Adam Jones, Ph.D.http://www.blogger.com/profile/02040417664765882878noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7402289313850824579.post-16464804852370136792012-01-13T11:01:00.001-08:002019-01-04T22:13:12.344-08:00"East Jesus Nowhere" - Green Day<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<a href="http://www.novasbatidas.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/green_day_216565.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="500" data-original-width="800" height="250" src="https://www.novasbatidas.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/green_day_216565.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
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A highlight of Green Day's epic <i>21st Century Breakdown </i>(2009), "East Jesus Nowhere" also establishes the L.A. punk-rockers as the only band to place two anthems on this list from the same record (see also "Know Your Enemy"). It's a withering polemic against religious extremism and fundamentalism -- of whatever stripe, though the direct targets here are self-proclaimed Christians. It's married to monster riffs and a stomping, stadium-shaking beat:<br />
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<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>Raise your hands now to testify</i></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>Your confession will be crucified</i></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>You're a sacrificial suicide</i></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>Like a dog that's been sodomized</i></div>
<br />
"East Jesus Nowhere" also has a nice ecumenical touch, with the biracial/multiracial summons to mobilize a new activist generation:<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>All the white boys</i></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>And the black girls</i></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>You're the soldiers</i></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>Of the new world!</i></div>
<br />
The core of the anthem, I feel, lies in a verse and chorus just begging to be sung as Billie Joe Armstrong and his mates sing it -- loudly, aggressively, tunefully -- wherever religious ranters and misogynists and homophobes gather to express their bigotry:<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>Put your faith in a miracle</i></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>And it's non-denominational</i></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>Join the choir we will be singing</i></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>In the church of wishful thinking.</i></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i><br />
</i></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>A fire burns today</i></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>Of blasphemy and genocide</i></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>The sirens of decay</i></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>Will infiltrate the faith fanatics.</i></div>
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<a name='more'></a>-- followed by some handclaps, maybe, to mimic the crisp riffing that follows, then back to "A fire burns ...?" You figure it out. Here's the original version of "East Jesus Nowhere" from <i>21st Century Breakdown</i>:<br />
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<iframe width="320" height="266" class="YOUTUBE-iframe-video" data-thumbnail-src="https://i.ytimg.com/vi/s4ptSaCG9pg/0.jpg" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/s4ptSaCG9pg?feature=player_embedded" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe></div>
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One would have to choose an appropriate setting with this song; it doesn't pull its punches, and it shouldn't be used <a href="http://greendaymind.wordpress.com/2009/12/06/east-jesus-nowhere-ticket-to-hell-has-never-been-so-fun/">just to slag religious believers</a>. Then again, there are plenty of honorable cops in the world, and we still need "Fuck Tha Police."<br />
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<b><span style="font-size: large;">Other Resources</span></b><br />
<br />
Song available on Green Day, <i><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/21st_Century_Breakdown">21st Century Breakdown</a> </i>(2009).<br />
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<a href="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/c/c8/Green_Day_-_21st_Century_Breakdown_cover.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/c/c8/Green_Day_-_21st_Century_Breakdown_cover.jpg" width="200" /></a></div>
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Full lyrics <a href="http://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/greenday/eastjesusnowhere.html">here</a>.<br />
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A Wikipedia <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/East_Jesus_Nowhere">stub</a> for "East Jesus Nowhere."<br />
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A quite ruthless rendering at the Fox Theater, Oakland, CA, in 2010:<br />
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<iframe allowfullscreen='allowfullscreen' webkitallowfullscreen='webkitallowfullscreen' mozallowfullscreen='mozallowfullscreen' width='320' height='266' src='https://www.youtube.com/embed/KG5wCIlqZtU?feature=player_embedded' frameborder='0'></iframe></div>
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<span style="text-align: left;">And a crazy live version from Japan, maybe my favorite: </span><br />
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<iframe allowfullscreen="" class="YOUTUBE-iframe-video" data-thumbnail-src="https://i.ytimg.com/vi/LOqsj88kkKo/0.jpg" frameborder="0" height="266" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/LOqsj88kkKo?feature=player_embedded" width="320"></iframe></div>
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Adam Jones, Ph.D.http://www.blogger.com/profile/02040417664765882878noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7402289313850824579.post-47497962962182964952012-01-13T10:52:00.002-08:002019-01-06T11:11:18.202-08:00"Sun City" - Artists United Against Apartheid<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://30daysout.files.wordpress.com/2008/07/sun-city-2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="265" src="https://30daysout.files.wordpress.com/2008/07/sun-city-2.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i><b>Bruce Springsteen with David Ruffin and Eddie Kendricks</b></i><br />
<i><b>of The Temptations, filming the "Sun City" video in 1985.</b></i></td></tr>
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<span style="text-align: left;">The</span><span style="text-align: left;"> 1980s was the first decade of the benefit single, most notably supporting the cause of famine relief in Africa. The problem with most of these efforts was twofold: they were often drippy and saccharine, lowest-common-denominator (see <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ne7fPpxAnuM">"We Are the World"</a> and <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VJN3u1wAWIk">"Tears Are Not Enough"</a>, though the original Band Aid production <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bjQzJAKxTrE">"Do They Know It's Christmas"</a> was spirited by comparison). And the songs tended to be rather apolitical -- look how dreadful everything is, let's all pull together, believing makes it so, etc.</span></div>
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<a href="http://30daysout.files.wordpress.com/2008/07/sun-city-1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" height="186" src="https://30daysout.files.wordpress.com/2008/07/sun-city-1.jpg" width="200" /></a>At the height of the strings and syrup, in 1985, came "Sun City" by Artists United Against Apartheid -- a multinational and multiracial coalition forged by Little Steven Van Zandt, best known as the guitarist and backing vocalist for Bruce Springsteen's E-Street Band. It was Van Zandt (wearing the bandanna in the photo at right) who wrote the song and its lyrics, denouncing not abstractions like famine and poverty, but a specific structure of oppression: apartheid (racist rule by whites over blacks) in South Africa. Moreover, the song zeroed in on a heated controversy in the pop-cultural field: the surreally ritzy resort of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sun_City,_North_West">Sun City</a>, in the allegedly independent "homeland" of Bophutswana, actually a fiction by which South Africa's white leaders maintained a veneer of "sovereignty" for the country's overwhelming black majority. A number of major pop artists, including Queen and Rod Stewart, had been lured by fat paychecks to play at Sun City. This undercut the mounting cultural boycott of the apartheid regime, which accompanied other economic, political, and sports-related sanctions. </div>
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The response of Little Steven and the enormous gaggle of artists he assembled was to declare defiantly:</div>
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<i>You can't buy me, I don't care what you pay</i></div>
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<i>Don't ask me, Sun City, because I ain't gonna play.</i></div>
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<a name='more'></a>The apartheid regime's "homelands" policy was denounced as an outrageous sham:<br />
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<i>Relocation to phony homelands</i></div>
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<i>Separation of families I can't understand</i></div>
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<i>Twenty-three million can't vote because they're black</i></div>
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<i>We're stabbing our brothers and our sisters in the back!</i></div>
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The attack on western (especially US) government policy was equally bracing and explicit:</div>
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<i>Our government tells us we're doing all we can</i></div>
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<i>Constructive engagement is Ronald Reagan's plan</i></div>
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<i>Meanwhile people are dying and giving up hope</i></div>
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<i>Well this quiet diplomacy ain't nothing but a joke.</i></div>
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And my, how it all did rock (and rap), from the very first get-off-your-butt drum salvo. The "na-na-na-na-na-na" hook, the "Ain't gonna play Sun City" refrain, and several of the key stanzas would all be a welcome presence at anti-racism and anti-corporate demos, or in any context where a cultural boycott is pursued as a strategy against a repressive regime.</div>
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Here's the original version of "Sun City," from the eponymous album by Artists United Against Apartheid, accompanied by the official video, filmed on the streets of New York City. Among the 49 artists involved, watch for contributions by Peter Gabriel, <a href="http://newanthems.blogspot.com/2011/01/desapariciones-ruben-bladesmana.html">Rubén Blades</a>, Pete Townshend of <a href="http://newanthems.blogspot.com/2011/01/wont-get-fooled-again-who.html">The Who</a>, <a href="http://newanthems.blogspot.com/2011/01/workingmans-blues-2-bob-dylan.html">Bob Dylan</a>, and Peter Garrett of <a href="http://newanthems.blogspot.com/2012/01/beds-are-burning-midnight-oil.html">Midnight Oil</a>. (The "Sun City" album, which you can find complete <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XOb_fN60trY">here</a>, also includes the original version of the powerful <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h2wMqHUwBHQ">"Silver and Gold"</a>, by Bono of <a href="http://newanthems.blogspot.com/2012/01/i-still-havent-found-what-im-looking.html">U2</a> with <a href="http://newanthems.blogspot.com/2012/01/gimme-shelter-rolling-stones.html">Keith Richards</a> and Ron Wood, which has anthemic potential as well.)</div>
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<b><span style="font-size: large;">Other Resources</span></b><br />
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Song available on Artists United Against Apartheid, <i><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artists_United_Against_Apartheid">Sun City</a> </i>(1985), track 1.<br />
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An informative <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artists_United_Against_Apartheid">Wikipedia page</a> for the "Sun City"/Artists United Against Apartheid project.<br />
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Full lyrics <a href="https://genius.com/Artists-united-against-apartheid-sun-city-lyrics">here</a>.<br />
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Little Steven Van Zandt introduces and sings the song at the close of the 1988 Tribute to Nelson Mandela at Wembley Stadium, London (on Mandela's birthday, while he was still in jail). Simple Minds provides the musical backing, and many performers lend a hand:<br />
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A 12" remix of the song, clocking in at nearly 10 minutes:</div>
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Adam Jones, Ph.D.http://www.blogger.com/profile/02040417664765882878noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7402289313850824579.post-41457595206333029342012-01-13T09:00:00.000-08:002019-01-06T11:37:41.301-08:00"The Harder They Come" - Jimmy Cliff<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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The Perry Henzell-directed film <i>The Harder They Come</i>, released in the UK in 1972 and the US the following year, represents a milestone in reggae music and in socially-conscious pop. The Jamaican sound "might have remained an isolated phenomenon," writes Ed Ward in <i>The Rolling Stone History of Rock and Roll </i>(p. 447), "if it hadn't been" for Henzell's film about "a rude boy who comes to Kingston, records a smash hit, is cheated by an all-too-typical record businessman, cokmmits a murder, goes on the lam, and is sought by both the Jamaican army and the producer, who wants another hit." Instead, within just a few years, Eric Clapton was recording Bob Marley's "I Shot the Sheriff," Marley himself was on his way to icon status, The Clash were mixing reggae with punk to potent effect, and ska was taking off. The music arguably remains the predominant soundtrack for the world's oppressed to this day.<br />
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The soundtrack of <i>The Harder They Come</i>, also released in 1972, was an equally essential moment in this process of cultural diffusion and cross-fertilization. It included imperishable cuts like Toots and the Maytals' <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6rb13ksYO0s">"Pressure Drop"</a> and Jimmy Cliff's <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SF3IktTk_pQ">"Many Rivers to Cross"</a> and <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=18EAqHx2lMk">"You Can Get It If You Really Want"</a> (which themselves have anthemic potential). But it was the title track as recorded by Cliff, the film's charismatic star, which best expressed the anger, yearning, and indomitable spirit of reggae music. It's a spirit that can be tapped every time the song is deployed for a progressive/emancipationist cause:<br />
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<i>Well they tell me of a pie up in the sky</i></div>
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<i>Waiting for me when I die</i></div>
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<i>But between the day you're born and when you die</i></div>
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<i>They never seem to hear even your cry.</i></div>
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<i>So as sure as the sun will shine</i></div>
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<i>I'm gonna get my share now of what's mine</i></div>
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<i>And then the harder they come the harder they'll fall, one and all</i></div>
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<i>Oh, the harder they come the harder they'll fall, one and all.</i></div>
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<i>Well the officers are trying to keep me down</i></div>
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<i>Trying to drive me underground</i></div>
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<i>And they think that they have got the battle won</i></div>
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<i>I say forgive them Lord, they know not what they've done.</i></div>
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<i>And I keep on fighting for the things I want</i></div>
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<i>Though I know that when you're dead you can't</i></div>
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<i>But I'd rather be a free man in my grave</i></div>
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<i>Than living as a puppet or a slave.</i><br />
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://img.strtorrent.tech/films/images/1972/the-harder-they-come-1972-5082-screenshots-1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="450" data-original-width="800" height="225" src="https://img.strtorrent.tech/films/images/1972/the-harder-they-come-1972-5082-screenshots-1.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><b><i>Jimmy Cliff in </i>The Harder They Come <i>(1972).</i></b></td></tr>
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Here's the original recording of "The Harder They Come," on the eponymous soundtrack album:</div>
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Here's Cliff's joyous rendering of the tune at the Marquee Club, London, in 2006:<br />
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<b><span style="font-size: large;">Other Resources</span></b><br />
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Song available on <i><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Harder_They_Come_(soundtrack)">The Harder They Come</a> </i>(soundtrack) (1972), track 6 (reprise, track 12).<br />
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<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Harder_They_Come_(song)">Wikipedia stub</a> for "The Harder They Come" (song).<br />
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Full lyrics <a href="http://www.metrolyrics.com/the-harder-they-come-lyrics-jimmy-cliff.html">here</a>.<br />
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<i>Rolling Stone </i>500 Greatest Songs of All Time (<a href="https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-lists/500-greatest-songs-of-all-time-151127/jimmy-cliff-the-harder-they-come-35805/">no. 350</a>).<br />
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<a href="http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=1474004">NPR documentary</a> on the cultural impact of <i>The Harder They Come</i>.</div>
Adam Jones, Ph.D.http://www.blogger.com/profile/02040417664765882878noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7402289313850824579.post-35452156961231339172012-01-13T08:57:00.001-08:002019-01-06T11:46:45.048-08:00"Things Can Only Get Better" - Howard Jones<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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Maybe it's the hairstyle, or the ultra-eighties synths. Whatever the reason, Howard Jones's infectious anthem, from his second album (<i>Dream Into Action</i>, 1985), hasn't received the respect and consideration it deserves. It's wedded to a rambunctious beat reminiscent of another song on our list, Eminem's <a href="http://newanthems.blogspot.com/2012/01/business-eminem.html">"Business"</a>. Jones sings the blazes out of the tune, pushing his range to the limit -- just the thought of thousands of progressives all trying to hit the high notes is reason enough to include it here. The lyrics are another; the first verse and chorus are the core of the song's anthemic potential. Jones shifts from a declaration of common progressive purpose, to a surprisingly poignant evocation of the fear of risk; and then, with the jubilant "Whoa, whoa" refrain, he liberates us from all anxiety:<br />
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<i>We're not scared to lose it all </i></div>
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<i>Security throw through the wall </i></div>
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<i>Future dreams we have to realize </i></div>
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<i>A thousand skeptic hands </i></div>
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<i>Won't keep us from the things we plan </i></div>
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<i>Unless we're clinging to the things we prize. </i></div>
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<i>And do you feel scared? -- I do </i></div>
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<i>But I won't stop and falter </i></div>
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<i>And if we threw it all away </i></div>
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<i>Things can only get better. </i></div>
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<i>Whoa, whoa whoa whoa oh oh ...</i> </div>
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Of course, we know in our hearts that things can also get worse. But by deploying Jones's reflective, uplifting anthem in our protests, we can bring his idealistic vision a little closer to reality.<br />
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<a name='more'></a>Here's the original album version:<br />
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Better is the kickass seven-and-a-half-minute extended mix:<br />
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<b><span style="font-size: large;">Other Resources</span></b><br />
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Song available on Howard Jones, <i><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dream_into_Action">Dream Into Action</a> </i>(1985).<br />
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Full lyrics <a href="http://www.lyricsfreak.com/h/howard+jones/things+can+only+get+better_20066153.html">here</a>.<br />
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<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Things_Can_Only_Get_Better_(Howard_Jones_song)">Wikipedia page</a> for "Things Can Only Get Better." <br />
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The original video is tons of fun. Maybe our progressive throngs could wear Howard wigs to go with their Anonymous masks.<br />
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Howard performs the song live in 2011!<br />
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Adam Jones, Ph.D.http://www.blogger.com/profile/02040417664765882878noreply@blogger.com0