That’s a fine line there… a damn fine line. Spot on.
For pure, uncompromising venomous, spitting hatred, it’s difficult to beat Elvis Costello’s note to Margaret Thatcher. God, it really was possible to hate that woman like no other politician in my experience:
Tramp The Dirt Down
** Well I hope I don’t die too soon
I pray the Lord my soul to save
Oh I’ll be a good boy, I’m trying so hard to behave
Because there’s one thing I know, I’d like to live
long enough to savour
That’s when they finally put you in the ground
I’ll stand on your grave and tramp the dirt down**
It’s irrational I know, but how I still hate that woman with every fibre in my body . . .
btw, isn’t it handy that all the Best. Ever. Protest Songs. are written in English by Americans and Brits . . .
Whatever. What a bunch of fucking crap. It was a completely generic indictment of politicians and the shallowness of modernity. If that was a particular denouncement of GWB, Willie sure did a piss-poor job of specifiying it.
Oh, I think it goes a bit farther than that.
Well, you have to understand, nuero, that Willy is a Texan, a people known for subtlety and sly innuendo.
London_Calling, never heard that song – but in high school, we Americans used to listen to Maggie, by the Exploited, with the following chorus:
Guess some folks didn’t like her very much.
Those of you who don’t like country music still ought to give a listen to some Willie Nelson – until I heard some of his stuff, I thought I hated country music, too. IMO Teatro is his best work (or at least the best I’ve heard – I’m no connoisseur, sadly).
On New Year’s Eve I saw the strangest protest performance I’ve yet seen: a local burlesque troupe did a get-out-the-vote, Bush-is-evil show, complete with nurse uniforms and pasties.
Daniel
Daniel
Yeah and they are usually about “stopping” wars and stuff like that. Wonder why we don’t have any protest songs about “Lets go to War and Kill Saddam” or “Hey, Baby, you don’t need an Abortion”
** Left Hand of Dorkness** - I can appreciate the sentiment even if the delivery seems to be slightly deficient in nuance.
I suppose this isn’t the place to ask, but what the hell was Ruby, don’t take your love to town all about . . . he couldn’t get it up, she was horny and he wanted to shoot her for going into town to get laid ?
They don’t write chirpy pop songs like that no more, on sirree.
I must have been wooshed or summut.
Huh? I didn’t post that. I posted:
- to LifeOnWry, who wasn’t my wife last time I checked.
It wasn’t that he couldn’t get it up AFAIK, but that he knew “it’s hard to love a man whose legs are bent and paralyzed”. If Ruby loved him, she’d find a way anyway, but instead she’d rather just use him and his disability check as a meal ticket while ignoring his, um, needs and gratifying her own with a less-worthy man. That may not be enough cause for murder, but it seems like cause for hatred.
http://www.bobdylan.com/songs/masters.html
Time for this one to be reissued.
You missed a nuance there, sport. It wasn’t he who “started that crazy Asian war”, he’s a disabled combat vet with a slut-Fonda wife, who’s probably headed to town to give it up to some granola-munching hippie who…
Wait a tick! Ruby? Ruby? No, never mind…
Note to furriners: Willy is by no stretch of the imagination reponsible for this, nor any other of the abominations committed by Tony Orlando and Dumb. Thier indictment is pending.
Darryl Worley’s “Have You Forgotten?”
He wants us to go to Iraq and get the “ones behind bin Laden” :smack: :rolleyes: :smack: :rolleyes: :smack: :rolleyes: :smack: :rolleyes: :smack: :rolleyes: :rolleyes: :rolleyes: :rolleyes:
Referring to the general public as sheep has totally jumped the shark.
I wouldn’t both because you told me not to and because you may be right.
What a great Cafe Society thread ! I need to add my nominations
“Masters of War” by Bob Dylan (although I see plnner has beat me to it, I think it merits mentioning again!)
“If I Had a Rocket Launcher” by Bruce Cockburn
Though My Country 'Tis of thy People You’re Dying by Buffy Sainte-Marie is a contender.
I suggest you go back to the OP and click the link to the article. Look it up again for yourself. It Says:
“Now, I haven’t played it for Toby (Keith) yet,” Nelson said with a laugh. Although the two are close friends, the sentiments of “What Ever Happened to Peace on Earth” are the polar opposite of Keith’s angry-American anthem “Courtesy of the Red, White and Blue,” with its call to arms.
“Toby wrote that song in reaction to 9/11, which was a totally different thing than watching U.S. soldiers die in Iraq,” Nelson said. “Toby’s said he’s not a Republican or a Democrat; he’s a Christian. So we’re coming from the same place.”
Country music is full of “other side” protest songs. Don’t you remember “Oakie from Muscogee?” (It was recorded by Haggard over 30 years ago). OK, maybe not a good example, that song was somewhat tongue in cheek. Surely the Toby Kieth song was sung in more seriousness.
Okie from Muskogee was tongue-in-cheek? Well, maybe, but it sure escaped me at the time.
Best protest music ever? Jimi Hendrix solo intermingling aircraft, machine guns. bombs and horror. Made my hair stand on end. Guernica on guitar.
Like so much else in life,…
The answer is Blowin’ in the Wind.