The Americana and roots music authority
Where has all the righteous fury gone?
It is, perhaps, unbecoming -- a sign of arrested development -- but even at 51 I remain an angry young man at heart. (Or else I was born a curmudgeon; or both.) Even with all the good things in my life, I remain proud of the banked fury within. This is my edge, it is my nature, it is the treasure from which I pay for each day's labors.
These times seem, now more than ever (yes, an echo of Richard Milhaus Nixon's re-election slogan), to call for carefully modulated rage.
We have 10 percent unemployment, give or take however many million have given up or never been counted, or settled into jobs which no longer sustain a modest, middle-class lifestyle. Health care, insurance, retirement, all that. My pessimist's barometer says that by January 2011, safely after the midterm elections and with a disappointing Christmas in the rearview, that number will rise to 12 percent. Maybe higher.
We are at war on two fronts, and it's not going well. We may manage enough of a fig leaf to leave Iraq, where never should we have been, in some kind of temporary order. Maybe. Afghanistan, where the logic said we had to go even as the historical record insisted we could not succeed, seems intractable. The one soldier I know casually (our children share teachers and hobbies, so really I know his wife) faces his third deployment to a combat zone this fall.
(Incidentally, I would commend to your attention Sebastian Junger's new book War, a mostly apolitical portrait of the soldiers on the front lines in Afghanistan. There is also a documentary; it is the first book I am aware of in which the reporter was able to fact check himself based on contemporaneous video he and his colleague shot.)
Let's see...there's still climate change, the gulf oil spill, the gulf between America's left and right wings and the apparent lack of consensus to move our society in any forward direction (the Middle Ages, apparently, retaining a perverse hold on the imaginations of extremists on both sides), and the complex factors being manipulated? to erode the stability of the middle class.
Plenty of fodder for angry songs, wouldn't you think?
I drive back and forth to the farm two or three times most days, and routinely pluck a handful of CDs from the stacks so as to make the trips productive. To have something to write about here. To have quiet moments of private joy at the discovery of the magic I've spent my lifetime seeking, for reasons which remain obscure and oblique (name that song...), and not presently worth exploring.
What I have heard, days on end, now, is a succession of anonymous midtempo albums, flawlessly produced, filled with abundant competence. Pretty, decorative, introspective bits of work. I will not name names because most of the CDs I've been playing come from unknown artists, and it serves little purpose to disparage them here; and because they are too unmemorable to bother recording. The computer has made it possible for mediocrity to sound professional in ways it could not have pretended to even a decade back. It has not made it certain that the performers have anything worth saying, however. Not my point. As usual, I digress beyond my own bounds.
No matter your politics, there's plenty to be pissed off about right now.
So where are the songs to fit that mood? And why is the music I'm hearing so placid? Is it all an echo of Kenny Roby's great lyric, "it's bad/but I'm glad/it's not me"? Are we faced with a curious case of survivor's blindness (not guilt, for their voices would betray that)? Have we been taught so much compromise that we now comfortably settle -- even in our art -- for voicing only the most placid, most presentable, most likely to be placed on a network TV show credits soundbed lyrics?
Surely I am not the only angry man out there, much less the only furious liberal. (Ah, where's Phil Ochs when I need him? On a shelf at my back, happily.) Surely our songwriters, our troubadours, our griots have something to say about the lives we are leading, about the quiet desperation with which we trudge through each day. Surely they do.
Because, trust me, you don't want me to start singing.
These times seem, now more than ever (yes, an echo of Richard Milhaus Nixon's re-election slogan), to call for carefully modulated rage.
We have 10 percent unemployment, give or take however many million have given up or never been counted, or settled into jobs which no longer sustain a modest, middle-class lifestyle. Health care, insurance, retirement, all that. My pessimist's barometer says that by January 2011, safely after the midterm elections and with a disappointing Christmas in the rearview, that number will rise to 12 percent. Maybe higher.
We are at war on two fronts, and it's not going well. We may manage enough of a fig leaf to leave Iraq, where never should we have been, in some kind of temporary order. Maybe. Afghanistan, where the logic said we had to go even as the historical record insisted we could not succeed, seems intractable. The one soldier I know casually (our children share teachers and hobbies, so really I know his wife) faces his third deployment to a combat zone this fall.
(Incidentally, I would commend to your attention Sebastian Junger's new book War, a mostly apolitical portrait of the soldiers on the front lines in Afghanistan. There is also a documentary; it is the first book I am aware of in which the reporter was able to fact check himself based on contemporaneous video he and his colleague shot.)
Let's see...there's still climate change, the gulf oil spill, the gulf between America's left and right wings and the apparent lack of consensus to move our society in any forward direction (the Middle Ages, apparently, retaining a perverse hold on the imaginations of extremists on both sides), and the complex factors being manipulated? to erode the stability of the middle class.
Plenty of fodder for angry songs, wouldn't you think?
I drive back and forth to the farm two or three times most days, and routinely pluck a handful of CDs from the stacks so as to make the trips productive. To have something to write about here. To have quiet moments of private joy at the discovery of the magic I've spent my lifetime seeking, for reasons which remain obscure and oblique (name that song...), and not presently worth exploring.
What I have heard, days on end, now, is a succession of anonymous midtempo albums, flawlessly produced, filled with abundant competence. Pretty, decorative, introspective bits of work. I will not name names because most of the CDs I've been playing come from unknown artists, and it serves little purpose to disparage them here; and because they are too unmemorable to bother recording. The computer has made it possible for mediocrity to sound professional in ways it could not have pretended to even a decade back. It has not made it certain that the performers have anything worth saying, however. Not my point. As usual, I digress beyond my own bounds.
No matter your politics, there's plenty to be pissed off about right now.
So where are the songs to fit that mood? And why is the music I'm hearing so placid? Is it all an echo of Kenny Roby's great lyric, "it's bad/but I'm glad/it's not me"? Are we faced with a curious case of survivor's blindness (not guilt, for their voices would betray that)? Have we been taught so much compromise that we now comfortably settle -- even in our art -- for voicing only the most placid, most presentable, most likely to be placed on a network TV show credits soundbed lyrics?
Surely I am not the only angry man out there, much less the only furious liberal. (Ah, where's Phil Ochs when I need him? On a shelf at my back, happily.) Surely our songwriters, our troubadours, our griots have something to say about the lives we are leading, about the quiet desperation with which we trudge through each day. Surely they do.
Because, trust me, you don't want me to start singing.
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Comment by Easy Ed on July 6, 2010 at 3:10pm -
My first thought was Billy Bragg and Tom Morello. My second thought was that maybe protest music is still being made by younger artists...just not ones we may be listening to in this sphere. When I saw Earle a few weeks ago he made a comment that with all that's going on in the world these days, we need a helluva lot more singing if we expect some change.
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Comment by Adam Sheets on July 6, 2010 at 3:38pm -
Good call on Tom Morello and, although it's not for everybody, I really enjoyed his last record with Street Sweeper Social Club, his side project with Boots Riley. Very angry and very political. But you are correct that there are no artists willing to speak out who have a chance of actually being heard. Neil Young, yes, but are the younger generations listening? Morello, yes, but what was shocking back in 1992 on the first Rage Against the Machine album is now expected from him and, although he is still correct he has lost some of that effect. Natalie Maines wouldn't have had a single story written about her if she were around at the time when Bob Dylan was saying "I hope that you die" to the "Masters of War" and Phil Ochs was telling the President to "find another country to be part of".
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Comment by denton fabrics on July 6, 2010 at 4:28pm -
The have's of the 21st century are dusting the have nots like never before. The new numbers are that the richest 1% in this country have more money than the lowest 95%. How did the numbers ever get so skewed? How does that in any way represent the concept of "democracy"? Shame on the politicians. And shame on us for allowing this to happen and tolerating it's existence.
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Comment by Barry Dredze on July 6, 2010 at 4:33pm -
Well, maybe we're in one of those inhaling periods. Kind of like the early-mid 70s between the commercial revolutionary anthems (Steve Miller Band's "Fly Like an Eagle," Jefferson Starship's "Ride the Tiger") and the birth of punk.
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Comment by Easy Ed on July 6, 2010 at 4:44pm
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While it took a bit of searching, I discovered an article (click this) from a week or so ago that discusses a new move about protest singing in the 21st century.
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Comment by Lost Hills on July 6, 2010 at 5:35pm -
Upper Big branch Mine Disaster
I'm still writing protest songs. But it's trickier than it was a couple years ago - you don't want to come off like a teabagger and lose your credibility.... It was a lot easier to be a rabblerouser when the neo-cons were driving the the thrasher.... Well, Woody and Pete ripped on Rooseveldt and then campaigned for his reelection. "May you live in interesting times......"
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Comment by Paul on July 6, 2010 at 5:40pm
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Ya know, I was just gonna say, "I Ain't A Marchin' Any More...." Phil Ochs. Yes, that's who we need now, but who would listen to him when we've got Lady Gaga to hold our rapt attention.... ????
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Comment by greasepaint on July 6, 2010 at 6:18pm -
Check out Peter Case's "Wig". There's just enuff not so carefully modulated rage happening on that platter.
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Comment by denton fabrics on July 6, 2010 at 8:50pm
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Hey, Lost Hills, that's a great song, a fantastic tribute to the Massey miners, thanks for posting it. Check out his video posted above. Maybe one can find a bit of hope in a song.
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Comment by Mr Edyoulis on July 7, 2010 at 12:29am -
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