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Best Political Music

by: JimC

Fri Aug 08, 2008 at 12:40:18 PM EDT
OK, here goes. Best political music.

My criterion (yours may differ): The band's identity (or individual's identity) is political. That doesn't mean every song, but it also excludes bands that may do one or two political songs. I reserve the right, as should you, to add honorable mentions of songs as the thread grows.

Of course, the usual rap against political music is that when politics comes to the fore, the music suffers. I say: bollocks.

Rock on.
JimC :: Best Political Music
Tags: (All Tags)
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Best Political Music | 72 comments
A few to start (0.00 / 0)
The Clash, towering above everyone else.

Billy Bragg

Public Enemy


This is fun. (0.00 / 0)
Let's rec this, folks, which for a diary like this is better than the front-page, because it will stick around for a longer time.

Wonder if Sununu's fired now.
RATM (4.00 / 1)
Rage Against The Machine

The giant finds its gait.
For some reason, (4.00 / 1)
this was the first thing that popped into my head:



Wonder if Sununu's fired now.

Smiths (0.00 / 0)
Is "Everyday Is Like Sunday" a political song? I say yes.
[ Parent ]
A few more (0.00 / 0)
Midnight Oil

Bad Religion (there are something like 15 Bad Religion CDs; I have 7 or 8 of them, and they're all the same and they're all good)

Naked Raygun

Honorable mention: Consolidated (Promising but short-lived; "White American Male" is a classic)


The Weavers (4.00 / 3)
Eric Darling, who took over Pete's slot when he left, died yesterday. Pete will be playing a benefit in Brattleboro VT in the next couple of weeks.
Woody Guthrie and Manu Chao (4.00 / 3)
This is one of the most overtly political songs I know, and Woody Guthrie's music generally was very political. And his guitar killed fascists.

This song is a tirade against Charles Lindbergh and the political organization America First and the Republican Party (Hoover, Clark, and Nye).

This other song, by Manu Chao, is in Spanish and it's about illegal immigrants to the European Union. It's also really good. Manu Chao is considered very political.

The song basically says stuff like "they say I'm clandestine because I don't have papers," "I went north for work," "my life is prohibited, say the authorities," "my destiny is to run, because I'm clandestine."

The cities he refers to, Ceuta (a Spanish city in Africa) and Gibraltar (a British city across the straight that separates Europe and Africa), are entry ports into the European Union and the destination of many migrants from Africa.  

Woody was in the Almanac Singers (4.00 / 2)
with Pete Seeger and Lee Hays. After that political band broke up Pete and Lee formed the Weavers with Ronnie Gilbert and Fred Hellerman.

The Weavers had chart-toppers - e.g. Goodnight Irene - and got blacklisted. I think they set the standard by which others will be measured.

The Weavers' "children" - bands and performers who openly cite their influence - include just about everyone in folk music, notably Peter Paul and Mary, Malvina Reynolds, Arlo, Country Joe and the Fish, Holly Near, and Nanci Griffith.

Along with Woody we should mention Ledbelly.

[ Parent ]
Awesome (0.00 / 0)
"They say America first, but they mean America next." And said so gently, I love it.

Not to go OT, but the Philip Roth novel on Lindbergh, The Plot Against America, is a stunning read.

[ Parent ]
Guthrie: (4.00 / 1)
Christ for President

Let's have Christ our President
Let us have him for our king
Cast your vote for the Carpenter
That you call the Nazarene

The only way we can ever beat
These crooked politician men
Is to run the money changers out of the temple
Put the Carpenter in

O It's Jesus Christ our President
God above our king
With a job and a pension for young and old
We will make hallelujah ring

Every year we waste enough
To feed the ones who starve
We build our civilization up
And we shoot it down with wars

But with the Carpenter on the seat
Way up in the Capital town
The USA would be on the way
Prosperity Bound!

I've got a Billy Bragg version that is fantastic.

Wonder if Sununu's fired now.

[ Parent ]
Don't let McCain see that (0.00 / 0)
He'll run it with shots of Obama over it: http://www.time.com/time/polit...



[ Parent ]
Randy Newman. (4.00 / 1)
Sail Away is just about perfect. Good Old Boys is maybe the only album based on an academic political science work (Harry Williams' biography of Huey Long).
Really? (0.00 / 0)
I had no idea. I only have his "best of" -- the songs "Rednecks" and "Political Science" would merit mention if he'd never written another song.

[ Parent ]
Political Science is from Sail Away (4.00 / 1)
The title song is a slave trader wooing Africans aboard.

Rednecks is from Good Old Boys. He covers Long's campaign song Every Man a King.

The album also has Louisiana, 1927 which got a lot of play following Katrina:

The river rose all day
The river rose all night
Some people got lost in the flood
Some people got away alright
The river have busted through cleard down to Plaquemines
Six feet of water in the streets of Evangelne

...
Louisiana, Louisiana
They're tyrin' to wash us away
They're tryin' to wash us away
Louisiana, Louisiana
They're tryin' to wash us away
They're tryin' to wash us away

President Coolidge came down in a railroad train
With a little fat man with a note-pad in his hand
The President say, "Little fat man isn't it a shame what the river has
done
To this poor crackers land."


[ Parent ]
Woodstock (4.00 / 1)

Some Faves:
Country Joe McDonald - "Feel Like I'm Fixing To Die Rag"

Richie Havens - Freedom

Joan Baez - Drug Store Truck Driving Man
Dedicated to Ronny Rayguns



The giant finds its gait.

"We're just jammin" (0.00 / 0)
Then Hendrix' guitar turns into a bomber fleet for the Star Spangled Banner...
[ Parent ]
Bob Dylan of course (0.00 / 0)
Also Negativland -- a band who has been "culture-jamming" since 1980 -- not political songs per se, but  definitely political acts.

http://www.negativland.com/ind...

and

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/N...




Request for clarification (0.00 / 0)
Our three-judge panel all love Dylan, but wonders what criteria you are using to admit him.

And Negativland reminds me of U2. Kind of a borderline call. Is U2 a political band, at the end of the day? Probably.

[ Parent ]
Which Dylan? (0.00 / 0)
Have you seen I'm Not There? Woody, not Jude or Rimbaud...
[ Parent ]
Cate Blanchett (0.00 / 0)
But actually, I haven't seen it.
[ Parent ]
Well, as you know (4.00 / 1)
I could write an essay on that.

We could certainly go 1963/64 Dylan. Despite his uncomfortability with movement politics those songs were political, and in fact reinvigorated the genre. Much has been said of the Woody Guthrie link, but he modernized it, and added something new.

If we want to go 70s, we could get him in just on Hurricane, IMHO, which had real world effects, and was movement related.

Infidels (1983) is an odd one, with songs about Israel's foriegn policy (he defends it) and the decline of the unions in America (he's pro-union).

Oh Mercy had political world, disease of conceit, everything is broken. Social commentary I suppose there.

I actually think his political work is not his best work, alough it is brilliant. Same is true of Billy Bragg, incidentally, who wrote beautiful songs in the interstices of his political albums.

Actually I take that back. Bragg's Great Leap Forward is still a song that can move you like none other (jump the video to 47 seconds in):




[ Parent ]
oops wrong vid, here's the best one (4.00 / 1)



[ Parent ]
Billy forever (4.00 / 1)
Can I 4 that 16 times?

Make it 15, because Henry Rollins having a talky entertainment show is a bit of a downer.

And yes, the judges knew you'd have a good answer. Thanks for playing.


[ Parent ]
I went to an anti-war march in DC (0.00 / 0)
Vietnam War, 1970, that is. It was the Mobe, IIRC.

My roommate stayed one day longer than me. He came back talking about a concert I had missed by the Washington Monument. Two bands: the Dead and the Beach Boys...

Phil Ochs (4.00 / 2)
Testimony at the Trial of the Chicago 7.5
http://www.law.umkc.edu/facult...

I met Phil in the Spring of 1968, but I heard him in front of the Lincoln Memorial at the massive April 11 1967 demonstration

From his FBI file...


http://philipdavidochs.googlep...
"The Worker" of April 11, 1967, page one, column four, indicated Phil Ochs was one of the artists scheduled to participate in the April 15, 1967, anti-Vietnam demonstration in New York City sponsored by the Spring Mobilization Committee to End the War in Vietnam.

The October 16, 1967, issue of "Mobilization News," published by the National Mobilization Committee to End the War in Vietnam (NMC) listed Phil Ochs as one of the entertainers who would appear at the October 21, 1967 anti-Vietnam demonstration at the Pentagon in Washington, D.C.

The October 27, 1967, issue of the "Kingsman," a Brooklyn College, Brooklyn, New York, newspaper, reflected that Phil Ochs was one the folk singers who performed at the October 21, 1967, anti-Vietnam demonstration at the Pentagon, Washington, D.C.

The November 23, 1967, issue of "The Village Voice," a New York City newspaper, contained an article written by Phil Ochs captioned, "Have You Heard? The War is Over!" In this article the author calls for a rally in Washington Square Park, New York City, on November 25, 1967, to declare an end to the Vietnam War

for old Wobbly, Twomey...the Ballad of Joe Hill


This is not a novel to be tossed aside lightly. It should be thrown with great force.

   Dorothy Parker

[ Parent ]
Reggae? (4.00 / 3)
I'm not a big reggae guy. I know a little Marley, a little Jimmy Cliff, and I know "Pressure Drop" because the Clash did a classic cover of it.

But it is some of the most overtly political music out there. Any reggae aficionados?

Jr. Gong (Bob's youngest son) (4.00 / 1)

Welcome to Jamrock
Come on let's face it, a ghetto education's basic
A most a the youths them waste it
And when them waste it, that's when them take da guns and replace it
Then them don't stand a chance at all
And that's why a nuff little youth have up some fat matic
With the extra magazine inna them back pocket
And a bleach a night time inna some black jacket
All who not lock glocks, them a lock rocket
Then will full you up a current like a short circuit
Dem a run a roadblock which part the cops block it
And from now till a morning not stop clock it
If them run outta rounds a bruck back ratchet

Road To Zion
In this world of calamity
Dirty looks and grudges and jealousy
And police weh abuse dem authority
Media clowns weh nuh know bout variety
Single parents weh need some charity
Youths weh need some love and prosperity
Instead of broken dreams and tragedy
By any plan and any means and strategy

The giant finds its gait.

[ Parent ]
scroll down (0.00 / 0)
http://www.bluehampshire.com/s...

This is not a novel to be tossed aside lightly. It should be thrown with great force.

   Dorothy Parker

[ Parent ]
Some honorable song mentions (0.00 / 0)
"Anarchy in the UK" and "Holidays in the Sun" by the Pistols (In general, I'd argue that the Pistols are more political within music than actually political. They were world-changing, but musical world-changing.)

"Dreamin'," Blondie (not political? I think it is)

"Don't Fall Out Jack," the Housemartins (actually a very political band, but a lot of their stuff is not to my taste)

"Holiday in Cambodia," the Dead Kennedys (perhaps their most fully realized vision)


And (0.00 / 0)
"Empire of the Senseless," the Mekons. Also "Insignificance."


[ Parent ]
Springsteen's Nebraska album (0.00 / 0)
I'm not half the Springsteen fan I once was. But think about it -- it's the early Reagan years, you're one of the world's biggest rock stars (and you're from New Jersey), and you record one of the most stripped-down records ever made by a mainstream artist, about the occasionally brutal nature of life in America's heartland. It's political in its way.


Early 80s British punk (0.00 / 0)
Was it considered punk? The movement had a name... The Clash may be there at the tail end, but I mean more Elvis Costello and especially Joe Jackson. Jackson's albums are unusually political, not so much in topic and outrage but in awareness. It's a Big World, Blaze of Glory...
The Stiff Records guys (0.00 / 0)
Like Ian Dury, the Damned, etc. Elvis said they were the real punks, because they recorded on shoestring budgets, as opposed to Pistols, who recorded on major labels.
[ Parent ]
Oh wait (4.00 / 1)
The term you may be groping for is "pub rock."
[ Parent ]
More songs on imperalism (4.00 / 1)
British echoes of:

and emerging American:



Wonder if Sununu's fired now.

Neither artist, though, is "political" all or even most of the time n/t (0.00 / 0)


Wonder if Sununu's fired now.
[ Parent ]
Populist Protests (4.00 / 1)
CCR - Fortunate Son

Billy Joel - Goodnight Saigon, Allentown

Neil Young - Rockin' In The Free World

John Mellencamp - Rain On The Scarecrow

Hank Williams Jr. - A Country Boy Can Survive

KRS-One - Sound of da police


The giant finds its gait.

harry chapin (0.00 / 0)
nuff said
California Uber Alles (4.00 / 1)


Hope > Fear
Gil Scott Heron (4.00 / 2)


Hope > Fear
Revolution (0.00 / 0)


This is not a novel to be tossed aside lightly. It should be thrown with great force.

   Dorothy Parker

[ Parent ]
Revolution (0.00 / 0)


This is not a novel to be tossed aside lightly. It should be thrown with great force.

   Dorothy Parker

[ Parent ]
Revolution #9 (0.00 / 0)


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v...
revolution #9 experimental recording of john and yoko, with a little help from their friends.

please suscribe to beatlesfan4ever13, the beatles music and interesting stuff only here

"Revolution 9" or sometimes "Revolution #9" is a song which appeared on The Beatles' 1968 self-titled LP release (also known as the White Album).

The recording began as an extended ending to the album version of "Revolution", to which were added vocal and music sound clips, tape loops, and sound effects influenced by the musique concrète styles of Karlheinz Stockhausen, Edgard Varèse, Luigi Nono, and John Cage, further manipulated with editing and sound modification techniques (stereo panning and fading). At over eight minutes, it is the longest track on the album, as well as the longest Beatles track ever officially released.

The work is credited to Lennon/McCartney (as were most Beatles songs written by either composer), though it was primarily the effort of John Lennon. George Harrison, Ringo Starr, and Yoko Ono made small contributions, while Paul McCartney did not actively participate in the track's creation. Ono's avant-garde influence on Lennon's songwriting and composition is clear throughout "Revolution 9."

Believing the track to be too uncommercial for even the Beatles to get away with, McCartney and producer George Martin fought hard to keep the track off the White Album, but Lennon and Ono won out, and the track was included as the second from last song at the end of the album's fourth side.



This is not a novel to be tossed aside lightly. It should be thrown with great force.

   Dorothy Parker

[ Parent ]
Buffalo Springfield n/t (0.00 / 0)

For what its worth n/t (4.00 / 1)


This is not a novel to be tossed aside lightly. It should be thrown with great force.

   Dorothy Parker

[ Parent ]
Not even remotely political (4.00 / 1)
But it's Saturday.


Staff Sargeant Barry Sadler (0.00 / 0)



This is not a novel to be tossed aside lightly. It should be thrown with great force.

   Dorothy Parker

Dylan (4.00 / 1)
... is said to have called out that song as derivative of his work.  I'm not taking a position, just adding the historical note.
[ Parent ]
The Animals We've Got To Get Out Of This Place (4.00 / 2)
a better life for me and you



This is not a novel to be tossed aside lightly. It should be thrown with great force.

   Dorothy Parker

Sky Pilot (4.00 / 2)
Yeah its the Animals again...slang for a Military Chaplain



This is not a novel to be tossed aside lightly. It should be thrown with great force.

   Dorothy Parker

Mahalia Jackson :We Shall Overcome (4.00 / 1)
OMG


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v...
"We shall overcome--very moving she gets totally saturated with the song, even at the end as she walks from the mic the power of her voice is still overwhelming. This song was a staple of the civil rights movement, Mahalia worked closely with Dr. Martin Luther King. She also sang Precious Lord at his funeral in 1968"


This is not a novel to be tossed aside lightly. It should be thrown with great force.

   Dorothy Parker

Down By The Riverside (4.00 / 1)
I ain't gonna study war no more

Pete Seeger, Sonny Terry, and Brownie McGhee.Amen.

This is not a novel to be tossed aside lightly. It should be thrown with great force.

   Dorothy Parker

JonnyB brings it big! (0.00 / 0)
n/t
[ Parent ]
parents (4.00 / 1)
took us to Geenwich Village in 1963 to see Sonny Terry and Brownie McGhee at some (?) club. Nothing sounded quite the same after.

This is not a novel to be tossed aside lightly. It should be thrown with great force.

   Dorothy Parker

[ Parent ]
John Lennon (4.00 / 2)
John Lennon
Bruce Springsteen (every album, not just Nebraska)
Neil Young
Patti Smith

Energy and persistence conquer all things.

Benjamin Franklin

I'm a strategist for the NH Coordinated Campaign
thank you (0.00 / 0)
Patti Smith on my mind, couldn't pick...there is a brand new documentary...


Movie Review
Patti Smith: Dream of Life
August 6, 2008
Godmother of Punk, Celebrator of Life
By MANOHLA DARGIS
Published: August 6, 2008

http://movies.nytimes.com/2008...
You may not learn everything you want to know in "Patti Smith: Dream of Life," an impressionistic portrait of that punk godhead, but you learn just about everything you need. Created over a heroic 11 years, it was directed and mostly shot by Steven Sebring, a high-end commercial photographer whose perseverance and conspicuous unfamiliarity with, or disregard for, the conventions of nonfiction cinema (not to mention the apparently deep-enough pockets that freed him to follow his own muse) have inspired a lovely, drifty first feature that feels less like a documentary and more like an act of rapturous devotion.
For old punks and new, such devotion is easy. Ms. Smith was born (in 1946), wrote poetry, made rock 'n' roll history, changed the world, part of it anyway. "Dream of Life" tells some of that story, intimately and yet at arm's length. If you want to know about punk, what it was like to play CBGB when it mattered (or on its final night, as Ms. Smith did in 2006), look elsewhere. The same goes if you want to know what it was like to be on top of the world and on top of the charts, to watch Robert Mapplethorpe get his nipple pierced, sit at the feet of William S. Burroughs and shack up with Sam Shepard at the Chelsea Hotel.


as for Sam Shepard any guess what band he played in ?
Big Hit Hint: The Faster We Go The Rounder We Get

This is not a novel to be tossed aside lightly. It should be thrown with great force.

   Dorothy Parker

[ Parent ]
oh, how could I forget.... (4.00 / 1)
Jimmy Cliff
Quicksilver Messenger Service - "What About Me?"

Energy and persistence conquer all things.

Benjamin Franklin

I'm a strategist for the NH Coordinated Campaign
"What Are You Gonna Do About Me ?" ? (0.00 / 0)
No, you are right..."What About Me?" is the title !


This is not a novel to be tossed aside lightly. It should be thrown with great force.

   Dorothy Parker

[ Parent ]
Smothers Brothers (4.00 / 1)
they kill @:42
Nixon, Vietnam, Race, it's all out front.
Then Cronkite announces they've been canceled by the network.

Pat Paulson..."The Democrats are split between three factions: the New Left, the Old Left, and what's left."




This is not a novel to be tossed aside lightly. It should be thrown with great force.

   Dorothy Parker

Simple Song Of Freedom (0.00 / 0)
Tim Hardin had a hit with this song written by Bobby Darin. Here he sings his song. This really brought me back, so simple really. Splish splash...

"We, the people here, don't want a war"

This is not a novel to be tossed aside lightly. It should be thrown with great force.

   Dorothy Parker

Strange Fruit (4.00 / 2)

What can I say ?  

This is not a novel to be tossed aside lightly. It should be thrown with great force.

   Dorothy Parker

The best activist band you've never heard of: State Radio. (4.00 / 1)
Well, maybe you have, or the front man's first band, Dispatch (which was apolitical)

The Band: State Radio (home-grown in New England) was formed in 2002, and nearly every song is a protest of the atrocities that are occurring right now.  If only I thought I could get you to watch twenty or thirty videos, I'd post plenty more.  They spend election years turning their concerts into voter registration drives, and have even been known to play songs from the lead singer/guitarist/writer, Chad Urmston's earlier band, which is better known, if it will get people to register.  They don't just sing about it; they do it.

All the ones I've posted are excellent, but for the more hopeful stuff, skip the first three on this list.

Whether or not you enjoy the music (this song is called Camilo), this song is the most moving argument you'll hear for not forcing our troops to return to Iraq, and it's a true story:

Another song, this one about the struggle against totalitarianism.  Think Burma, for example.  By the way, the songs are somewhat self-explanatory, my descriptions are just to get you to press "play".  Anyway, "Revolutionaries":

Next up is "Riddle in Londontown", which is...hauntingly relevant.  There's no good video, but it's one of their most famous songs.
Riddle In London Town - State Radio

Now for the more upbeat stuff:

Centuries ago, off the coast of Maine, a slave in a shipwreck saved his master, who repented for keeping the former enslaved, and freed him ("The Story of Benjamin Darling, Part 1"):

Rock out against THIS war ("Gang of Thieves"):

And, for anybody who knows Dispatch or State Radio, Chad Urmston's most famous song (and certainly the most hopeful of the ones I've listed), "The General" (the oldest on this list, circa 1996), which you might recognize but not know where from.  This version is performed by Dispatch (which Urmston was with when this song was popularized), not State Radio, but the writer/composer and lead singer are the same anyway:

Anyway, there's my plug.  They don't all have to be anti-Vietnam songs, people!

Incidentally, six songs/five youtube videos in one comment?  I have a feeling Jonny B and the Sleeping Giant won't let that record stand.

I was hoping -- (4.00 / 1)
to hear about stuff I didn't know about before. Thanks.

Alex G. delivers on that too, above.

[ Parent ]
children (4.00 / 1)
have them and you know stuff. Thanks to Nat I know State Radio

This is not a novel to be tossed aside lightly. It should be thrown with great force.

   Dorothy Parker

[ Parent ]
Mine is 4 in October (0.00 / 0)
I forget everything I used to know.
[ Parent ]
Tom Lehrer (4.00 / 2)
I used to really like watching That Was The Week That Was with my parents - did anyone say Tom Lehrer yet?

Oh, the white folks hate the black folks,
And the black folks hate the white folks.
To hate all but the right folks
Is an old established rule.

But during National Brotherhood Week, National Brotherhood Week,
Lena Horne and Sheriff Clarke are dancing cheek to cheek.
It's fun to eulogize
The people you despise,
As long as you don't let 'em in your school.

Oh, the poor folks hate the rich folks,
And the rich folks hate the poor folks.
All of my folks hate all of your folks,
It's American as apple pie.

But during National Brotherhood Week, National Brotherhood Week,
New Yorkers love the Puerto Ricans 'cause it's very chic.
Step up and shake the hand
Of someone you can't stand.
You can tolerate him if you try.

Oh, the Protestants hate the Catholics,
And the Catholics hate the Protestants,
And the Hindus hate the Moslems,
And everybody hates the Jews.

But during National Brotherhood Week, National Brotherhood Week,
It's National Everyone-smile-at-one-another-hood Week.
Be nice to people who
Are inferior to you.
It's only for a week, so have no fear.
Be grateful that it doesn't last all year!



Energy and persistence conquer all things.

Benjamin Franklin

I'm a strategist for the NH Coordinated Campaign
Tom Lehrer yet ! (4.00 / 1)
There I said it. So long mom, I'm off to drop the bomb, so don't wait up for me...

TW3 was a great show.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T...

That Was The Week That Was, also known as TW3, was a satirical television comedy programme that aired on BBC Television in 1962 and 1963.

Devised, produced and directed by Ned Sherrin, the programme was fronted by David Frost and cast members included improvising cartoonist Timothy Birdsall, political commentator Bernard Levin, and actors Lance Percival, who sidelined in topical calypsos, many improvised in response to suggestions from the audience, Kenneth Cope, Roy Kinnear, Willie Rushton (then known as 'William'), Al Mancini, Robert Lang, David Kernan and Millicent Martin. The last two were also singers and the programme opened with a song - eponymously entitled That Was The Week That Was - sung by Martin to Ron Grainer's theme tune and enumerating topics that had been in the past week's news. Off-screen script-writers included John Albery, John Betjeman, John Bird, Graham Chapman, John Cleese, Peter Cook, Roald Dahl, Richard Ingrams, Gerald Kaufman, Frank Muir, Denis Norden, Bill Oddie, Dennis Potter, Eric Sykes, Kenneth Tynan, Keith Waterhouse and others.

The programme was groundbreaking in its lampooning of the establishment. Prime Minister Harold Macmillan was initially supportive of the programme, chastising the then Postmaster General Reginald Bevins (nominally in charge of broadcasting) for threatening to "do something about it". During the Profumo affair, however, he became one of the programme's chief targets for derision. After two successful seasons in 1962 and 1963, the programme did not return in 1964, as this was a General Election year and the BBC decided it would be unduly influential.

At the end of each episode, Frost would usually sign off with: "That was the week, that was." At the end of the final programme he announced: "That was That Was The Week That Was...that was."



This is not a novel to be tossed aside lightly. It should be thrown with great force.

   Dorothy Parker

[ Parent ]
I'm late to the party but I haven't seen (4.00 / 1)
Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young on this list.  A terrible omission.

I can't do the YouTube thingy so I'll just post a selection of lyrics for your judging pleasure.

Chicago
So your brother's bound and gagged
And they've chained him to a chair
Won't you please come to Chicago
Just to sing

Ohio
Tin soldiers and Nixon's comin'.
We're finally on our own.
This summer I hear the drummin'.
Four dead in Ohio.

Find the Cost of Freedom
Find the cost of freedom
Buried in the ground
Mother Earth will swallow you
Lay your body down

I was fortunate enough to see them perform all of these songs in '72 at the Music Hall in Boston (now the Wang Center).  It still is the best concert I've ever seen.

Justica para todos.  Justice for all.  Pass it on.

Never too late for this party n/t (0.00 / 0)

[ Parent ]
What about Poor Charlie? (4.00 / 1)
On the MTA, not Bass - a great classic political song, very upbeat, none of that "When I am done singing this song I will go slash my wrists" down beat stuff.  
http://www.mit.edu/~jdreed/t/c...  

"When you get to the end of your rope, tie a knot and hang on."  Franklin D. Roosevelt   [I'm an advisor to the NHDP Coordinated Campaign]
Hey (0.00 / 0)
"If it weren't for the rocks in its bed, the stream would have no song."
-- usually attributed to Carl Perkins

It takes all beats to rock a world ...

[ Parent ]
Best Political Music | 72 comments
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