[lbo-talk] where have all the anti-war songs gone

James Heartfield Heartfield at blueyonder.co.uk
Sun Mar 30 13:30:09 PDT 2008


"To be fair, they weren't new in the sixties either. The songs you cite were all written in the 40s, the 30s and the 19th century."

The republican struggle in Ireland produced some good songs later than that, like 'the men behind the wire', a rousing singalong that led the British to arrest its composer, 'The Patriot Game' (which Brendan Behan wrote for a veteran of the 1956 border campaign, and Bob Dylan plagirised for as 'God's on our side' after hearing the Clancy brothers singing the original - Behan's is a lot less obvious than Dylan's).

Reggae produced some good rebel rousing, like Tapper Zukie's MPLA, Jimmy Cliff's Vietnam, and the Wailers early tunes.

I recently made up a list of truly execrable environmentalist songs: the tragic Albert Hammond (who seems to have killed himself to avoid the smog) leading the pack with 'Down by the River' and 'We're running out'. Listen to the words of Bowie's Five Years and you will see that his cut up technique has been practised on a background piece on the Club of Rome report. The despicable Seeger's Little Boxes (I know he did not write it) and as for paving paradise and putting up a parking lot, it sounds like a better idea than listening to that again.



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