Where’s the Revolution?

Here’s bleak 2017 tune with a driving synthesizer line from Depeche Mode, complete with sinister black-and-white video.

They manipulate and threaten
With terror as a weapon
Scare you till you’re stupefied
Wear you down until you’re on their side

 

Your Capricious Soul

Hearing Michael Stipe sing No Time For Love Like Now for a recent Late Show segment brought the artist back to mind.
It’s a tender tune for the times.

Where did this all begin to change
The lockdown memories can’t sustain
This glistening, hanging free fall

 

The quiet minimalism of No Time For Love Like Now reminded me of another tune pointing to the future of our children, Your Capricious Soul. It’s minimalistic, as well, but more urgent.
The video is engaging, as well, a different take on images for song.

Your mother’s worried
Is this in your favor
And your pastor’s crying
And the birds are dying
Or they might as well be
They might as well be

Don’t Give Up

This one jumped quickly to the head of the line. I’ve been strolling through music videos and have consciously plucked from the past more than the present.

Couldn’t resist this one, though.
Herbie Hancock, Pink and John Legend reinterpret Peter Gabriel’s lovely tune.
From it’s opening verse:

In this proud land we grew up strong
We were wanted all along
I was taught to fight, taught to win
I never thought I could fail

The song builds to its final chorus:

Don’t give up now
We’re proud of who you are
Don’t give up
You know it’s never been easy
Don’t give up
‘Cause I believe there’s a place
There’s a place where we belong.

It’s a sad, hopeful, heoirc tune.

Political World

Carolina Chocolate Drops tear through one of my favorite Bob Dylan tunes, and I do mean “tear.” The track is positively danceable.

Danceable protest… what a thought. It’s positively subversive.

We live in a political world
Where peace is not welcome at all
It’s turned away from the door
To wonder some more
Or put up against the wall

At the Purchaser’s Option

Slaves were property. Rhiannon Giddens sings of a particularly horrific practice. If you bought a slave, you could opt to purchase the baby of that slave… or not…
Think of the heartache, and the strength involved…
Giddens does a good job of introducing the song.

 

I’ve got a babe but shall I keep him
‘Twill come the day when I’ll be weepin’
But how can I love him any less
This little babe upon my breast
You can take my body
You can take my bones
You can take my blood
But not my soul

Prairie thoughts

Mountainous is stupendous, but a hilltop overlooking an immense expanse of prairie? Nature’s ululation.

Alabama

A 2015 Houston Press story alerted me to this John Coltrane lament.
The song’s title is a clue. So is the bass rumble of the piano in portions of the tune, not to mention Coltrane’s mournful tenor.
No words are necessary.
The death of four girls in the 16th Street Baptist Church bombings in Birmingham in 1963, followed by the shooting of two more boys by police just seven hours later fueled this jazz dirge.

Bike Lane

Lo-fi and live.
Stephen Malkmus and The Jicks: Progress! Bike lanes!…
Oh wait…

Another beautiful bike lane
The cops, the cops that killed Freddie
Sweet young Freddie Gray
Got behind him with the trenchant
And choked the life right out of him

Home

Punk icon Iggy Pop waxes rhapsodic about the importance of having a home

 

I ain’t on the street, I don’t have to be a bum
Nobody can get at me, they can’t fuck with me
They can’t fuck with me because I got my home.

Our leaf dump

Three vultures circle
(among many here
who perch on
our water towers)
while I load
my car with
lawn’s leaf litter.

Nine vehicles converged.
Six white pickups
and three cars
near three islands
on the dirt,
30-foot piles.
Leaves, wood, earth,

Three minutes later
three plastic cans
and one bag
add my litter
to the compost.

I imagine later
buck, doe, fawn
wending their ways
among three dozen
careful planted trees
eyed by a
lidless, single, watchful
sentinel surveillance camera.