Random music/political musings.
Driving to Trader Joe's today, I'm listening to KFOG. Bruce Cockburn's "If I Had A Rocket Launcher" is playing on the radio. I remember this song from high school. I don't remember liking it especially at the time; I think we gently mocked it at the time for its combination of tinkly synthesizers and earnest (as in, overly) vocals.
Then
I notice the truck in front of me. It sports two bumper stickers:
"Viva
Bush" and "Support Our President And Our Troops." Also,
incongruously,
there's a "Senior Berkeley Parking" decal. (Biting the hand that
feeds
him?)
Meanwhile, Bruce is singing:
I don't believe in guarded borders and i don't believe in hate
I don't believe in generals or their stinking torture states
And when i talk with the survivors of things too sickening to relate
If i had a rocket launcher...i would retaliate
So I do the only rational thing. I turn up the radio. When my
lane opens up I pass the truck, the driver and I glare at each other. A
more sour and twisted face I hope not to see again for a
while.
On the way home from Trader Joe's, the DJ says something about how, as you listen at various stages in your life to the song she's about to play, it sounds different. The song is John Lennon's "Imagine."
At first, I think it sounds exactly the same as it has every time I've heard it in my life since I was a kid, but then something strikes me.
We used to sing this song in my hippie middle school. I've heard it a million times. I think I know the lyrics by heart.
What everyone else but me has probably noticed already is that it's not just a "what-if-we-could-all-live-peacefully-together-and-pet-the-fuzzy-bunnies" anthem.
It starts with "Imagine there's no heaven," and suggests that
"no religion too" would be a highly desireable state of
affairs.
It is an anti-gospel song. And right now, that sounds a bit... subversive.
I grew up in Berkeley, but I can very much imagine some fundy parent in a righteous frenzy because her child is being taught to sing a song calling for a world without religion!
And that's the United States in 2005.
I'm noticing that we're starting to get some good protest songs again... they are starting to get more creative and catchy enough that they may last beyond the present administration. "Sixteen Military Wives" by the Decembrists, and "We Got Back the Plague" by the Fiery Furnaces are two of my favorites. I also really like "When the President Talks to God" by Bright Eyes (though generally, I can't see what the fuss is about yet.)
And that's about all for now.
