Monday, August 30, 2004 ... 3:37 PM
Revolution Rock
After hearing some of his new songs and speeches (and some old songs and speeches) a few weeks ago at Newport, I remarked to my darling Betsy that I'd follow Steve Earle into war. I missed the irony at the time, but it's true that after listening to him tumble through "Tom Ames' Prayer" and "Taneytown," I'd let that old boy put a rifle in my hand and lead me to glory or Georgia.
He couldn't, however, get me to sing along in public. Or much of anybody else either.
Boy, you know it's a dark fucking age for liberals when you can't get anyone at the country's biggest folk festival to sing along a chorus begging Woody Guthrie to come back and save us. And to boot -- for all his Pinko propaganda and provocation, all Steve's really aiming for at this point is to motivate enough libs to vote a rich New England moderate into the White House, to supplant the most overtly dangerous world leader in 50 years -- still, somefuckinghow, an uphill march for the citizens of this great nation of ours.
We are so fucked.
"Preaching to the choir" is a can't-miss criticism of Steve's new record (and if you don't know which "new record" I'm talking about, you're reading the wrong website, buddy), but the intention seems to be -- has to be -- to galvanize and mobilize, rather than to proselytize. He's just too confrontational and deliberately polarizing to be aiming for anything else. Steve is rallying the troops (because apparently we need rallying just to fucking vote these days -- to vote against the greediest most bellicose administration in the history of our country. We are so fucked). And he rallies effectively -- using fewer cliches across the album than I've used in this paragraph -- some feat for a post-1990s anti-war record.
Veering into trite territory only on the catchy title track(s) -- with a "follow your heart" lyric and Buddy Holly handclaps -- Steve mostly tackles the politics with the tough-to-block rabbit-punch of empathy. On the disc's two best cuts, he tells stories from the ground level of war, the P.O.V. of America's low-income-bracket boys and girls dying in uniform in desert nations around the world. In the Bakersfield rumble "Home to Houston", he takes us on a nervous ride with a truck-drivin Texas boy rolling out of Basra "with a bulletproof screen on the hood of my truck and a Bradley on my back door" (talk about your white freightliner blues). Shifting later down to rim-tap speed with "Rich Man's War," he aims again at Iraq, but then at Afghanistan (America's passe war), where a soldier spends his time "chasin ghosts in the thin dry air" while his car gets repossessed at home, after which -- in the album's moment of brillance -- Steve turns his camera on Gaza, where a Palestinian kid is seduced to blow himself up by "a fat man in a new Mercedes". Drawing compassionate parallels between U.S. Marines in Kandahar and potential terrorists in the Occupied Territories, and equalizing them by economic oppression, is an interesting attempt to sneak Marxism in the backdoor of phobic American politics ... But again, are the phobes even listening? If you don't have some Pinko leanings, are you really going to have picked this CD up? -- particularly after the press assault preceding its release? Nah. Still, it's a rousing revival for believers, and provides decent emotional ammo for skirmishes at the water cooler and family reunion.
The two excellent love songs on the later half deserve more sympathetic surroundings; here, sharing the same live, overdriven-preamp vibe as the rest of the record -- and following the Louisville Slugger-swinging punk anthem "F the CC" -- the love songs are given equal weight as headier topics, allowing them to function mostly as reminders of the current disconnect between our headlines and our Billboard charts, the tear in our cultural fabric that makes the hardline songs on this album important. Steve Earle is the only motherfucker sticking his neck out in just this way -- unapologetically, unequivocally, loud and clear. I'd risk suggesting that Steve bears the Pinko folk-punk mantle of Woody Guthrie and Joe Strummer. He's not the only recording artist speaking out -- but his singular voice is stronger and clearer than a whole roster of more cautious activists.
The Only Singer-Songwriter That Matters?
Ehhhh ... I'll get back to you on that one.
A love song of another stripe, "Condi, Condi", is a musical nod to less cautious folkie-activist Harry Belafonte, who most recently made headlines for likening National Security Advisor Rice and State Secretary Powell to house-slaves. Bascially a throw-away, the cut bears mention for its meandering calypso into uncomfortable territory, flirting with minstrelsy and misogyny both. It could come off as a Clashy squawking political satire ("Junco Pardner" springs to mind) if you're in the mood, though Joe's mocking bark always brought substance to the debate, using send-up mainly as a hook. Here there is only send-up, only hook, and some sexual menace besides. Political correctness out of the path, though, it's a good tune, though once its context goes the way of Brent Snowcroft (cross your fingers for sooner than later), the song will probably be heard as a speedbump in the stylistic continuity of the record.
It's a good album, definitely. I've been listening to it nonstop for the last several days, pumping my fist and shouting the bureaucracy-defying "I'm livin in the motherfuckin U.S.A.!" with the rest of the Bachelor of Arts Pinkos around the country this week. It's no London Calling (though it's a better record than Sandanista, for whatever mileage you get out of that), and it's hard to tell at this point how these songs will stand up when the threat of our current war profiteering leadership is behind us (cross your fingers for sooner than later), but whether or not this album will survive its context at all depends mainly on whether or not any of us survives the next four years, not to put too fine a point on it. It is depressing that John Kerry is the best cause Steve has to champion, but the plain fact is that we have to dodge a World War before we can recalibrate for our more liberal aspirations. So even if the uphill march ends at something as mundane as a fucking voting booth -- if that's where Steve Earle's revolution starts right now -- then I'll follow him, yeah. As long as I don't have to sing along in public.
Brendan
0 Comments:
Making Notes: Music of the Carolinas
(Novello Festival Press, April 2008)
includes my essay, "Link Wray"
MUSIC
Flop Eared Mule
The Celestial Monochord
HickoryWind.org
Modern Acoustic Magazine / Blog
Faking It
Honey, Where You Been So Long?
whiskey-girl
Porchlight
Charlotte-related
Emily A. Benton
Laurie Koster's Charlotte & Area Events
Evening Muse
Neighborhood Theatre
OTHER THAN MUSIC
Rusty Barnes
Mixed Animal
Cans and Jars
Night Train
Cat and Girl
Tom Drury
Ian Frazier
Film Freak Central
November 9, 2007
Eilen Jewell
The Evening Muse, Charlotte, NC
***review!***
June 16, 2007:
Carrie Rodriguez w/ Tim Easton
The Evening Muse, Charlotte, NC
***review!***
June 2, 2007:
Mt. Airy Fiddlers Convention
***review!***
July 10, 2005:
Chris Scruggs
The Evening Muse, Charlotte, NC
***review!***
July 8, 2005:
Tim Easton
The Evening Muse, Charlotte, NC
***review!***
February 19, 2005:
Neko Case and The Sadies w/ Visqueen
Variety Playhouse, Atlanta, GA
***review!***
September 17, 2004:
Gillian Welch & David Rawlings w/ Old Crow Medicine Show
Theater At Lime Kiln, Lexington, VA
***review!***
August 17, 2004:
Sweet Harmony Traveling Revue
Wolf Trap, Vienna, VA
***review!***
August 7 & 8, 2004:
Newport Folk Festival
Newport, R.I.
***review!***
July 11, 2004:
Cowboy Junkies
Wolf Trap, Vienna, VA
***review!***
Various Artists:
Friends of Old Time Music: the folks arrival 1961-1965 (at HickoryWind.org)
Neko Case:
Live From Austin TX DVD (at HickoryWing.org)
Old Crow Medicine Show:
Big Iron World
Sampson Pittman:
"Highway 61 Blues"
Baby Boy Warren:
"Stop Breakin Down"
Nina Nastasia:
The Blackened Air
Ryan Adams:
Jacksonville City Nights
Robert Wilkins:
"Rolling Stone"
Neko Case:
Furnace Room Lullaby
Etta Baker:
One Dime Blues
Steve Earle:
The Revolution Starts Now
Grey DeLisle:
The Graceful Ghost
