RE: olds from the music front

["Brown, Martin - ARP (NCI)" <mbrown@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hey, as someone who is playing the Bach Brandenburg No.1 in a few weeks, I
think his old music also is also still relevant (albiet at a more abstract
level).

In the early 1970's I had some connections to the G.I. antiwar movement. We
connected up a group on the Corel Sea aircraft carrier with an
anti-imperialist rock group and got their songs broadcast over the carrier
radio station.  Besides doing Woody Guthrie classics like The Banks Are Made
of Marble (with a guard at every door), they had some original stuff.  The
one I liked the best was If Jesus Came to Berkeley (on a take care of
business trip).

-----Original Message-----
From: Devine, James [mailto:jdevine@xxxxxxx]
Sent: Thursday, May 23, 2002 12:12 PM
To: 'pen-l@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx'
>Subject: [PEN-L:26247] olds from the music front


It's amazing how "old" music is still relevant. I'm not talking about Bach,
but about more profound (;-) country/rock music by singer-songwriter John
Prine. I recently stuck his early-1970s album (named "John Prine") and was
hit by its relevance: there's a sad song about destroying Appalachia to get
coal ("Mr. Peabody's Coal train has towed it away."), a humorous one about
the War on Drugs ("Illegal Smile"). There's a song about a drug-addict
Vietnam War veteran ("Sam Stone"), which isn't quite relevant but still
poignant. And there's a funny song with the following chorus:

"Your flag decal won't get you into heaven anymore;
It's already overcrowded from your dirty little war;
Jesus don't like killin' no matter what the reason for;
Your flag decal won't get you into heaven anymore."

This makes me feel much better about all those "United We Stand"
bumper-stickers on those SUVs that cut me off on the freeway. Now I have
something to sing (almost yodel).

BTW, after the DarwinFish on my car induced a woman driving a car with a
"Darwin is Dead" bumper sticker to give me quite a dirty look, I'm printing
up a sticker that says: "What Would Darwin Do? [in smaller letters:] use
scientific method."

Jim Devine jdevine@xxxxxxx &  http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~jdevine