A new documentary film on the life and music of Phil Ochs, “There But For Fortune,” is being shown in a several US cities now. It hasn’t come too soon, certainly, because Ochs today is largely unknown outside the circle of lefty baby-boomers. Often Ochs is dismissed as a “topical” songwriter whose music, for...
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Music
What Was He Fighting For? (Phil Ochs as the Sound of the New Left)
I read some Marx…
Utah Phillips once said that IWWs used hymns as the basis of their famous labor songs because the tunes were pretty and every one knew them. All the IWW would have to do was change the lyrics so they made sense. Now some folks make more sense of Katy Perry’s “I kissed a girl”…
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Desmond Dekker – Israelites
“Get up in the morning, slaving for bread, sir,/So that every mouth can be fed./Poor me, the Israelite. Aah.”
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Strike – the movie
Demo trailer for the movie musical "Strike!" now in pre-production. O'Reilly (Carson Nattrass) convinces his army mate McDougall (Jon Ted Wynne) that they have more in common with their former WW1 enemies than their rulers. ... "Strike!" is based on the actual events of the 1919 Winnipeg General Strike.
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Street Sweeper Social Club
“Off the breaking backs of others/Where you got all your bucks/Till we make the revolution I just hope your life sucks” Street Sweeper Social Club is an American rap rock supergroup, formed in Los Angeles, California in 2006. The band primarily consists of guitarist Tom Morello of Rage Against the Machine and vocalist/emcee Boots...
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They’re not the world…
A classic subversion of “We are the world” by the Houston band Culturcide. As Utah Phillips said, “Change the words so they make more sense.”
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Television – Drug of A Nation
From Michael Franti and the Disposable Heroes:
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Live Aid – another lesson from history
Twenty-two years ago today Bob Geldof asked “..why do people starve on one side of the world while on the other people are paid not to produce food, or “surpluses” are allowed to rot? He said that no-one had yet answered that question for him satisfactorily..” Well, in an article titled ‘Politics of Live...
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THIS LAND IS THEIR LAND
You must have heard the song by Woody Guthrie: “This land is your land, This land is my land, … “ It should be, but in fact it isn’t. Many millions of working people own no land at all. Those who are a bit better off own the small plot on which their house...
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