jihad This one is meant to convey deep respect for the soldiers, regardless of the religion, or nation, for which they fight. I've always loved the study of comparative religion, and this song goes way back to my freshman year in college, that's where I wrote the main verse to this one, as part of a song called "Two Worlds" -- the descriptions of individuals preparing for battle were written more recently. I first heard of the term "jihad" or "holy war" back in the eighties when Reagan was president -- a group calling themselves the Islamic Jihad who were making news for themselves in Lebanon, where suicide bombers blew up an american army barracks. It wasn't until around 2001 that I first starting hearing an interpretation of the term in connection with the inner spiritual battle that everyone fights, not just militant extremists -- which is why I changed the title.
fear
(in the
name of
security) This
is the second version of this one, the original was written in 1992 in
response
to the first Gulf War; it was shorter than the present version but was
broader
in scope. The initial idea was a
study of how fear can shape beliefs and behavior in general, not just
political
behavior, and the many ways in which we unwittingly terrorize one
another, be
we parents terrorizing kids, children terrorizing each other, or what
have you.
The present version is more along the lines of "Seig
Hail", a song that didn't
make the cut for this collection written in the eighties to accompany a
short
play I wrote about a state run news organization in Nazi
Germany.
plume
de terre Literally
translated "apple of the earth" in French means potato.
This one was written in the late 90s,
envisioned to be predominantly an instrumental piece, with the lyrics
sung in a
similar style to that of the song called "Fingers" by
They Might Be
Giants. The line "I'm going
to get
me mine" is a direct quote of one of my former clients who was
very upset and
kept yelling this over and over and over, but he wasn't talking
about
potatoes. I titled the song "apple
of the earth" secondary to the biblical connotation for apple. Though perhaps mine is more abstract,
the lyrical content of this one I liken to "I Me Mine",
by George Harrison of
the Beatles. Someone suggested
recently that the song could have been about the Ireland potato revolt. I didn't think of that, but it could be
about that too I'm sure.
puppet
factory Yes,
the
title of Metallica's "Master of Puppets" was in
mind when I came up with the title of this one -- but the content of
the song is
original of course. The line about
"exchanging money on the side" came about in reference to "the
compromise" with
Turkey the Bush administration was considering in preparation for war
with Iraq
in 2003 -- paying Turkey to allow us to station our troops there while
we
prepared for war. Yes, not everyone is
going to buy into my perspective on the contemporary role corporations
play in our empire building, but hey,
its my song, I can say what I want.
peace
on earth today
Originally there was a chorus to this one -- but the
chorus ended up sounding a little too much like the one in "Peace On
Earth" by
U2; it wasn't a very good chorus anyway, so I left it out of the
final
version. I wrote this song over
the course of about four months, and as I hint in my comments for
"propagate peace"
below, the earlier version of this song had a longer ending --
one which I
eventually decided could stand on its own as an independent work.
propagate
peace This is one of my favorites
because its short and simple! The part about "open hearts, minds,
and doors", is
from a United
Methodist Church commercial getting a lot of air time when I was
writing the
lyrics for "peace on earth today".
This
one
was initially part of that song, the ending of it in fact, but I felt
like it could pretty well stand on its own.
My dad is an elder in the Methodist Church, and currently
is
pastor of a
small church in Croswell Michigan -- I probably wrote this song
mostly for him.
war
machine I had the title in mind for some time,
but it took
me awhile to finally decide what direction to take it in.
The lines about "government ox" and
soldiers being "sent home in a box" was taken from a song called
"temperatures
steaming" that I wrote in the mid eighties; the rest of the material in
this
one is entirely new content. The
part I like the most is the list of killing machines -- I did that by
brainstorming a list, then spending several days arranging the list to
make it
rhyme -- I used that same mechanism for the song "192".
join
the campaign
(parts 1-3) Part
2 is nearly identical to the original version I wrote in 1987. Parts 1 and 3 are complete revisions. The most significant change to
part 2 was
to try to create less of an anti-American or nationalistic sentiment,
by
altering all the sarcastic lines in the original version that had "now
I know
what it takes to be an American" to "now I know what it
takes to be a grown
man". Parts 2-3 of the song still
rely heavily on sarcasm, of course. That picture of Goofy
interviewing the President always cracks me up. That picture in
Part 3 where the lady is holding a sign that reads "take the red pill:
wake up" -- thats a reference to The Matrix, in case you didn't know.
fairy
tale This one was
pretty much finished in
the 1980's, but a couple verses were completely rewritten
when I was
preparing this compilation. The
part of the mother turning off the TV was there in the original version
but was
expanded by a couple verses and word changes here and there to bring
the whole thing closer to my
original
idea.
collateral
damage The
original title was "Timothy Says", which is pretty
telling in that the original
melody I had in mind was the Velvet Underground's "Stephanie says". It was
quite awhile before I came up
with an un-pirated melody to support the lyrics. During
one of his interviews McVeigh used the term "collateral damage"
referring to the school children
killed in the Oklahoma
City bombing; a statement which outraged many of the surviving victims
of his
attack. That's where the current
title for this one comes from -- but of course my reference is much
broader, to
include a lot of other areas of devastation as well.
The verse about a father still loving his son, is a
reference to Tim's father whom as apologist visited and prayed with
many
of the
surviving victims of the bombing.
I was in Scotland when I read that Timothy McVeigh had been
executed;
there was a small column about it in the paper supplied by the hotel
where I
was staying. I remember
experiencing the sadness I feel whenever I hear someone has been
executed.
The tone of the song I think derives mostly from that
feeling.
brave
new world The
first
two of those verses about being "taught to" do various things are from
a song I
wrote in the eighties titled "words of
freedom (in our
history books)". The rest of the song is
entirely new content (late 2002 to 2003) and was greatly influenced by
the book and the recent made-for-TV
movie of
the same title.
citizens
without
borders "Brothers
without borders" was the original title, written
when I was in high school. It won
a peer award and was published in our high school's literary
magazine. Though not my favorite, seems
like it
is the single most remembered work of mine from those days --
had a stranger
come up to me in college who could recite parts of it from memory;
which was an
embarrassing moment for me b/c I never thought of this one as being
very good. I added a couple lines and changed some words here and
there in preparation for the release of this collection b/c some of
those same feelings were still lingering. I like it better now.
just
another war song In
the present collection this song serves as a reprise for the song "new
war
songs". Over the years I've
had
reservations about this one being too anti-military, and the result has
been to
severely re-write it several
times. Was never really happy with
how the re-writes turned out though, so what you're seeing is
pretty close to
the original version I wrote in the eighties. The
reference to 43
rd command is entirely
made-up. The reference to Lebanon
is about the first "modern" middle eastern terrorist
attack on the U.S. that I
can recall. A group referring to
itself as the Islamic Jihad used a suicide bomber to drive into and
subsequently blow up a military barracks we had there.
Killed several hundred military
personnel I think. The original
version of this one was written within a year of that attack, when I
was about
fifteen. "Be all that you can be" was the catch phrase of the
military recruitment commercials when I was growing up -- since they
don't really use that saying anymore, those parts of this song might
not make sense to people younger than myself. I've put the lines
"be an army of one" in the final verses of the song in attempt to
reference more recent recruitment commercials.
corporate
colonization "Freedom
of the press belongs to the man that owns one" is a quote that
one of my best
friends from high school passed along to me -- he was living on this
commune in
college and we'd have these great conversations about all kinds
of things when
I visited. I started writing the
words to this one on one of those trips. The
idea about
putting logos on our forehead comes from a real advertising campaign I
came
across for the Guardian -- a British newspaper that asked people to
take a
picture of themselves with the Guardian logo on their forehead in
exchange for
a possible prize. I completed this song around the same
time that I was writing "puppet factory", which is why there are
similarities in their themes -- I was doing a lot of research
into WTO protests at the time. I love the picture of the
baby with the television eyes -- most of the still images used for this
one are compliments of adbusters, with the exception of the "boob tube"
image (also a favorite), which I found in the french daily, Le Monde.
terrorist
(parts 1-3) This
one was written very deliberately following the events of September 11th. The
reason there are three parts to this song is mainly
because I couldn't figure out how
to arrange the material any other way, and I didn't want to cut
anything
out. The phrase "anger is a lock
pick" I read in an internet chat room
concerning the 9/11
attacks. The line "there's
no such
thing as a winnable war" was used by Sting in his song "Russians", one
of my
favorite anti-war songs from the last years of the cold war era; he
rhymed it with "[...winnable war] is a lie we don't believe anymore".
green
fields forever I love that picture of the soldier with
the cat. The mood the photos create together in this one is right
on target. I wrote another one like this several
years later which I just flat out called "promiseland" (not included in
this collection). The reference to green fields also
shows up in "plume de terre",
which I wrote much later. I guess I could call these my three
Moses'
songs. There's a serious problem with "green fields"
in that I wrote it to the tune of "Bullet
The Blue Sky"
by U2 -- not on purpose, I just really loved that song when it came
out, and so
it was in my head when I wrote this one.
Anyway, I have never found a replacement that I like as much, so
it
remains without a soundtrack at the moment.
the
lunatics in
our shoes I
started this one in the early years of college, but it remained in
fragment form for quite awhile before I realized that all I really had
was a
good title -- the rest of the song was just filler. So I set it
aside and basically forgot about it. In retrospect I realize that
I wrote a song called "lab animals" my junior year in college that had
a similar theme, but was more Eleanor-Rigby-like in mechanism, creating
portraits of several different people. It wasn't until many
years after college that the details really started to come together
into
anything like it is today. I still
consider it subject to significant revision -- I'm not happy with it
yet, but I think its one of those that potentially could turn out
pretty good.
love
conquers all This
one came together pretty fast. The
original version was just the first three verses. The
part about love coming down from heaven was inspired
from the movie Philadelphia where Tom Hanks is interpreting a scene
from an
opera he's listening to -- one of my favorite parts of that
movie.
the"some
are one"
song The line about keeping
hope alive was triggered by Jessie Jackson's presidential
campaign that was
going on at the time that I wrote the first version of this one. Had a couple different names early on,
including "some smell roses". Wrote
the
original version very quickly my freshman year in college, most
recently revised
it in the spring of 2003.
only
a dream I
wrote this one in high school to accompany a short story
I wrote called "Just trying to help you". The
story was 20 pages long, won an award just
for its
length I think. It was about a guy
in a military sanitarium and the future Vietnam-style war in Nicaragua
that put
him there. The story was inspired
by the Iran-Contra affair that was just beginning to become public at
the time. So in a way it could be
dedicated to
people who are severely injured or killed in military operations that
are never
made public.
what's
the
music for? This one is a
revision, based on an old one that I originally wrote in
the eighties. The music to the first version, in retrospect, was very
heavily
influenced by the track "South Hampton Dock", off Pink
Floyd's Final Cut, of
which I was listening to a lot in those days. The themes are very
similar as well. The revision more
than doubles the content of the original I wrote -- the first and last
verses remain essentially unchanged. Here's one of the pictures I
didn't use:
192
(these are our
nations) From
the start the idea was to include a complete list of all the nations --
but I had no idea how many nations there are in the world, and found it
very difficult to find a source, other than the United Nations, that
would provide an answer. So I ended up taking the number
recognized by the United Nations, which is one hundred and
ninety-one. The reason why the name of the song is 192 is
because I added Palestine. Once I had the
list, I just kept rearranging the names
until I could get them to rhyme. And yes,
I completely stole the line in the song about "terror is our
common enemy" from the sign that little boy is holding in the first
picture. The chorus came together pretty fast. The picture
of the Norman Rockwell looking mosaic was taken by my mother when we
were visting the U.N.; the mosaic is in the hallway just outside the
General Assembly.