The One, the Only . . .

Music - The Business, Anti -War Songs . . . and Hope

Mrs. Dear Leader and I were chatting over a delicious meal grilled by yours truly the other day and guess what? Apparently I’m not a great griller! But I digress early.

                                                       Mrs Dear Leader aka Lizzy Rain

Said Mrs, aka Lizzy Rain, is in the studio working on her third album, High Tide, the first in 6 years and it’s going to be the best of three great albums! So obviously we talked about music and the music industry. Or what passes for a music industry today. That is to say that it sucks. Like just about everything else that it has touched, the internet has totally disrupted the music industry as much or more than others. 

Recording artists have pretty much always been essentially indentured servants to the music companies. The only thing that has changed now is that the artists are indentured servants to technology companies e.g. Apple, Amazon, Spotify, Pandora, etc. Oh, there is one thing that’s the same: the artists still just receive a few pennies for each song while the Big Boys skim off the rest.

Assuming that you like music, we are really lucky that musicians love what they do so much that they are willing to subject themselves to this system (where everyone thinks that musicians should work for free.) Sheesh.

What the  !*&@ Happened to Our Soul?!

As in any conversation with me it usually wanders off task early (and often.) So as we were talking I had to bring up something else about music that has bugged me for some time: what the hell ever happened to anti-war protest music? I mean we have protest music for just about every other societal ill today but nothing about war? Really? After 15 years of war? Huh.

I grant you that those of us who came of age during the debacle that was the "Vietnamese Conflict" (and a few of us that had our butts dragged over there) were exposed to some of the best anti-war music ever done. (As I think about it, maybe it was the only war that had anti-war music. Hmmm.) In any event, I find it shocking that we have been at war for almost a whole generation and there have been so few mainstream (essentially none) anti-war songs.

Where is the modern Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young (Four Dead in Ohio)? Or Edwin Starr (“War, What is it Good For.”) Or Creedence Clearwater (“Fortunate Son.”) And we mustn’t forget Country Joe and the Fish (“Fixin’ to Die Rag.”)

Try one of these:

Fortunate Son

Four Dead in Ohio

Clearly something has changed. So was it just our generation that thought that war was stupid? Or was it just THAT WAR that was that dumb? (Hard to imagine given what a horrendous waste our current wars have been.)  A darker thought is that because these wars have been fought by the so called “all volunteer” military, no one really gives a crap anymore – hey, it’s not MY kid fighting and dying!

Or maybe it’s just another aspect of the modern music business (and modern big business in general?) Anything that’s anti-war might upset the people and hurt profits – and we wouldn’t want a few thousand lives to interfere with business and profits now would we.

Maybe There is Hope . . .

To end on a very positive note, it's been my good fortune to watch the songs of Lizzy Rain’s new album evolve and it's been a wonderful experience - they are terrific! She's one of the greatest musical story tellers that you have ever heard. So good in fact that they make even a curmudgeon like me happy!

(Stand by for more information on her project later this fall.)