The amplified folkie returns to roots--one-man Clash, though more Paul than Mick or certainly Joe--but treads lightly with kind words sent to soldiers; worse, he even tosses in a reference to the 2000 Florida vote, which is this close to a Lewinsky reference. "Don't give me no shit about blood, sweat, tears and toil/It's all about the price of oil," sings Bragg. "Now I ain't no fan of Saddam Hussein/Oh, please don't get me wrong/If it's freeing the Iraqi people you're after/Then why have we waited so long?" Bragg, a noble and sincere man, just comes off sounding like every other celebrity who's read a New Republic headline.
John Mellencamp's "To Washington," from a forthcoming collection of covers tentatively titled Trouble No More, treads the same battlefield: corrupt election, war for oil, bad Bush. Confusing, though, is the final verse of a song that has no chorus (and that, sir, is a real act of revolution): "What is the thought process/To take a human's life/What would be the reason/To think that this is right/From heaven to Washington/From Jesus Christ to Washington." I have no idea what the answer is, and I stopped listening two minutes ago.
Keeping it real awful is Dan Bern, a folkie of some critical adoration who I believe to be a Republican plant in the anti-war movement; any feller who'd name a song "Talkin' Al Kida Blues" and actually play, sing and blow into a harmonica just like Bob Dylan circa 1964 has gotta be out to destroy from the inside. Frankly, I'd like to like Bern: The last song of his brand-new Swastika EP is "Lithuania," where our families are from; the song resonates like kin wrote it, down to the story about relatives being gunned down in the streets of Lithuania. (And turns out Bern and I both had an Uncle Eli.) Bern can also make you laugh--on purpose--which is rare among the self-serious and self-satisfied carrying placards with the word "Vietnam" crossed out and "Iraq" penciled in. "I had to turn in my own mom," he whines in his "Al Kida" blues. "You know what they say/Unpaid parking tickets aid terrorists." Still, that Dylan thing grates, maybe because the real thing never tried so hard.
Brit folkies Seize the Day--otherwise known as Peter, Paul and Peter--offer their own retro-bution on www.seizetheday.org; their track "United States" sounds 35 years old, and listening to it makes me feel 35 years older. Their mellow protest is just the kind of thing that gives the anti-war movement a bad name, because it bends so far backward it completely snaps in half. "I am not an Islamicist/Religion's not my thing," sing the folksmen who dress in silly costumes. "But they're friendlier than Christians/And I like the way they sing." On second thought, I'll give them the benefit of the doubt and assume it's just a joke.
Most talked-about among the new wave of old guards waving the white flag is the Beastie Boys' "In a World Gone Mad," which debuted two weeks ago on beastieboys.com and even garnered some K-ROCK airplay; first new single in four years, no matter the subject matter, will do that in L.A. The track's astonishingly drab--Paul's Boutique with a "For Lease" sign hung out front--and stunningly didactic, especially from the band that once had more hits than Sadaharu Oh. Here's how Mike D kicks it: "We need health care more than going to war/You think it's democracy they're fighting for?" Yo, don't they just know Dubya's partying for his right to fight? Maybe so, since they hint at the flavor they used to savor by insisting Bush and Saddam "should kick it like back in the day/With the cocaine and Courvoisier." Not bloody likely, though the Zoolander reference later reminds they're never so funny as when trying to be soooo serious.
In very shocking news, available at www.handontheplow.com is the House Music Against War EP, featuring electronica artists who couldn't get a dance-floor crowd to break a sweat, much less a bunch of pissed-off placard-wavers. Still, the damnedest of the lot is George Michael's cover of Don McLean's 1971 "The Grave" (ooof), performed so earnestly it sounds as if he's going to melt into a puddle of tears at any moment. The soldier's lament was gooey, superficial drivel first time around, and it doesn't help that Michael takes it more seriously than McLean, who thought himself as deep as the trenches of which he sang and sang and sang. Wake me up before you go-go; I fell asleep during the second verse.
