Your Tuesday Massively Unsubtle YouTubery By Amanda on November 4, 2008 6:35 PM | Permalink
"I can't be a pessimist .... because I'm alive."
(see the Baldwin vid below)
The official video of "Democracy" can't be embedded, but see it here. I do think that like Dylan Leonard Cohen is merely diminished, and thus diminishes us all, by lip synching and there should be an earmark outlawing it. But it's a cool video.
The same one, live:
The Randy songs I want aren't on YouTube, alas. But this new one is no slouch.
Oh heck, here's "Rednecks" too:
Enough irony! Seeing Steve Earle this Saturday. Yay. "Four more years of things not getting worse"? "Um, sure, I'll take it," says America.
I was going to include "Song of the South" by country legends Tom T. Hall and Earl Scruggs but the only YouTube version I could find was by Alabama. NO. Interestingly they say "get" instead of "kill" in the original line "ought to kill a rich man who votes like that." ie. Republican. Anyhow, that got me thinking of other country songs which are about "Southern pride" but not in a racist way (note: don't search "south is gonna rise again" rying to find YouTubes of such songs. Ick.) I did an 8tracks of three such, the Tom T./Earl, Tanya Tucker and Johnny Cash. I mean, I had to burn a disc and import it again; DRM is quintessentially American as are the simple ways to get around it. U-S-A! 8tracks here. Yes, I know about the misspelling. Actually this didn't work. D'oh.
It might interest regular readers to see I quite like a lot of hip hop/rap. It's important stuff to hear. Public Enemy (pity I couldn't find an uncensored version):
Fuck the game if it ain't saying nothing. Never a truer word spoken.
And in Arizona-land, reminded very much of this by Colin Powell's comments.
Todd Snider's ultimate anthem:
That's fun, but here's Elvis to bring us the pink unicorn of bipartisanship:
And non-musical but my fave bit of non-Biden political rhetoric this year and if some earnest troubadour ain't putting it in a song they should be:
Can't not include some classic finger-pointin' :
I had to read "The Invisible Man" in uni and glad I did, it was the most difficult thing on the reading list but it remains live in my mind to this day. James Baldwin, people. Read him. If you only have a couple of minutes, just watch from 4:00 in.
And, it goes without saying:
