For What It's Worth...

This past week I was honoured to be taken as "Show & Tell" to the pre-school of my second tiniest bff, Margot.  Music is a big part of their curriculum (which I find most laudable as well as awesome!) so I went there to sing Loudon Wainwright III's, "The Swimming Song".  This is a song that I have been singing to Margot since she was a baby.

I did not however, as I had threatened on facebook two nights before, conclude the program with "Peace Out. L'il MoFos" and then, gangsta that I am, a mic-drop.  I just thanked them and said that they were the most sober audience for whom I had ever played - leaving off that this included the fact that I used to have to play at Sunday morning Mass (flipping Vatican II, damn your folk masses) as well as Mass at school all the way through middle and high schools.  Jesus wept.

Since I had behaved (which I can only imagine is a sign of aging - not sure I like it), apparently the teachers want me to come back again.  I am delighted but quite frankly my repertoire is built on a foundation of songs about drinking, life's regrets, love (both lost and unrequited), some drug-taking and often include swear words - you know, the set-list of any bar singer - it occurs that I need to have a think about what else I might be able to learn and play for them. 

I haven't quite figured that out yet since my lack of attention span then had me hop on facebook, see that one of my bro's had posted a Peter Gabriel song and then think, "I totally need some Peter Gabriel on my iPod" so, I downloaded "SO" and mentally wandered off, thinking about how finally, FINALLY, the masses are mad as hell and won't take it anymore.   Here.  In America.

Our Federal government has done fuck-all because no one will listen to anyone else and on local levels with the stripping of Union rights, making voter registration requirements almost impossible and these little GOP fiefdoms popping up all over the goddamn place - the kettle has finally whistled.

Yet, I was still on iTunes (RIP Steve Jobs - that you came up with a concept that allows me to sit at home, and think, "I really like that song, X" and then in a true act of instant gratification allows me to own that song two minutes later and be able to play it at high volume in my headphones is, to me, the best invention.  Ever!).  These protests, national and international, made me think of all of the music of my youth, songs of protest, yet songs of peace.  Songs that implored us to make our voices heard.  Anthems and hymns that made us want to in fact, get up, stand up, stand up for our rights.  Not that we are completely without that now, "Sing" by My Chemical Romance is a brilliant example.

The song that then came to my mind (and I'm afraid I don't know the path that got me there, so let's just move along) first came out when I was just beginning to play the guitar.  It was not a song I played at that time since the list of songs that I could sing convincingly, given the fact that I was 10 and growing up on the Upper East Side, was limited.  WTF did I know?  There was really no trouble I had seen, whether anyone knew it or not.  Maybe that's why that little girl who sings in that fat-old-opera-diva-lady voice creeps me out so.  My set-list was mostly The Monkees and those songs suitable for folk masses - some Jesus-y and then others like "Blowing In The Wind". 

This song, I now realize, has only three chords and so, on this cold, gray, wet Montana fall day, I am going to memorize the words so that I can play it and invite those who know it to sing along (no, you wouldn't have to know the words exactly, that's my worry) and dedicate it to those who will now take up the mantle (as we have been there, done that and the mantle is a little heavier than many of us should be reasonably expected to lift at this point).

And so, in the words of the philosopher, Stills:

I think it's time, we stop, children - what's that sound?
Everybody look what's going down.

'Course I also think that Jay-Z/Alicia Keys' "Empire State of Mind" should replace "New York, New York" as the state song.

For what it's worth....