“Abraham, Martin and John” is a 1968 song written by Dick Holler and first recorded by Dion. It is a tribute to the memory of four assassinated Americans, all icons of social change, namely Abraham Lincoln, Martin Luther King, Jr., John F. Kennedy and Robert F. Kennedy. It was written in response to the assassinations of King and the younger Kennedy in April and June 1968.
Each of the first three verses features one of the men named in the song’s title, for example:
- Has anybody here, seen my old friend Abraham –
- Can you tell me where he’s gone?
- He freed a lot of people, but it seems the good die young
- But I just looked around and he’s gone. ( Source wikipedia)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jcwsfns7KPQ
“Zombie” is a protest song by the Irish rock band The Cranberries.[1] It was released in September 1994 . It was about “The Troubles ” In Northern Ireland
Going Underground by the Jam. The song includes several indictments of the British policy on arms, and challenges its relative emphasis compared with social provision. It also points a telling finger at the “public” (i.e. electorate).
You want more money of course I don’t mind / To buy nuclear textbooks for Atomic crimes
The song also blasts the idea of using money, that could be spent on healthcare, on weapons:
You’ll see kidney machines replaced by rockets and guns
According to the book The Last Party: Britpop, Blair and the Demise of English R Jones ock by John Harris, this song was written about the fall of the Iron Curtain and taken up as an anthem by bomber pilots during the first Gulf War. The song reflected the optimism felt around the free world as nations came together. A good indicator of this attitude is the Doomsday Clock, which is run by the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists to indicate how close the world may be to destruction at any given time. In 1947, the clock was set at 7 minutes to midnight, but in 1953, when the US and USSR tested nuclear devices, the clock reached 2 minutes to midnight as nuclear war loomed. Tensions eased in the ’70s and the clock moved back, but the cold war brought the clock to 3 minutes in 1984. In, 1991, which was the year when the US and USSR signed the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START) and destroyed many nuclear weapons, the clock was moved to 17 minutes, which is the farthest it has ever been to midnight. In 2007 it was at 5 minutes. (thanks, Radhika – Gurgaon, India)
Fat boy slim’ version was used by Tony Blair at the height of his power!
The Jam again with Eton Rifles!
The song recounts a street battle Paul Weller had read about in the newspapers concerning elements of a Right To Work march going through Slough in 1978 breaking off to attack pupils from Eton College who had been jeering the lunchtime marchers (hence Hello, Hooray, an extremist scrape with the Eton Rifles), rashly thinking that a bunch of ‘posh schoolboys’ would be an easy target: only for the outnumbered but far fitter college pupils to give them a beating. As the lyric put it: Thought you were smart when you took them on, but you didn’t take a peek in their artillery room. All that rugby puts hairs on your chest…
The song’s lyrics, in common with many Jam tracks, contain colloquial references to life in Britain, including:
“Sup up your beer and collect your fags, There’s a row going on down near Slough”
Literally, the first part of the line means “drink up your beer and collect your cigarettes”, though in this case it is likely a double entendre referring both to a group of friends hurriedly leaving a pub, and to the British boarding school practice of fagging; a hierarchical authority structure in which younger students acted as personal servants to those in higher forms.
With regard to the latter part, Slough is a town near to Eton. The two districts have a history of class conflict, with Slough in particular as a result of being used for various sociological experiments by urban planners and politicians throughout the 1960s through to the 1990s (a common target in Paul Weller’s lyrics in The Jam). Source Wikipedia . Basically the song just showed how much there was a have and have nots society in the UK in the 60’s and 70’s
Narina Pallot’s song is a true prost against war
I’ve got a friend, he’s a pure-bred killing machine
He says he’s waited his whole damn life for this
I knew him well when he was seventeen
Now he’s a man he’ll be dead by Christmas
And so, everybody’s going to war
But we don’t know what we’re fighting for
Don’t tell me it’s a worthy cause
No cause could be so worthy
If love is a drug, I guess we’re all sober
If hope is a song, I guess it’s all over
How to have faith, when faith is a crime?
I don’t want to die
I’f God’s on our side, then God is a joker
Asleep on the job, his children fall over
Running out through the door and straight to the sky
I don’t want to die
For every man who wants to rule the world
There’ll be a man who just wants to be free
What do we learn but what should not be learned?
Too late to find a cure for this disease
And so, everybody’s going to war
But we don’t know what we’re fighting for
No cause could be so worthyIf love is a drug, I guess we’re all sober
If hope is a song, I guess it’s all over
How to have faith, when faith is a crime?
I don’t want to die
If God’s on our side, then God is a joker
Asleep on the job, his children fall over
Running out through the door and straight to the sky
I don’t want to die
I-I-I-I don’t want to die
I-I don’t want to die
Green day When September ends is not a real protest song but the video is !
The big river referred to in the title is the River Tyne that runs through Nail’s home town, Newcastle upon Tyne. The song is an elegy to the days when shipbuilding and industry in general were at their height in Newcastle and laments the later decline of the industry and therefore the decline of the importance and activity of the Tyne itself. However, in the last chorus, the song takes a more hopeful turn, declaring that, “the river will rise again”.
Some of the guitar work on the song was provided by Mark Knopfler. Source Wikipedia
Walking on cobbled stones, little bits of skin and bone
Jumping on the tram car for a ride
I can remember then, I was just a boy of ten
Hanging around the old keyside
Now all the capstans and the cargo boats
And stevadores are gone
To where all the old ships go
But memories just like the seas live on
‘Cause that was when coal was king,
The river a living thing
And I was just a boy, but it was mine,
The coaly tyne
This was a big river,
I want you all to know that I was proud
This was a big river, but that was long ago,
That’s not now, that’s not now
My father was a working man,
He earned our living with his hands
He had to cross the river every day
He picked up a union card out of the neptune yard
Mouths to feed and the bills to pay
Then came a time for him to sail across the seas
And far away
Finally when that war was won
You brought him home and home he stayed
And when his days were done, under a golden sun
You took him back to where he longed to be,
Back to the sea
For this was a big river,
I want you all to know that I was proud
This was a big river, but that was long ago,
That’s not now
That’s not how
That’s not now
The neptune was the last to go,
I heard it on my radio
And then they played the latest number one
But what do they do all day?
And what are they supposed to say?
What does a father tell his son?
If you you believe that there’s a bond between our future
And our past
Try to hold on to what we had,
We build them strong, we built to last
‘Cause this is a mighty town,
Built upon solid ground
And everything they’ve tried so hard to kill,
We will rebuild
Well guys I hope you don’t mind that I put a UK slant on this one. 😉
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willowdot21 