Just about now, you have browser tabs open on every news site and blog covering today's primaries, and you're hitting the "refresh" button before the pages even fully load. You already know the weather forecasts for Cleveland and Dallas, you've got delegate count estimates scribbled on the back of an envelope, and you have actually spent time trying to tease out the meaning of 1% shifts in polls with 10% margins of error.
Breathe.
Here's a smattering of lyrics from topical songs. I'm posting this not so much to tell you about mine (except for the first one, which is relatively unknown but should be the anthem of our age) but because I want to know yours.
Kevin Gilbert/Goodness Gracious
Goodness gracious,
I'm not listening anymore.
'Cause the spooks are in the Whitehouse,
And they've justified a war.
So wake me when they notify,
We're gonna fight some more,
Gonna fight some more.
Goodness gracious,
My generation's lost.
They burned down all our bridges,
Before we had a chance to cross.
Is it the winter of our discontent,
Or just an early frost?
Just an early frost?
You may not know his name, but you know the name of the musical collaboration he was in: the Tuesday Night Music Club. Yeah, that one.
He wrote "Goodness Gracious" in 1995 -- eerily prescient, eh? -- and sadly, was dead two years later. But he left us a great record, whose name you're about to scribble down so that you can run out tomorrow and buy it: "Thud". If you can find a copy with the bonus CD (including a cover of Led Zeppelin's "Kashmir") so much the better.
Iris Dement/Wasteland of the Free
We got preachers dealin' in politics and diamond mines
And their speech is growing increasingly unkind
They say they are Christ's disciples
But they don't look like Jesus to me
And it feels like I am living in the wasteland of the free
We got politicians runnin' races on corporate cash
Now don't tell me they don't turn around and kiss them people's ass
Now you may call me old-fashioned
But that don't fit my picture of a true democracy
And it feels like I am living in the wasteland of the free
The Staple Singers/Hope in a Hopeless World
You got a quarter for the homeless man?
Spare some change for the soldiers who fought the war
Put a little money in those hats and tins
Give them hope in a hopeless world
(Covered by Widespread Panic)
Leonard Cohen/First We Take Manhattan
They sentenced me to twenty years of boredom
For trying to change the system from within
I'm coming now, I'm coming to reward them
First we take Manhattan, then we take Berlin
(Covered by Jennifer Warnes)
Kansas/Can I Tell You Something
If you expect the freedom
That you say is yours
Prove that you deserve it
Help us to preserve it
Or being free will just be
Words and nothing more
John Cougar Mellencamp/We Are the People
You see yourself as a leader
May my thoughts be with you
If you try to divide and conquer
We'll rise up against you
We know only the strong will survive
But the meek will inherit
So if you've got a coat of arms, my friend
I suggest we wear it
Jimi Hendrix/The Star-Spangled Banner
(instrumental interlude)
Tim Capello/I Still Believe
For people like us
In places like this
We need all the hope
That we can get
John Prine/Your Flag Decal
Your flag decal won't get you
Into heaven any more.
They're already overcrowded
From your dirty little wars.
Now Jesus he don't like killin'
No matter what the reason for,
And your flag decal won't get you
Into heaven any more.
Nanci Griffith/It's a Hard Life
'Cause it's a hard life, it's a hard life, it's a very hard life
It's a hard life wherever you go
And if we poison our children with hatred
Then the hard life is all that they'll know
And there ain't no place in Chicago for those kids to go
Curtis Mayfield/People Get Ready
Now people get ready,
there's a train a'comin.
Don't need no baggage,
you just get on board.
Red Rider/Lunatic Fringe
I know you're out there
You're in hiding
And you hold your meetings
We can hear you coming
We know what you're after
We're wise to you this time
We won't let you kill the laughter.
Bruce Cockburn/If I Had a Rocket Launcher
I don't believe in guarded borders and I don't believe in hate
I don't believe in generals or their stinking torture states
And when I talk with the survivors of things too sickening to relate
If I had a rocket launcher
If I had a rocket launcher
If I had a rocket launcher
I would retaliate
David Crosby and Graham Nash/Immigration Man
There he was with his immigration face
giving me a paper chase
but the sun was coming
'cos all at once he looked into my space
and stamped a number over my face
and it sent me running
Won't you let me in, immigration man
can I cross the line and pray
I can stay another day
Won't you let me in, immigration man
I won't toe your line today
I can't see it anyway.
Alice Cooper/Elected
Kids want a savior, dont need a fake
I wanna be elected
Were gonna rock to the rules that I make
I wanna be elected, elected, elected
I never lied to you, Ive always been cool
I wanna be elected
You knew this was coming.
Peter Gabriel/Biko
You can blow out a candle
But you can't blow out a fire
Once the flames begin to catch
The wind will blow it higher
Stevie Ray and Jimmie Vaughan/Tick Tock
The sick, the hungry, had smiles on their faces
The tired and the homeless had family all around
The streets and the cities were all beautiful places
And the walls came tumblin' down
People of the world
All had it together
Had it together
For the boys and the girls
And the children of the world
Looked forward to a future
Remember,
Tick tock, tick tock, tick tock, people
Time's ticking away
Remember now,
Tick tock, tick tock, tick tock, people
Time's ticking away
Ah, Stevie Ray and Jimmy. It's been too many years since we lost SRV.
And for all his incendiary guitar work that I love so much...this is
the song that I think really has his beautiful heart in it.
Tick tock, indeed.