“Another Age” is one of Phil’s later songs, appearing on his Rehearsals for Retirement album. Most obviously, it speaks to the social upheavals of the 1960’s, but I recognize it also speaks to many problems that remain wit us today: the growth of totalitarian regimes, the trauma of war, social injustice and inequality in many forms, and the virtual abandonment of our aging population, especially if they don’t have the funds and resources to provide for a tolerable retirement. Unlike my other slideshows on Phil—Cross My Heart, Phil and Chicago 1968, and The Scorpion Departs But Never Returns—this one consciously tries to explore the continued relevance to the modern world. I am sure you could compile a slideshow that remained fixed in the immediate historical context of the song, probably written in 1968, but that is not what I was trying to do here.
It was fairly easy to update this song because so many of the problems—Voter suppression and gerrymandering, the use of white phosphorous and cluster bombs (as opposed to napalm), income inequality, rote learning, police brutality, racism, a religious and political culture that celebrates violence and the exercise of force, the trauma caused by war, the growth of prisons, our support of totalitarian regimes, and our disposal of “disposable” people (here mostly old people, although any number of marginal groups could be substituted)—are still very much with us. One of the things that struck me back when I was writing a diary about empathy and protest, is how remarkably empathetic Phil’s lyrics were, extending far beyond people we normally think of as victims, including—in fact—many of the people who were to a large part responsible for the very social and political landscape the song so eloquently condemns.