Current mood:

bored

Non-fiction. Well, mostly.
These are on my account, and I'll probably delete them in a week. Take what you want.



I defined non-fiction as somewhat broad in a couple of cases here, but here's a few songs from all over that are based on non-fiction events.

My first introduction to the Australian band Redgum came as I was hunting for information on Vietnam as I was working on a story. I stumbled across the following mp3 on some website somewhere, and even in the low-quality mp3 there, I was struck by the power and the beauty of the song. It's an Australian perspective on the Vietnam War -- yeah, the Aussies served and served honorably in that conflict, and their part of it is much forgotten. This song helped stir public opinion to build an Australian Vietnam Veterans memorial, as somber in its own way as the Wall here in the US, and some of the words from the song are included on said memorial. A vivid, vibrant song about the horrors of war, it's based off songwriter John Schumann's brother-in-law's recollections. This copy is a much cleaner mp3 ripped off their Greatest Hits CD.

And the ANZAC legends didn't mention mud and blood and tears/ and the stories that my father told me never seemed quite real/ I caught some pieces in my back that I didn't even feel/ God help me, I was only nineteen

Redgum - I Was Only 19 (A Walk in the Light Green)

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The Last Frontier is another Redgum song I fell in love with after acquiring their Greatest Hits CD, it's based on a 1974 roadtrip across the Outback of Australia by Schumann and others. It gives a beautiful account of Australia, though, and about its odd place in the world. It's obvious Schumann likes his country. His own words:

"I wrote this song after a road trip to Uluru and Alice Springs in 1974, long before the Stuart Highway was sealed. Arriving at Alice Springs after a long, hard driver I couldn't reconcile the scene in Todd River with the US Air Force uniforms and the huge C-141 Starlifters flying in to re-supply Pine Gap. I was outraged when someone told me that the US Starlifters didn't even have to announce they were in Australian airspace until they were 'on approach'."

Actually, I'd recommend Redgum in general, but these two songs I particularly like.

We went looking for Australia in between the TV lines/ 'Cause the ABC just couldn't make it real/ A colour documentary from a bean-bag on the floor/ Never shows as much as it conceals.

Redgum - The Last Frontier

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While somebody beat me to this one with the Cry Cry Cry version, I'm much more fond of the original version here by James Keelaghan, a Canadian songwriter. It is the story of the Mann Gulch fire of August 5th, 1949, the first deaths involving the elite Smokejumpers, and for a very long time the most Smokejumpers lost fighting a fire until the Storm King Mountain tragedy in Colorado in 1994. (Interesting factoid, Norman McLean (of A River Runs Through It fame) wrote the definitive book on Mann Gulch, and his son John wrote the definitive book on Storm King Mountain -- and the two tragedies are eerily similar.)

Anyway, I bring myself off topic. There's not much to be said about this song that hasn't already been said, but I second the recommendation of McLean's book Young Men and Fire on the subject, and note that this song was my introduction. Coming from wildfire country, it's all too real, and this song does a good job of catching it. And note Keelaghan's ending the song with the tune of Shenandoah in this version, which I think adds power to the tale.

Sky had turned red/ Smoke was boiling/ Two hundred yards to safety/ Death was fifty yards behind/ I don't know why/ I just thought it/ Struck a match to waste high grass/ Running out of time

James Keelaghan - Cold Missouri Waters

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The definitive event of Canadian history is the battle between the French and English at the Plains of Abraham near Quebec City. If you've ever seen a Quebec license plate, you'll note the phrase Je me souviens -- I remember. What does Quebec remember? Well, most of it is this battle, which gave the English control of Canada, and left the French-speaking Quebecois sorta high and dry. While the song is an imaginary conversation with the farmer who owned the land, it is an expression of the root of the sore points between Anglophone and Francophone Canada, and hope that the two nations in one might somehow be able to get along someday.

Abraham/ When will this fighting end/ When will we learn to recognize/ Who is foe and who is friend/ Abraham/ This field that bears your name/ For one a field of victory/ For one a field of shame

James Keelaghan - Abraham

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If there is any one political figure in United States history that is routinely looked upon as a villain, that would be Richard Nixon. Yet at the same time, there was, at the time of Nixon's death, attempts by people to rehabilitate Nixon's image. This song is Keelaghan's wry take on those attempts, tying it to the biblical story of Lazarus rising from the dead.

Lazarus, come forth/ we deal in contradictions/ symbols we mistake for real/ private truth and public fiction/ ways to weave a storyline/ wrap you in a martyr's coat/ paint you brighter than you ever were/ Lazarus, come forth!

James Keelaghan - Lazarus

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The Acadians were French settlers living in what is now Nova Scotia's Annapolis Valley near the Bay of Fundy. During and after the Seven Years War, which ended with the climactic battle at the Plains of Abraham mentioned above, they forcibly removed the Acadians from their homes and sent them southward, where the Acadians ended up in what is now Louisiana. The people whom today are known as Cajuns are the displaced Acadians.

As I commented to a friend after hearing the song, "The Quebecois had it lucky. They got to stay."

There is a lot of good commentary on this song at this website

Acadian driftwood/ Gypsy tail wind/ They call my home the land of snow/ Canadian cold front movin' in/ What a way to ride/ Ah, what a way to go

The Band - Acadian Driftwood

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Another song from the Band on a historical situation, where the song isn't exactly non-fiction, it does deal with the Civil War. In many ways, we're still fighting the Civil War here in these United States, and this song brilliantly explains why in many fashions. It is somewhat a novelty, in that it is told from the point of view of a Southerner after that bloody defeat, and you really get a sense of how the South feels about the war. Ironically, the song is written by a Canadian. This song also has wonderful commentary.

Virgil Caine is the name, and I served on the Danville train,/ 'Til Stoneman's cavalry came and tore up the tracks again./ In the winter of '65, We were hungry, just barely alive./ By May the tenth, Richmond had fell, it's a time I remember, oh so well,

The Band - The Night They Drove Ol' Dixie Down

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In 1970, there were three last great student uprisings that ended tragically. There was one at Jackson State, down in Missouri. There was one at the University of California, Berkeley. And lastly, there was one at Kent State. This song is about the last of those three, the one that resulted in four deaths when a National Guard unit opened fire on a group of protesters. Neil Young, it is said, looked at a magazine cover, went for a walk in the woods, and returned with this song, an anthem of that dreadful day at Kent State. It was recorded and rushed to studios and became an anthem for a generation. In many ways, the Kent State shootings were the end of innocence in America, and it was a time of great fear. Indeed, Crosby is quoted as saying that he thought bandmate Neil Young's decision to call out Nixon in the song was one of the bravest things he'd ever seen.

There have been many covers of the song, but I have chosen to include Devo's here for one good reason. Jerry Casale and Mark Mothersbaugh, the two artists behind Devo, were students at Kent State at the time, and if I understand it correctly, Mothersbaugh was actually present at the ill-fated rally into which the National Guardsmen shot. While the CSNY song is the stronger one musically, the Devo cover captures a lot of the raw emotion and what it must have felt like to actually have been there.

A very good reference for what happened and Neil Young's song is contained in this lyric analysis.

Tin soldiers and Nixon's coming/ We're finally on our own/ This summer, I hear the drumming/ Four dead in Ohio

Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young - Ohio
Devo - Ohio

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Speaking of college campuses and tragedy, there was the incident at the University of Texas, Austin in 1966, when Charles Whitman, an ex-Marine and TU student, climbed up into the campus belltower and started to take potshots at people walking through the campus. For the next 96 minutes, Whitman terrorized the Texas campus and the city of Austin, and with it, our idea of public space was forever changed.

The big thing to keep in mind here is that Charles Whitman wasn't exactly considered the stereotypical type to commit such crimes. The man was an Eagle Scout, he had served in the Marines, and at the time of his insanity, was achieving A's and B's in the engineering program at Texas. Nobody could quite figure out why he snapped. So it is probably appropriate that Whitman be immortalized by this irreverent song by Kinky Freedman. It's rather...well, cheerful, for a song about a mass murder.

Here's a good reference on Charles Whitman and his crime.

He was sitting up there for more than an hour,/ Way up there on the Texas Tower/ Shooting from the twenty-seventh floor. Yahoo!/ He didn't choke or slash or slit them,/ Not our Charles Joseph Whitman,/ He won't be an architect no more.

Kinky Freedman - Ballad of Charles Whitman

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In 1976, there was a minor popular uprising in Western Minnesota over the course of an interstate powerline. Many farmers didn't want a powerline running through their property. It was doubly galling because the farmers believed that there was a conspiracy between the power company and the larger agriculture conglomerates to the south, and they hated the fact that the line would run diagonally through their property, cutting down on their arable land.

After fighting the power companies in court and in the government, some people finally got the idea to take matters into their own hands and committed sabatage on the towers. That is what this song is about, the sabatage when people felt like they have nothing else left to lose.

Interestingly enough, for those of you familiar with Minnesota politics, it was this issue that catapulted an otherwise unknown Carleton College sociology professor into the spotlight. That obscure sociology professor later ran for office and won, and until 2002, served his home state of Minnesota admirably and well until he was killed in a plane crash. Yes, I'm referring to the late Senator Paul Wellstone. You can read all about the powerline crisis in this special website by Minnesota Public Radio.

And in the still of the evening the wind is all you hear/ I watch the waves on the wheat fields alone/ I walk the furrows of earth I plant year after year/ This is our land this is our home

Dana Lyons - Turn of the Wrench

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1968 was a year in which everybody went crazy here in the United States, or so it felt. Opposition to Vietnam was reaching fever pitch and protests were finding novel ways to protest. Into this whirling maelstrom stepped peace activists Daniel and Phillip Berrigan, brothers and Catholic priests. Daniel Berrigan even went to North Vietnam with Howard Zinn to negotiate the release of three American flyers, an act that wasn't taken well by the US government -- to the point they tried to bomb places where Berrigan was. This, of course, made Berrigan think a lot about his government and what it was doing, and the meatgrinder of a war. So they decided to do something about it.

On May 17th, 1968, Daniel and Phillip Berrigan and seven other Catholics broke into the draft board of Catonsville, MD, brought out the draft cards, and burned them. They were arrested, and in October of that year, they were put on trial for their actions there. This song, by Dar Williams, is told from the perspective of Daniel Berrigan, as he arrives at his trial. At said trial, he uttered these words, "Our apologies, dear friends, for the fracture of good order, the burning of paper instead of children, the angering of the orderlies in the front parlor of the charnel house. We could not, so help us God, do otherwise." The song talks of this difficulty, and the struggle between what they're doing and what the country finds acceptable. It's a rather powerful song.

You can find out more about Daniel Berrigan and the Catonsville nine on this nicely done website by the Maryland Digital Cultural History people, which is a branch of the Enoch Pratt Free Library in Baltimore. There is also the Daniel Berrigan written Trial of the Catonsville Nine.

First it was a question, then it was a mission/ How to be American, how to be a Christian/ But if the law is their cross, then the cross is burning

Dar Williams - I Had No Right

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Dick Gaughan is a Scottish folk musician and many of his songs deal with Irish/Scot issues. However, this song was originally written by Woody Guthrie, and concerns the tragic outcome of the mine strikes in Ludlow, Colorado. At the beginning of the twentieth century, labor unrest was sparking all over the West, mainly over mine owner's usurious practices. For example, at Ludlow, miners were often paid in script, only redeemable at the company store, where prices for goods were high above market value. (See Johnny Cash's Sixteen Tons for what usually ended up happening in this situation.) Plus, often times, miners were cheated by crooked weights and there was often what was known as 'dead work' (ie, shoring up timbers in the mine) that was unpaid.

So the miners struck, and were evicted from their houses (also owned by the company), so they set up a tent city. A security team hired to be strikebreakers liked to shoot into the tent cities, and tensions were high enough for the Colorado governor to call in the National Guard. Because of the random shootings, miners dug holes under their tents to protect their wives and children. One horrible day, the National Guard set fire to the tents, not knowing there were still woman and children under them in those holes. The event became known as the Ludlow Massacre.

An interesting factoid that ties in the Canadian connection is that the Rockefellers, who owned the Ludlow mine, decided to prevent more strikes and tragedies such as this, decided to set up a phony union. To do this, they hired the former labor minster of Canada to impose a representation plan that was tilted in favour of the company. That man? William Lyon Mackenzie King, later Canada's Prime Minister for 21 years, including during WWII.

Here's a few articles on Ludlow: Wikipedia | A People's History of the US | Ludlow Massacre and Birth of Company Unions | Google Search on "Ludlow Massacre"

I carried my blanket to a wire fence corner,/ Watched the fire till the blaze died down,/ I helped some people drag their belongings,/ While your bullets killed us all around.

Dick Gaughan - Ludlow Massacre