| |
|
As a counterpoint, does anyone remember the recent stuff about a country singer called Steve Earle who released an "anti-war" album called Jerusalem in the states, in the face of a lot of criticism?
---
In describing, Jerusalem, Steve Earle's newest CD and his sixth album in six years, Earle says, "This is a political record because there seems no other proper response to the place we're at now. But I'm not trying to get myself deported or something. In a big way this is the most pro-American record I've ever made. In fact, I feel URGENTLY American. I understand why none of those congressmen voted against The Patriot Act, out of respect for the Trade Center victims' families. I've sat in the death house with victims' families, seen them suffer. But this is an incredibly dangerous piece of legislation. Freedoms, American freedoms, things voted into law as American freedoms, everything that came out of the 1960's, are disappearing, and as any patriot can see, that has to be opposed."
"John Walker's Blues, which deals with John Walker Lindh, the erstwhile Marin County teenager and admitted Taliban fighter. Opening with the lines, "just an American boy, raised on MTV…I seen all the boys in the soda pop bands and none of them looked like me" and finishing with a recitation of Sura 47, Verse 19 of the Qur'an, Earle wrote the song as the newspapers clamored for Walker to strung up for treason. For Steve, the issue was a little more complicated than that.
(full article, scroll down for interview) |
|
|
