Music has often been the sound of freedom. From el gato malo at boriquagato.substack.com:
more american than apple pie
kitten calling
When they kick out your front door
How you gonna come?
With your hands on your head
Or on the trigger of your gun
When the law break in
How you gonna go?
Shot down on the pavement
Or waiting in death row
You can crush us, you can bruise us
But you’ll have to answer to
Oh-oh, the guns of Brixton
-the clash, guns of brixton
Now every cheap hood strikes a bargain with the world
And ends up making payments on a sofa or a girl
“Love and hate” tattooed across the knuckles of his hands
Hands that slap his kids around ’cause they don’t understand how
Death or glory
Becomes just another story
Death or glory
Becomes just another story
-the clash, “death or glory”
released in 1979, the clash “london calling” was the alpha and omega of punk, an album that encapsulated the whole of the movement and saw the full sweep from commencement to consummation.
“the guns of brixton” extols the never go quietly/they must face us agit-pop of defiance and “death or glory” admits the inevitability of becoming that against which you used to rail. it so perfectly predicted the life-arc of the children of the 60s as to induce the envy of nostradamus.
free birds were caged and the mantle of rebellion and brash megaphone of dissent traded for the hall monitor’s sash and the censor’s pen.
rebellion became rulership.
and we got fooled again.
Tavistock and Laurel Canyon?
I like the ones where you can’t even read the band logo or it looks like a hamburger and there is no UPC code to be found.