Savior and protector, that is. How is it possible that, after two disastrous forays into The Fertile Crescent, mostly fertile now with unrest, rebellion, and death, we're going down for the third time? Why, oh why, oh why have we appointed ourselves the world's police force and bully-remover? I know, it's a difficult and at least arguable topic. As a friend of mine asked, after the gassing of Syrian civilians--especially kids, although it's unclear to me why their lives are more important than the rest of ours--"If you were walking down the street and came upon some big person beating up on a smaller person, what would you do? Keep walking, or defend the little guy?" (Do I play "Walk On By" here?) Setting aside the fact that "defending the little guy" has fallen out of fashion in current-day America, there's a point of discussion there: how can we ignore those who are abused by bullies, whether individual or governmental?
On the other hand, our own history is hardly pure and blameless: how would we have felt if, say, the French, or the British, or the Spanish, or the Polish (just to represent) had invaded us to stop us from giving, oh, say, smallpox-infected blankets to the Natives? Would we have said "Oh yeah, okay, you're right--that was terrible, and we won't do it again"? Not thinkin' so: likely we'd've gotten up on our hind legs to repel the foreign busybodies and claimed sovereign rights to do as we saw fit on our own soil, as we have always done, often to our everlasting shame. I mean, aren't we the only ones in human history to have used nuclear weapons? Somehow that's better than chemicals? Oy, the self-justification we're capable of on Mulberry Street.
Which, in my addled brain, at least, brings us back to the question of why we have appointed ourselves hall-monitors for the world. Where is our moral high ground? And how've we done in that regard? Well, we did okay with Hitler, Mussolini and Tojo (why hasn't that been a band name, yet? If "The Dead Kennedys" can happen....), but, since then, not so much. Maybe it's Karmic, that we align ourselves with Self Interest rather than Humanitarianism but, whatever the reason, we haven't done so great. So say we intercede in Syria, and beat the current bad guys: who takes their place? Again, our record there ain't so great; I don't know who's doing our handicapping, but we seem to back the also-rans or the downright lame way more often than the noble thoroughbreds. Okay, enough of the horserace metaphor: I don't know anything about that stuff, and it, in itself, is exploitative (Hello, PETA: welcoming donations, here....).
So, given that I always tie these posts to my little community-radio station show, what'll I play this week? Truth be told, I'm sick as shit of our species' hell-bent-to-self-destruction modus operandi; a while back I wrote a piece about some other example of dire, self-immolating human bullshit, and played a show of "dance" songs. I'm'a do the same sorta thing this week. Where am I, at least on Chewsdays from noon till two? On the radio, that's where. On community radio, playin' people's music for the people--or, in WOOL's case, more likely, person. At any rate, whatcher gonna get from me this week is "radio" songs. "Turn it up (huh)."
Here's some songs you're likely to hear:
Do You Remember Rock 'n' Roll Radio? The Ramones
Border Radio Dave Alvin
Dust Radio Chris Whitley
Golden Age Of Radio Josh Ritter
Late Night Radio David Gray
Like Rock & Roll Radio Ray LaMontagne
Mohammed's Radio Warren Zevon
Listen To The Radio Nanci Griffith
Love Songs On The Radio Mojave 3
Magenta Radio Rusted Root
On The Radio John Hartford
On Your Radio Joe Jackson
One More Song The Radio Won't Like Kathleen Edwards
Radio City Serenade Mark Knopfler
Radio Free Europe REM
Radio Ga Ga Queen
Radio Cure Wilco
Radio Fragile Nanci Griffith
Radio King Golden Smog
Radio Radio Elvis Costello
Radio Nowhere Bruce Springsteen
Radio Operator Roseanne cash
Radio Song REM
Radio Sweetheart Elvis Costello
This Is Radio Clash The Clash
Turn On Your Radio Harry Nilsson
Turn On Your Radio Marc Cohn
Turn Your Radio On (Pts One & Two) John Hartford
Video Killed The Radio Star The Buggles
You Turn Me On, I'm A Radio Joni Mitchell
The WASP (Texas Radio And The Big Beat) The Doors
Wavelength Van
Hey Mr. DJ Van
Domino Van
In The Days Before Rock 'n' Roll Van
In the face of abject human folly and cruelty, what better to do that to listen to your radio?
Personalish note: a couple of weeks ago I wrote about the resistance in this country to The Affordable Care Act, or to subsidized healthcare in general. Last Tuesday, as I was doing my show, Alice B. Fogel broke the fifth metatarsal bone in her right foot. Eight weeks of no weight, no driving, and us still without health insurance. Sorry, NSA; we really love you, and admire you, and thank you for keeping us safe. Now can you fix her foot? And why when, a couple of weeks earlier, when I wrote about oral sex.... Oh, never mind.
One last thing: If you haven't become a member yet, do it. And be sure to listen to all of the other great shows on WOOL.fm.
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