Album: Stations of the Crass (1979)

"Mother Earth"

Now that the sun have vowed is light
And bid the world good night;
To the soft bed my body I dispose,
But where were shall my soul repose?

Mother? Mother? Mother? Mother? Mother? Mother?
Mother? Mother? Mother? Mother? Mother? Mother?
Mother? Mother? Mother? Mother? Mother? Mother?
Mother? She's the anti-mother, mommy is that you?
She's the anti-mother, mother, mother is that you?

It's Myra Hindley on the cover,
Your very own sweet anti-mother.
There she is on the pages of The Star,
Ain't that just the place you wish you were?
Let her rot in hell is what you said,
Let her rot, let her starve, you'd see her dead.
Let her out but don't forget to tell you where she is,
The chance to screw her is a chance you wouldn't miss.
Let her suffer, give her pain is the verdict you gave,
You just can't wait to piss on her grave.
You pretend that you're horrified, make out that you care,
But really you wish that you had been there.
You say you can't bear the thought of what she did,
But you'd do it to her, you'd see her dead.
Tell me, what is the difference between her and you?
You say that you would kill her, well, what else would you do?
Don't you see that violence has no end? Isn't limited by rules?
Don't you see as angels preaching you're nothing but the fools?
Fools step in, where angels fear to tread,
You see, to kill others is the ethic of the dead.

She's the anti-mother, mommy is that you?
She's the anti-mother, mother, mother is that you?

That single mug shot from the past
Ensures your fantasy can last and last.
It gives you the chance to air your hate
Because she got there first, you were too late.
Hindleys' crime was to do what others think,
Took her anger and her prejudice and pushed it to the brink.
Then you goodly christian people, with your sickly mask of love,
Would tear that woman limb from limb, you'd never get enough.
So you keep the story alive,
So you can make yourselves believe,
That you are so much better than her.
But you aren't, that's YOUR GUILT laying there.

She's the anti-mother, mommy is that you?
She's the anti-mother, mother, mother is that you?
She's the anti-mother, mommy is that you?
She's the anti-mother, mother, mother is that you?
Mother? Mother? Mother? Mother? Mother? Mother? Mother? Mother? Mother?

In fact this song is about media coverage of serial killer Myra Hindley, in particular the tabloid Daily Star, who launched their first edition with the 'readers verdict' headline "Let Her Rot In Hell". However, we believe that the title “Mother Earth” tries to make connections of sexism with nature destruction by man.

you can hear this song among others in my space
http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewprofile&friendID=138247270

http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewprofile&friendID=194391038


"Contaminational Power"

Cause a disturbance, don't let this slide by,
Do you want to end up a McDonalds french fry?
Atomic power, atomic power,
Death shower, maggies power.

The dust is settling, ticking in your brain,
Ain't imagination gonna blow you away.
Who cares a fuck as it's work for the people?
Compromised labour you build your death with.
Cheaper goodies, more time with the family,
Don't be fooled with their gestures of equality.
The only thing that's equal is your own rotting corpse,
Staring at each other to see who'll make it first.

Cause a disturbance, don't let this slide by,
Do you want to end up a McDonalds french fry?
Atomic power, atomic power,
Death shower, maggies power.

She holds it over you, you won't hear a thing,
No great contender to help the people win.
Another white paper gets waved in the air,
A victory for the modern world, but you won't be there.
Are you gonna let it shower over you?
The new great energy that sucks off yours,
Giving all you wanted as it settles in your pores,
Make it known just this once that people ain't toys.

Cause a disturbance, cause a fucking noise,
Atomic power is just another of their ploys,
To build their firepower and defend the nation,
They expose us to contamination.
Contamination, contamination, contamination,
Contamination, contamination, contamination,
Contains the nation, that old sensation
Contamination, contamination,
Contamination, contamination,
Cause a disturbance, cause a fucking noise,
Atomic power is just another of their ploys.
TO BLOW YOU RIGHT AWAY.

A call to resistance against the domination and pollution from western way of life, especially against the domination of nuclear power.

You can hear this song among others in myspace

http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewprofile&friendID=278475250

http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewprofile&friendID=198373559

North sea Oil by Jethro Tull, album: Stormwatch 1979

Black and viscous --- bound to cure blue lethargy
Sugar-plum petroleum for energy
Tightrope-balanced payments need a small reprieve
Oh, please believe we want to be in North Sea Oil

New-found wealth sits on the shelf of yesterday
Hot-air balloon --- inflation soon will make you pay
Riggers rig and diggers dig their shallow grave
But we'll be saved and what we crave is North Sea Oil

Prices boom in Aberdeen and London Town
Ten more years to lay the fears, erase the frown
before we are all nuclear --- the better way!
Oh, let us pray: we want to stay in North Sea Oil

An ironic song about the strong dependence of our lives and society from energy consuming (oil or nuclear)

You can hear this song in you tube:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KjvNY2zzEC8

“NO NUKES Concerts” held by Musicians United for Safe Energy, 1979

Musicians United for Safe Energy, or MUSE, was an activist group founded in 1979 by Jackson Browne, Graham Nash, Bonnie Raitt, and John Hall of Orleans. The group advocated against the use of nuclear energy, forming shortly after the Three Mile Island nuclear accident in March 1979. MUSE organized a series of five No Nukes concerts held at Madison Square Garden in New York in September 1979.

The No Nukes Concerts were the main political effort of MUSE. Other musicians performing at the concerts included Crosby, Stills, and Nash, Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band, James Taylor, Carly Simon, The Doobie Brothers, Jesse Colin Young, Gil Scott-Heron, Tom Petty, and others. The album No Nukes, and a film, also titled No Nukes, were both released to document the performancese.The profits of all this effort went to various anti-nuclear groups.

In 2007, Bonnie Raitt, Graham Nash and Jackson Browne, as part of the No Nukes group, recorded a music video of the Buffalo Springfield song For What It's Worth.

The No Nukes Concerts were a particularly significant event because it was one of the first times that a large-scale concert was organized not around support for a particular cause (e.g. charity performance for Third World poverty), but rather in protest of a national policy and a rather hot-button issue in the U.S. at the time.

The No Nukes Concerts raised millions to donate to various anti-nuclear groups around the country. Also they probably greatly aided in raising public awareness and encouraging greater safety measures. MUSE founder John Hall was elected to the U.S. House in 2006 on an alternative energy platform, so there's at least one MUSE member who's still making a real difference.

The group faced considerable scrutiny from the press, who tended to hardball the founders with questions about whether it was an artist's place to try to change public policy. However, the prickly Bonnie Raitt would often respond that if the press had done their job reporting on the risks of nuclear energy in the first place, they wouldn't have had anything to protest!

The No Nukes protest concert in 1979 was one of the defining '70s events for aging '60s hippies, a way to prove that they held political and social power. In many ways, the concert worked: by the end of the '80s, nuclear weapons and power eventually faded away (All music)

References:
www.ugo.com
http://en.wikipedia.org
http://wc09.allmusic.com


some songs from these concerts in you tube:

Bobbie Raitt

James Taylor and Carly

The times they are a changin'

Bruce Springsteen

And the 2007 video by No Nukes artists, mentioned above, about the campaign against nuclear nightmare who came back in clean-energy-disguise, with a cover of Buffalo Springfield highlight "For What It's Worth"

Album: Power in the darkness by Tom Robinson Band, 1978

Power In The Darkness

Power in the darkness
Frightening lies from the other side
Power in the darkness
Stand up and fight for your rights

Freedom... we're talking bout your freedom
Freedom to choose what you do with your body
Freedom to believe what you like
Freedom for brothers to love one another
Freedom for black and white
Freedom from harassment, intimidation
Freedom for the mother and wife
Freedom from Big Brother's interrogation
Freedom to live your own life... I'm talking 'bout

Power in the darkness
Frightening lies from the other side
Power in the darkness
Stand up and fight for your rights

(Voice from The Other Side:) "Today, institutions fundamental to the British system of Government are under attack: the public schools, the house of Lords, the Church of England, the holy institution of Marriage, even our magnificent police force are no longer safe from those who would undermine our society, and it's about time we said 'enough is enough' and saw a return to the traditional British values of discipline, obedience, morality and freedom.

What we want is:
Freedom from the reds and the blacks and the criminals
Prostitutes, pansies and punks
Football hooligans, juvenile delinquents
Lesbians and left wing scum
Freedom from the niggers and the Pakis and the unions
Freedom from the Gipsies and the Jews
Freedom from leftwing layabouts and liberals
Freedom from the likes of you..."

Power in the darkness
Frightening lies from the other side
Power in the darkness
Stand up and fight for your rights


Glad To Be Gay

The British Police are the best in the world
I don't believe one of these stories I've heard
'Bout them raiding our pubs for no reason at all
Lining the customers up by the wall

Picking out people and knocking them down
Resisting arrest as they're kicked on the ground
Searching their houses and calling them queer
I don't believe that sort of thing happens here

Sing if you're glad to be gay
Sing if you're happy that way

Pictures of naked young women are fun
In Titbits and Playboy, page three of The Sun
There's no nudes in Gay News our last magazine
But they still find excuses to call it obscene

Read how disgusting we are in the press
The News of The World and the Sunday Express
Molesters of children, corruptors of youth
It's there in the paper, it must be the truth

Sing if you're glad to be gay
Sing if you're happy that way

Don't try to kid us that if you're discreet
You're perfectly safe as you walk down the street
You don't have to mince or make bitchy remarks
To get beaten unconscious and left in the dark

I had a friend who was gentle and short
Got lonely one evening and went for a walk
Queerbashers caught him and kicked in his teeth
He was only hospitalised for a week

Sing if you're glad to be gay
Sing if you're happy that way

So sit back and watch as they close all our clubs
Arrest us for meeting and raid all our pubs
Make sure your boyfriend's at least 21
So only your friends and your brothers get done

Lie to your workmates, lie to your folks
Put down the queens and tell anti-queer jokes
Gay Lib's ridiculous, join their laughter
'The buggers are legal now, what more are they after?'

Sing if you're glad to be gay
Sing if you're happy that way

Two songs from a revolutionary band in support of the freedom of sexual choice and against racism in general and institutional punishment of sexual minorities. The freedom of sexual orientation and self-determination of one’s body is of great importance in ecological movement and in a vision of a true free society. Traditional left parties or communist regimes ban homosexuality and persecute people for their sexual orientation or their voluntarily management of their body concerning sexuality.

You can hear these songs in you tube:

Power in the darkness

Glad to be gay

We Almost Lost Detroit by Gil Scott-Heron/Brian Jackson, Album: Bridges, 1977

It stands out on a highway
like a Creature from another time.
It inspires the babies' questions,
"What's that?"
For their mothers as they ride.
But no one stopped to think about the babies
or how they would survive,
and we almost lost Detroit
this time.
How would we ever get over
loosing our minds?
Just thirty miles from Detroit
stands a giant power station.
It ticks each night as the city sleeps
seconds from anniahlation.
But no one stopped to think about the people
or how they would survive,
and we almost lost Detroit
this time.
How would we ever get over
over loosing our minds?
The sherrif of Monroe county had,
sure enough disasters on his mind,
and what would karen Silkwood say
if she was still alive?
That when it comes to people's safety
money wins out every time.
and we almost lost Detroit
this time, this time.
How would we ever get over
over loosing our minds?
You see, we almost lost Detroit
that time.
Almost lost Detroit
that time.
And how would we ever get over...
Cause odds are,
we gonna loose somewhere, one time.
Odds are
we gonna loose somewhere sometime.
And how would we ever get over
loosing our minds?
And how would we ever get over
loosing our minds?
Didn't they, didn't they decide?
Almost lost Detroit
that time.
Damn near totally destroyed,
one time.
Didn't all of the world know?
Say didn't you know?
Didn't all of the world know?
Say didn't you know?
We almost lost detroit...

From www.allmusic.com :
"We Almost Lost Detroit," shares its title with the John G. Fuller book published in 1975, recounts the story of the nuclear meltdown at the Fermi Atomic Power Plant near Monroe, MI, in 1966. This song was also contributed to the No Nukes concert and album in 1980.

You can hear this song in youtube:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b54rB64fXY4

Jethro Tull, Album: Songs from the wood, 1977

Songs From The Wood

Let me bring you songs from the wood:
to make you feel much better than you could know.
Dust you down from tip to toe.
Show you how the garden grows.
Hold you steady as you go.
Join the chorus if you can:
it'll make of you an honest man.

Let me bring you love from the field:
poppies red and roses filled with summer rain.
To heal the wound and still the pain
that threatens again and again
as you drag down every lover's lane.
Life's long celebration's here.
I'll toast you all in penny cheer.

Let me bring you all things refined:
galliards and lute songs served in chilling ale.
Greetings well met fellow, hail!
I am the wind to fill your sail.
I am the cross to take your nail:
A singer of these ageless times.
With kitchen prose and gutter rhymes.
Songs from the wood make you feel much better.


Jack-In-The-Green

Have you seen Jack-In-The-Green?
With his long tail hanging down.
He sits quietly under every tree ---
in the folds of his velvet gown.
He drinks from the empty acorn cup
the dew that dawn sweetly bestows.
And taps his cane upon the ground ---
signals the snowdrops it's time to grow.

It's no fun being Jack-In-The-Green ---
no place to dance, no time for song.
He wears the colours of the summer soldier ---
carries the green flag all the winter long.

Jack, do you never sleep ---
does the green still run deep in your heart?
Or will these changing times,
motorways, powerlines,
keep us apart?
Well, I don't think so ---
I saw some grass growing through the pavements today.

The rowan, the oak and the holly tree
are the charges left for you to groom.
Each blade of grass whispers Jack-In-The-Green.
Oh Jack, please help me through my winter's night.
And we are the berries on the holly tree.
Oh, the mistlethrush is coming.
Jack, put out the light.

Cup Of Wonder

May I make my fond excuses
for the lateness of the hour,
but we accept your invitation,
and we bring you Beltane's flower.

For the May Day is the great day,
sung along the old straight track.
And those who ancient lines did lay
will heed the song that calls them back.

Pass the word and pass the lady,
pass the plate to all who hunger.
Pass the wit of ancient wisdom,
pass the cup of crimson wonder.

Ask the green man where he comes from,
ask the cup that fills with red.
Ask the old grey standing stones
that show the sun its way to bed.

Question all as to their ways,
and learn the secrets that they hold.
Walk the lines of nature's palm
crossed with silver and with gold.

Pass the cup and pass the lady,
pass the plate to all who hunger.
Pass the wit of ancient wisdom,
pass the cup of crimson wonder.

Join in black December's sadness,
lie in August's welcome corn.
Stir the cup that's ever-filling
with the blood of all that's born.

But the May Day is the great day,
sung along the old straight track.
And those who ancient lines did lay
will heed this song that calls them back.

Pass the word and pass the lady,
pass the plate to all who hunger.
Pass the wit of ancient wisdom,
pass the cup of crimson wonder.


Velvet Green

Walking on velvet green.
Scots pine growing.
Isn't it rare to be taking the air, singing.
Walking on velvet green.
Walking on velvet green.
Distant cows lowing.

Never a care:
with your legs in the air, loving.
Walking on velvet green.
Won't you have my company,
yes, take it in your hands.

Go down on velvet green, with a country man.
Who's a young girls fancy and an old maid's dream.
Tell your mother that you walked all night on velvet green.
One dusky half-hour's ride up to the north.
There lies your reputation and all that you're worth.
Where the scent of wild roses turns the milk to cream.
Tell your mother that you walked all night on velvet green.

And the long grass blows in the evening cool.
And August's rare delight may be April's fool.
But think not of that, my love,
I'm tight against the seam.
And I'm growing up to meet you down on velvet green.

Now I may tell you that it's love and not just lust.
And if we live the lie, let's lie in trust.
On golden daffodils, to catch the silver stream
that washes out the wild oat seed on velvet green.

We'll dream as lovers under the stars ---
of civilizations raging afar.
And the ragged dawn breaks on your battle scars.
As you walk home cold and alone upon velvet green.

Walking on velvet green. Scots pine growing.
Isn't it rare to be taking the air, singing.
Walking on velvet green.
Walking on velvet green. Distant cows lowing.
Never a care: with your legs in the air, loving.
Walking on velvet green.

may be one of the most naturalistic rock albums. A Folk concept-hymn in nature

you can hear three of the above songs in you tube:

songs from the wood

jack in the green

velvet green

White man by Queen, Album: Day at the races 1977

I'm a simple man with a simple name
From this soil my people came
In this soil remain oh yeah oh yeah
He made us our shoes
And we trod soft on the land
But the immigrant built roads
On our blood and sand oh yeah

White man White man
Don't you see the light behind your blackened skies
White man White man
You took away the sight to blind my simple eyes
White man White man
Where you gonna hide from the hell you've made

Oh the red man knows wars
With his hands and his knives
On the Bible you swore
Fought your battle with lies oh yeah
Leave my body in shame
Leave my soul in disgrace
But by ev'ry god's name
Say a prayer for your race oh yeah

White man White man
Our country was green and all our rivers wide
White man White man
You came with a gun and soon our children died
White man White man
Don't you give a light for the blood you've shed?

White man White man
White man
White man White man
For you battled with lies
White man White man
Still lies
White man White man
Say you look around every skin and bone again

What is left of your dream?
Just the words on your stone
A man who learned how to teach
Then forgot how to learn
Oh yeah


A strong accusation of the cultural and territorial destruction of Indians by “civilized” white people

You can hear this song in youtube:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=feV4RuZSdIc

Peter Garrett – from singing for the Midnight Oil to the post of Australian Environment Minister

Peter Garrett became lead singer of the Midnight Oil in 1973. As well as its great musical and commercial success, the band became well known for its commitment to environmentalist and left-wing causes, and was particularly critical of United States military and foreign policies during the 1980s. Garrett served as president of the Australian Conservation Foundation from 1989 to 1993 and 1998 to 2004. He also joined the International Board of Greenpeace in 1993 for a two-year term. He served as adviser and patron to various cultural and community organisations including Jubilee Debt Relief, and was a founding member of the Surfrider Foundation. In 2000 Garrett was awarded the Australian Humanitarian Foundation Award in the Environment category and in 2001 he received an honorary Doctorate of Letters from the University of New South Wales.

Garrett's first attempt at entering politics was in 1984, when he co founded the Nuclear Disarmament Party and stood for a seat in the Australian Senate in New South Wales at the December 1984 federal election. He needed 12.5% of the vote to win a seat in the Senate voting system, but a primary vote of just over 9% was insufficient when Labor gave its preferences to the conservative National Party ahead of the NDP.

Garrett decided to quit Midnight Oil on December 2, 2002, to focus on his political career. He won the seat of Kingsford Smith at the 2004 General Election for the Australian Labor Party and was selected as Shadow Minister for Climate Change, Environment, Heritage and the Arts. On Thursday, 29th November 2007, Labor Prime Minister elect Kevin Rudd named Garrett Minister for Environment, Heritage and Arts. However, he was stripped of the Climate change role, which was given to Penny Wong.

During the 2006 Victorian State election campaign, Garrett urged voters to not vote for the Australian Greens, but for his own Labor Party. This incurred the ire of Greens leader and former Garrett ally, Bob Brown who accused Garrett of having "sold out" and of going against the green movement, since joining the Labor Party.

Garrett has modified many of his earlier views and says he is now a "team player" in the Labor Party. He now supports the U.S.-Australia alliance, and no longer opposes the Joint U.S-Australian Defence Facility at Pine Gap. He says he will argue for environmental causes inside the Labor Party, but will observe the decisions of the ALP caucus, including accepting any decision to change Labor's "no new uranium mines" policy. Garrett's change of stance drew criticism from both journalists and Midnight Oil fans, who contrasted Garrett's former pronouncements on environmental and political issues he made before joining the Australian Labor Party.


we'll come back soon for presenting Midnight Oil songs and lyrics

Godzilla by Blue Oyster Cult, album: Spectres 1977

With a purposeful grimace and a terrible sound
He pulls the spitting high tension wires down

Helpless people on a subway train
Scream bug-eyed as he looks in on them

He picks up a bus and he throws it back down
As he wades through the buildings toward the center of town

Oh no, they say hes got to go
Go go godzilla, yeah
Oh no, there goes tokyo
Go go godzilla, yeah

Rinji news o moshiagemasu!
Rinji news o moshiagemasu!
Godzilla ga ginza hoomen e mukatte imasu!
Daishkyu hinan shite kudasai!
Daishkyu hinan shite kudasai!

Oh no, they say hes got to go
Go go godzilla, yeah
Oh no, there goes tokyo
Go go godzilla, yeah

History shows again and again
How nature points up the folly of men


A song about the famous sci-fi monster Godzilla, a creation from mutations by radioactive pollution. The song is an allegory about the nuclear threat and the nuclear test in pacific ocean. The last bold words and some announcements in their concerts during 70s and 80s leads us to such an interpretation.

You can hear this song in youtube:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TTW19g-uUTw&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jiHRm2DioMA

Save the Whales by country joe mcdonald album Paradise with an Ocean View 1976

When my grandpa was a boy,
he went down to the general store
Saw a picture book of a whale
shooting its spout and flashin' its tail

Then he got a sailor's dream
'bout cruisin' around on the salty sea
Joinin' up with a fishin' crew
to go out and get him a whale or two

Tell me what kind of men are these
who sail upon the salty seas
Up in the rigging in the afternoon,
swabbin' the decks and sharpenin' harpoons

Hooray and up she rises
Hooray and up she rises
Hooray and up she rises
Early in the morning

Shanghaied by the light of the moon,
put out from Boston in the middle of June
After six months out at sea,
it's nothin' but death and misery

Set out on a three-year cruise,
a union ship and a union crew
And after six months you begin to see,
that whalin's not what it used to be

A modern ship and a modern crew
with sonar scopes and explodin' harpoons
A mechanical boat made outta steel,
a floating machine built to kill the whales

Hooray and up she rises
Hooray and up she rises
Hooray and up she rises
Early in the morning

There're lots of whales in the deep blue sea,
we kill them for the company
We drag 'em 'longside and chop 'em in two
and melt 'em down and sell 'em to you

There hardly is a sailor alive
who can keep the tears from his eyes
As he remembers the good old days
when there were no whales to save

Thank the Russians and Japanese
for scouring the deep blue seas
Looking for ivory and perfume
and plastic toys and pet food

Another song against whale hunting, especially with modern devastating methods for profitable reasons and for fulfilling consumers’ useless needs.

You can hear this song in youtube

You can hear some songs of later Country Joe in my space:

Don’t bogart that joint

who cares

Martian Landscape by UFO, Album: No heavy petting, 1976

Come from the land where the wheat is still wheat
Where the waters in the rivers is still water
In this land every man lends a hand when you need it
But your hands are full of life
So you can help yourself and feel it
It's been a long way from the red of my home
From the valleys and the green plains never ending

Everyone knows that the sun in his land is stronger
And your hands are full of life
If you can only wait just longer

So let it be a small haven big in Your heart
Don't let it turn into an ogre
Tryin' to climb and climb
and forget this place where
I can still find time
To sing in rhyme

Martian landscape.
I'll learn to lie in your arms
Where all the freedom is mine and it comes
Martian landscape,
I'll turn my face to your sun
Where your horizon is mine and it comes


A vision of a land where nature is clean from civilization. It’s a mystery why this place is called “martian”. Probably, the songwriters having the name “UFO” (which came from Mars) wrote the song before first landing and sending pictures from plain rocky Mars surface.

You can hear this song in youtube

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dhf36xKRCi4

You can hear some UFO classics in myspace:

Doctor doctor

Rock Bottom

Too Hot to Handle

Love to Love

Too young to Know

Crosby Stills & Nash: To the Last Whale...: Critical Mass/Wind on the Water, Album: Wind on the water (1975).

Over the years you have been hunted
by the men who threw harpoons
And in the long run he will kill you
just to feed the pets we raise,
put the flowers in your vase
and make the lipstick for your face.

Over the years you swam the ocean
Following feelings of your own
Now you are washed up on the shoreline
I can see your body lie
It's a shame you have to die
to put the shadow on our eye

Maybe we'll go
Maybe we'll disappear
It's not that we don't know
It's just that we don't want to care.
Under the bridges
Over the foam
Wind on the water
Carry me home.

A lament for the devastating whale hunting usually for useless human needs

You can hear this song in you tube

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KHf6anDazW0

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r9P8y2ipMRM

Winter in America, by Gil Scott-Heron/Brian Jackson, Album: The First Minute of a New Day, 1975

Uh from the Indians who welcomed the pilgrims
And to the buffalos who once ruled the plains
Like the vultures circling beneath the dark clouds looking for the rain
Looking for the rain

Just like the cities stagger on the coastline
In a nation that just can’t stand much more
Like the forest buried beneath the highway, never had a chance to grow
Never had a chance to grow

And now it’s winter, winter in America
Yes now that all of the killers have been killed, sent away, Yeah
But the people know, the people know, it’s winter
Winter in America
And ain’t nobody fighting cause
Nobody knows what to say
Save your soul, lord knows from
Winter in America

The constitution, a noble piece of paper
With free society, a struggle but they died in vain
And now democracy is a ragtime on the corner
Hoping for some rain
It looks like he’s hoping, hoping for some rain

And I see the robins perched in baron treetops
Watching lasting racists marching across the floor
Just like the peace sign that vanished in our dreams
Never had a chance to grow
Never had a chance to grow
And now it’s winter
Winter in America

Yes now that all of the killers have been killed, or betrayed, Yeah
But the people know, the people know, it’s winter
Lord knows it’s winter in America
And ain’t nobody fighting cause nobody knows what to say
Save your soul
From a winter in America

a very strong song who accuses the american way or progress. There is also a reference to the forever lost nature under the cement and pavement of civilization

You can hear this song in youtube

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M6T2A0QdJVA
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rK_j04keKRE

OLD MAN NOLL by New Riders of the Purple Sage, Album: Brujo 1974

OLD MAN NOLL WAS A MEAN OLD SOUL
HE LIVED ACROSS THE HILL
I DIDN’T KNOW HIM VERY WELL
AND NOW I NEVER WILL

HE HAD SOME SHEEP THAT GRAZED HIS LAND
AND HE WAS VERY OLD
AND ALL THE KIDS WOULD STAY AWAY
WE KNEW HE WAS A SCOLD

BUT OUR BEST TREEHOUSE WAS ON HIS HILL
AND OUR NAVY SAILED ON HIS POND
THE YEARS HAVE ONLY BROUGHT ME PAIN
NOW I’M SAD THE OLD MAN’S GONE ..CAUSE NOW

CHORUS:
THE FREEWAY ROLLS WHERE OLD MAN NOLL
USED TO RUN HIS SHEEP IN THE MEADOW
AND AS YOU DRIVE BY, IF YOU REALLY TRY
YOU STILL CAN SEE HIS SHADOW

OLD MAN NOLL WAS A MEAN OLD SOUL
AT LEAST THE KIDS THOUGHT SO
BUT WE WERE MUCH, MUCH YOUNGER THEN
AND NOW, I JUST DON’T KNOW

THE WAY IT WAS WHEN IT WAS HIS
THE LAND WAS CLEAR AND FREE
THE LAND WAS LIFE AND WITH HIS WIFE
WAS ALL THAT HE COULD SEE

SO WHEN THE HOUSES CAME AND BROUGHT
THE KIDS WHO THOUGHT HE WAS MEAN
I THINK THAT NOW, AT LAST I SEE
HOW SAD HE MUST HAVE BEEN …CAUSE NOW

THE FREEWAY ROLLS WHERE OLD MAN NOLL
USED TO RUN HIS SHEEP IN THE MEADOW
AND AS YOU DRIVE BY, IF YOU REALLY TRY
YOU STILL CAN SEE HIS SHADOW

memories from childhood of a now paved and extinct by "progress" place with childs-play adventures in free nature

you can hear some songs in myspace

The growth of environmental movement in early seventies and the appearance of green parties

We saw in a previous post that environmental awareness increased gradually during the 1960s, something that affected the lyrical influences of rock music.

During the 1960s, several events illustrated the magnitude of environmental damage caused by man. In 1962 the publication of the book Silent Spring by Rachel Carson drew attention to the impact of chemicals on the natural environment. In 1967 the Torrey Canyon oil tanker went aground off the southwest coast of England, and in 1969 oil spilled from an offshore well in California's Santa Barbara Channel. In 1971 the conclusion of a law suit in Japan drew international attention to the effects of decades of mercury poisoning on the people of Minamata. At the same time, emerging scientific research drew new attention to existing and hypothetical threats to the environment and humanity. Among them were Paul R. Ehrlich, whose book The Population Bomb, published 1968, revived concerns about the impact of exponential population growth. Biologist Barry Commoner generated a debate about growth, affluence and "flawed technology." Additionally, an association of scientists and political leaders known as the Club of Rome published their report The Limits to Growth in 1972, and drew attention to the growing pressure on natural resources from human activities. Meanwhile, nuclear proliferation and photos of Earth from space emphasized the consequences of technological accomplishments, as well as Earth's truly small place in the universe. In 1972, the United Nations Conference on the Human Environment was held in Stockholm, and for the first time united the representatives of multiple governments in discussion relating to the state of the global environment. This conference led directly the creation of government environment agencies and the UN Environment Program. The United States also passed new legislation such as the Clean Water Act, the Clean Air Act, the Endangered Species Act, and the National Environmental Policy Act- the foundations for current environmental standards.

Thus, in early seventies, the environmental concerns find their way to the highest levels of goverments and the international community. The interest for environmental issues is reflected to various rock songs of that period, that we have already presented. The environmental movement takes gradually political character and the first green parties begin to pop up around the world. They incorporate many values of the counterculture and the new social movements of the sixties.

In March of 1972 the world's first green party, the United Tasmania Group, was formed at a public meeting in Hobart, Australia. At about that same time, in Atlantic Canada, 'the Small party' was formed with similar goals. In May 1972, a meeting at Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand, launched the Values Party, the world's first countrywide green party to contest Parliamentary seats nationally. A year later in 1973, Europe's first green party, the UK's Ecology Party, came into existence.

Album: Everyone is everybody else by Barclay James Harvest, 1974

Child of the universe

I'm a child of South Africa
I'm a child of Vietnam
I'm a child of Northern Ireland
I'm a small boy with blood on his hands

Yes I'm a child of the universe
Yes I'm a child of the universe
You can see me on the TV every night
Always there to join in someone else's fight

I didn't ask to be born and I don't ask to die
I'm an endless dream, a gene machine
That cannot reason why

Yes I'm a child of the universe
Yes I'm a child of the universe
You can see me on the TV every day
I'm the child next door three thousand miles away

A child of the third world with uncertain future and expendable life in countries with war or starvation is known to us only from TV, but is so close to us no matter the distance. Not only we are brothers as humanity, but we must also realize his/her misery feeds our wealth.


Crazy city

Running alone in the crazy city
Look at the face of once were pretty
People then wonder what happened
To make it that way

Listen around you, have you heard?
Climb on the back of a silver bird
London to L.A. before you can think
What to say

Stop awhile, take a smile
Know that you're living in today
Up and down, look around
No need to hide yourself away

Out in the country's where I'm going
Back where the tree of life's still growing
Take a free ride where the tide
Flows the way of your heart

Follow the wild dove where he's flying
Out where the sun is never crying
Wait at the gate or they'll stop you
And blow you apart

Stop awhile, take a smile
Know that you're living in today
Up and down, look around
No need to hide yourself away


A call to stop a while our urban routine we are bound on and to think about the free nature we sacrifice for a clockwork "safe" and predictable life

You can hear Child of the Universe in youtube:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q7hkRnmEgzI

Give Me The Good Earth by Manfred Mann's Earth Band Album: the good earth 1974

Give me the good earth that I was born on,
Give me the sunshine, the grass and the trees.
Give me the open skies that I can dream on,
Give me the flowers, the birds and the bees.

Give me the good earth to lay my head on,
Give me the mountains, the cool summer breeze.
Give me the forests, deep river valleys,
Give me the oceans, the fish and the seas.

I don't need to know about the things that lay beyond my life
I don't need to know about the things that I don't need

Give me the good earth to rest my mind on,
Give me the rainfall that fills empty streams.
Give me the life, the hills and the meadows,
Give me the seasons and the changes they bring.

I don't need to know about the things that lay beyond my life
I don't need to know about the things that I don't need

Give me the good earth that I was born on,
Give me my sunshine.
Give me open skies that I can dream on,
Give me the rainbow...
Give me the good earth,
Give me the good earth...

Give me the good earth that I was born on,
Give me the sunshine, the grass and the trees.
Give me the open skies that I can dream on,
Give me the flowers, the birds and the bees.

Give me the good earth to lay my head on,
Give me the mountains, the cool summer breeze.
Give me the forests and deep river valleys,
Give me the oceans, the fish and the seas.

A demand for the pure and clear nature that has been deprived from our lives by the heavy urbanization and industrialization and trying to fulfil our needs with useless substitutes and pastimes

You can hear some representative songs by Manfred Mann in youtube:

Spirits in the night

Father of night

Davy's on the road again

Album: The Adventures of Panama Red by New riders of the purple sage, 1973

CEMENT, CLAY AND GLASS

I LIVE BY THE SIDE OF ROLLING OAKS ROAD
TRACT 25 JUST LIKE THE MAN SHOWED IT TO ME
NOTHIN' TO HIDE IT, NOTHIN' BESIDE IT
I REALLY CAN'T FIGHT IT, THE WHOLE PLACE IS BLIGHTED WITH

CEMENT, CLAY AND GLASS
TREES AWAY, CONTRACTOR'S PAY
NO DELAY, 10 UNITS TODAY
OF CEMENT, CLAY AND GLASS

TREES GREEN, NONE TO BE SEEN
YOU CUT DOWN THE HILLS BUT YOU PAY HIGHER BILLS
FOR YOUR CEMENT, CLAY AND GLASS
CEMENT, CLAY AND GLASS

I LIVE BY THE SIDE OF ROLLING OAKS ROAD
TRACT 25 JUST LIKE THE MAN SHOWED IT TO ME
THERE'S NOTHIN' TO HIDE IT, NOTHIN' BESIDE IT
I REALLY CAN'T FIGHT IT, THE WHOLE PLACE IS BLIGHTED WITH

CEMENT, CLAY AND GLASS
CEMENT, CLAY AND GLASS

a song about the unatural urban environment which is hostile to trees, free space and our vital needs.

THANK THE DAY

SAILING ON THE OCEAN LEAVING ALL CONFUSION
OF WHO YOU ARE AND WHAT YOU WANT TO BE
SAILING UP THE GREEN WALL LAUGHING AS THE WIND BLOWS
SINGING, SLIDING DOWN THE OTHER SIDE
WORKING IN THE SUN HAVING GOOD HARD FUN
WHEN NIGHTTIME COMES WE'LL REST AND THANK THE DAY
WE THANK THE DAY

LANDING ON AN ISLAND I COULDN'T KEEP FROM SMILING
THE PEOPLE THERE WERE FRIENDLY AS CAN BE
LIVIN' IN AN OCEAN OF SYNCOPATED MOTION
LAUGHING, SINGING ALL OUR CARES AWAY
WORKING IN THE SUN OUR DAYS BE SPENT IN FUN
WHEN NIGHTTIME COMES WE'LL REST AND THANK THE DAY
WE THANK THE DAY

SAILING ON THE OCEAN LEAVING ALL CONFUSION
OF WHO YOU ARE AND WHAT YOU WANT TO BE
SAILING UP THE GREEN WALL LAUGHING AS THE WIND BLOWS
SINGING, SLIDING DOWN THE OTHER SIDE
WORKING IN THE SUN OUR DAYS BE SPENT IN FUN
WHEN NIGHTTIME COMES WE'LL REST AND THANK THE DAY
THANK THE DAY

another escaping to nature song where people are smiley and friendly in contrast with a depressing urban environment

you can hear some songs from NRPS in my space

Bein' Green by Van Morrison, Album: Hard Nose the Highway, 1973

It's not easy bein' green
Having to spend each day the color of the leaves
When I think it could be nicer bein' red or yellow or gold
Or something much more colorful like that

It's not easy bein' green
It seems you blend in with so many other ordinary things
And people tend to pass you over
'Cause you're not standing out like flashy sparkles
On the water or stars in the sky

But green is the color of spring
And green can be cool and friendly like
And green can be big like an ocean
Or important like a mountain or tall like a tree

When green is all there is to be
It could make you wonder why
But why wonder, why wonder?
I am green and it'll do fine, it's beautiful
And I think it's what I want to be

Great allegoric lyrics!

You can hear some songs in youtube:

Moondance

Warm love

Brown eyed girl

Tupelo honey

days like this

BALLAD OF THE BEACON, BY WISHBONE ASH , ALBUM: WISHBONE FOUR, 1973

Well be leaving this town in the morning
Tomorrow well be able to see
I’ve had me enough of this city
And she’s had enough out of me

I’m turning my sights on the country
Sold everything that I own
I’m heading away from the bright lights
Looking for where the wind blows

Say if I climbed to the mountains
Would you still follow me there
Steal me away in an echo
The mountains will always be there

Another “escaping the stress-producing city for living in the country” song.

You can hear this song in you tube but in a bad sound quality:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aPjnxeJt3iY

You can hear some other songs from Wishbone Ash in you tube:

Blowing free

Jailbait

leaf and stream

Mama Nature said, by Thin Lizzy, Album: Vagabonds Of The Western World ,1973

Mama Nature said
"It's murder what you've done"
I sent you forth my brightest world
Now it's nearly gone

Birds and bees
Been telling me
You can't see
The forest for the trees

You cover up your lies
With sympathies
And I got no solutions
To your persecution

Mama Nature said
"I can't believe it's true"
I gave you life and food for thought
Look what did you do

You're killing my rivers
Drowning my baby streams
Day by day by day by day
I hear them scream

I'm so disillusioned
I'm so disillusioned

Mama Nature said
"You're guilty of this crime"
Now it's not just a matter of fact
But just a matter of time

Cruel will be the vengeance
So savage is the deed that's done
And I've got no solutions
To your own pollutions

Another clear ecological song where Nature takes revenge and condemns us for our crimes against Her

You can hear some songs from Thin Lizzy in You tube:

Whiskey in the jar

The rocker

Emerald

Cowboy song

The City by FLEETWOOD MAC Album: Mystery To Me, 1973

Gonna stay out of New York
There's something there that drives me crazy
Gonna stay out of New York
There's something there that bleeds me dry

It gets so bad that I stop breathin'
And then the sun don't wanna shine
There's something wrong with New York
It's a prison without walls

No I won't go back there
I just don't like that place at all
You might call it sophistication
But I say time is runnin' out

I won't go back to New York
There's a darkness all around
No, I just can't handle it

You know that place is gettin' me down
You can say it's sophistication
But I say time is runnin' out

A strong distaste and disregarding of urban dehumanizing environment and desire for escape.

You can hear some classics from Fleetwood Mac in you tube:

Green Manalishi

Fool Noone

Don't stop

The Chain

Second hand news

Go your own way

peacekeeper

Happy old world by Barclay James Harvest, album Once Again, 1971

Looking like something from out of space we came
Nothing much to look at, but did he complain?
He didn't mind us being here to live in peace and grace
What we're doing to him now could put us back in space

We're thinking like some creatures off the ocean floor
Losing sight of what we've really come here for
Can I be heard above the sounds of prejudice and hate?
Take time to look around before it gets too late

It's a happy old world
Give and take a bit
That's what you make of it
A happy old world
But I'm sorry to be leaving it
It's a happy old world
Give and take a bit
That's what you make of it
A happy old world
But I guess I still, I still believe in it
It's a happy old world

We're tearing up the rivers and a thousand streams
And highways, they're in places where they've never been
We're building towers in the sky and racing for the sun
Oh Lord, any eye can see what harm we've done

I need some help to get myself out of this maze
We can both just say goodbye and go our separate ways
My mind's not on this song I sing, my heart's not in the lines
Guess I'll go and kill myself, so would you kindly close the blinds

Oh a happy old world
Give and take a bit
That's what you make of it
A happy old world
But I'm sorry to be leaving it
It's a happy old world
Give and take a bit
That's what you make of it
A happy old world
But I guess, guess I still believe in it
It's a happy old world

A song that notifies our alienation from our roots in nature. We behave like we came from outer space, or from depths of the sea and we swept out natural landscapes to create heavy urban environments, as nature is a foe.

You can hear some songs from this period of this band in youtube:

Mocking Bird

Mother dear

Album: A question of Balance by Moody Blues, 1970

"Question"

Why do we never get an answer
When we're knocking at the door?
With a thousand million questions
About hate and death and war.

It's where we stop and look around us
There is nothing that we need.
In a world of persecution
That is burning in it's greed.

Why do we never get an answer
When we're knocking at the door?
Because the truth is hard to swallow
That's what the wall of love is for.

It's not the way that you say it
When you do those things to me.
It's more the way that you mean it
When you tell me what will be.

And when you stop and think about it
You won't believe it's true.
That all the love you've been giving
Has all been meant for you.

I'm looking for someone to change my life.
I'm looking for a miracle in my life.
And if you could see what it's done to me
To lose the the love I knew
Could safely lead me through.

Between the silence of the mountains
And the crashing of the sea
There lies a land I once lived in
And she's waiting there for me.

But in the grey of the morning
My mind becomes confused
Between the dead and the sleeping
And the road that I must choose.

I'm looking for someone to change my life.
I'm looking for a miracle in my life.
And if you could see what it's done to me
To lose the the love I knew
Could safely lead me to
The land that I once knew.
To learn as we grow old
The secrets of our souls.


"How Is It (We Are Here)"

How is it we are here, on this path we walk,
In this world of pointless fear, filled with empty talk,
Descending from the apes as scientist-priests all think,
Will they save us in the end, we're trembling on the brink.

Men's mighty mine-machines digging in the ground,
Stealing rare minerals where they can be found.
Concrete caves with iron doors, bury it again,
While a starving frightened world fills the sea with grain.

Her love is like a fire burning inside,
Her love is so much higher it can't be denied,
She sends us her glory, it's always been there,
Her love's all around us, it's there for you and me to share.

Men's mighty mine-machines digging in the ground,
Stealing rare minerals where they can be found.
Concrete caves with iron doors, bury it again,
While a starving frightened world fills the sea with grain.

How is it we are here
How is it we are here
How is it we are here


"Don't You Feel Small"

Ask the mirror on the wall
Who's the biggest fool of all,
Bet you feel small,
It happens to us all.

See the world
Ask what's it for,
Understanding, nothing more,
Don't you feel small,
It happens to us all.

Time is now to spread your voice,
Time's to come there'll be no choice,
Why do you feel small,
It happens to us all.

Look at progress,
Then count the cost,
We'll spoil the seas
With the rivers we've lost.

See the writing on the wall,
Hear the mirror's warning call.
That's why you feel small,
It happens to us all.

Ask the mirror on the wall
Who's the biggest fool of all,
Bet you feel small,
It happens to us all.


In this album Moody Blues deal with social-orientated questioning about our destination, our arrogance, the questionable concept of progress, war and some ecological references (bold parts).

We read in wikipedia about this album:

For the first time, The Moody Blues used political strife as a basis for songwriting with the UK number two hit in May 1970, "Question", which dealt with the controversy resulting from the ongoing Vietnam War.

You can hear some songs from this album in youtube:

Question

Melancholy man

Tortoise and the hare

And the tide rushes in

The balance

When The Levee Breaks by Led Zeppelin, Album: IV, 1971

If it keeps on rainin', levee's goin' to break, [X2]
When The Levee Breaks I'll have no place to stay.

Mean old levee taught me to weep and moan, [X2]
Got what it takes to make a mountain man leave his home,
Oh, well, oh, well, oh, well.

Don't it make you feel bad
When you're tryin' to find your way home,
You don't know which way to go?
If you're goin' down South
They go no work to do,
If you don't know about Chicago.

Cryin' won't help you, prayin' won't do you no good,
Now, cryin' won't help you, prayin' won't do you no good,
When the levee breaks, mama, you got to move.

All last night sat on the levee and moaned, [X2]
Thinkin' about me baby and my happy home.
Going, going to Chicago... Going to Chicago... Sorry but I can't take you...
Going down... going down now... going down....

1927/2005 the same story repeats: leeve collapse, Missisipi floods and thousands of mainly poor black people met with disaster, left in their fates by authorities

We read in wikipedia very interesting information and interpretation for this great song:

The original work for "When the Levee Breaks" was produced by the blues musical duo known as "Kansas Joe McCoy" and "Memphis Minnie." The lines at the end of the song, "Going to Chicago; sorry but I can't take you", quote "Going to Chicago Blues" by Jimmy Rushing and the Count Basie Orchestra.

In the first half of 1927, the Great Mississippi Flood ravaged the state of Mississippi and surrounding areas. It destroyed many homes and ravaged the agricultural economy of the Mississippi Basin. Many people were forced to flee to the cities of the Midwest in search of work, contributing to the "Great Migration" of African Americans in the first half of the 20th century. During the flood and the years after it subsided, it became the subject of numerous Delta blues songs, including "When the Levee Breaks", hence the lyrics, "I works on the levee, mama both night and day, I works so hard, to keep the water away" and "I's a mean old levee, cause me to weep and moan, gonna leave my baby, and my happy home".

The song focused mainly on when more than 13,000 residents in and near Greenville, Mississippi evacuated to a nearby, unaffected levee for its shelter at high ground. The tumult that would have been caused if this and other levees had broken was the song's underlying theme
……

The song has a significant second connotation, aside from the literal breaking of water-retaining levees by floodwaters. The song was inspired originally by an event rife with social strife (when the levees broke in 1927, black labor was forced to repair it at gunpoint), and this fact carries through in the lyrics. Plant expanded the lyrics to include such phrases as "If you're goin' down south / they got no work to do / if you don't know 'bout Chicago" that add to the original themes of the poor being disenfranchised--the poor, working classes are the ones whose homes are going to be destroyed by floodwaters, and they are the ones who will have nowhere to go afterward.

The second connotation of the song is built on an interesting twist. If the song is interpreted as a social statement reflecting class issues, then the poor themselves become the raging storm, restrained by oppressive (often governmental) institutions (the levees), and who will inevitably strike down what restrains them. In this interpretation, 'when the levee breaks,' it will be the former oppressors whose constructs are destroyed and who are cast out into the cold. In this interpretation, the song serves as a warning to oppressive upper classes that if they provoke a raging storm of social fury, they may sit on their social levee and "weep and moan," but "crying won't help [them], praying won't do [them] no good."

You can hear this song in youtube with a slide presentation from New Orleans hit by Katrina and leeve collapse

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z_Ny9_CrUVY

The Hand of Man by country joe and the fish, album: C.J. Fish, 1970

It's many an hour I've been thinking of our fate
Doomed it seemed to live in a world of fear and hate.
I thought about the good and the love there could be,
How fear can blind a man, how people are not free.

Hey, take my hand and come walk with me,
Brothers and sisters we all can be
From a spark in the dark from the hand of man
Peace and understanding spread through our land.

I gazed into the sky and saw the rains come down
I saw the deadly poisons flowing to the ground.
The rivers and the oceans turned into a grave
All years of effort wasted there was nothing left to save.

Hey, take my hand and come walk with me,
Brothers and sisters we all can be;
From a spark in the dark from the hand of man
Peace and understanding spread through our land.

An awareness about the future of mankind and our ignorance, not only about environment and its pollution, but also about ourselves who live in fear and insecurity, isolated with no bonds of solidarity and compassion.
You can hear some songs by Country Joe and the Fish in You tube

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s5btZWbViPA
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JuTyDzS5awA
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mlW3iP11fH4

1984 by Spirit, 1969

1984
knockin' on your door
will you let it come
will you let it run your life

someone will be waiting for you at your door
when you get home tonight
ah yes he's gonna tell you darkness gives you much more
than you get from the light

classic plastic guards well they're your special friends
they see you every night
well they call themselves your brothers
but you know it's no game
you're never out of their sight

it's time you started thinking inside your head
that you should stand up and fight
oh where will you be when the freedom must end
just one year from tonight

classic plastic coppers are your special friends
they see you every night
well they call themselves protection
but they know it's no game
you're never out of their sight

I'm gonna run through the jungle
I'm not going to ever come back


a futuristic song, inspired by George Orwell’s 1984, about the consequences of the need for protection and security. The more protection the more loss of freedom. But the “need” for protection was the perfect excuse for freedom and human rights restrictions by authorities who also change or reverse the meaning of the words. We can see it today in the so-called war against terrorism, but under this pretext, the real enemies are the free citizens who struggle for a better way of living and for a healthy environment and against them are the new real terroristic laws and acts.

you can hear this song in you tube:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eX3Dr5EltDM

Murray Bookchin and his impact on the counterculture and the emergence of the ecological movement

In a recent issue of the on-line magazine "Communalism", Janet Biehl refers to some interesting aspects of the life and work of the philosopher of Social Ecology, Murray Bookchin, which support our comments on the decline of the counterculture at the end of the sixies, as well as the emergence of the ecological movement.

Biehl writes that

his 1969 essay “Listen, Marxist!” represented, not simply a warning to the SDS to avoid a takeover by Maoists of the Progressive Labor Party, but also his definitive personal break with Marxism as the ideology by which he defined himself. He took pride when, a few years later, Victor Ferkiss identified him with a tendency that he called “eco-anarchist.”

(...)

Murray went on in the 1970s to make further contributions to both eco-anarchism and to anarchism as such. He pioneered exploration of alternative energy sources and eco-technics in his 1965 essay “Towards a Liberatory Technology.” In the 1970s he developed a distinction between ecology (inherently radical) and environmentalism (reformist).

(...)

In 1969 Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), the primary political organization of the American New Left, collapsed, its leadership having been taken over by ultraleft guerrilla groups like Weatherman and the Black Panthers. The Maoist guerrilla campaigns that had seemed to be the path ahead ended up destroying the organization. The student movement had always suffered from the endemic problem of fast turnover—no sooner do students organize a demonstration than summer vacation begins; no sooner do students develop political experience than they graduate. In April 1970 National Guards killed four student demonstrators at Kent State in Ohio. Among the New Left’s rank and file the National Mobilization Committee to End the War in Vietnam continued to pull together intermittent demonstrations in Washington. The 1972 presidential campaign of George McGovern channeled the energy of many antiwar activists. Amid the once-vibrant American radical movement confusion reigned.

In these years Murray was involved with the East Side Anarchists in New York as well as a libertarian collective that published the periodical Anarchos. What the American radical movement needed, he realized, in order to function as a real social and political alternative, was a set of institutions that would have at least some permanence. But no such institutions remained from the detritus of SDS or emerged from the antiwar demonstrations. Marches were “ephemeral spectacles,” he wrote in “Spring Offensives and Summer Vacations,” published in Anarchos in June 1972. “After each demonstration, street action, or confrontation, this hollow cone [of organizational leadership] all but collapsed, only to be recreated again with varying degrees of success for another demonstration, street action, or confrontation.”

Something more lasting had to be built: “The hollow cone that we call a movement must acquire a more solid geometry. It must be filled in by an authentic popular movement based on the self-activity of the American people, not the theatrical eruptions of a dedicated minority.” Antiwar activists, he urged, should build stable institutions.

(...)

As we have seen, Murray had argued that revolutionary institutions are formed spontaneously by the people during the course of a revolution. (Spontaneity was one of his principles of convergence between anarchism and ecology.) But during the late 1970s—I believe it was about 1977 —something happened that permanently changed his thinking: he came to the realization that he was not going to see a revolution would happen in his lifetime. The way he put it to me was: he realized that the revolutionary era is over.

He had been working with the Clamshell Alliance, the group that prevented the Seabrook nuclear reactor from going on line. Was it something about that experience that led to this realization? He was frustrated by the decision-making processes used in that group: consensus, he found, was a process very prone to manipulation. Or was it the changes happening in North America and Europe in the 1970s? Certainly the United States was entering a period of right-wing backlash against the 1960s (a backlash that continues to this day). Onetime radicals were now pursuing careers, getting “a piece of the pie” for themselves. The new social movements were emerging, which offered hope but also fragmentation of any broad movement; they moved radical thinking increasingly toward identity politics. Ecology was emerging as an issue of general concern, but as Washington adopted a few environment-friendly laws, radical ecologists were becoming reformist environmentalists. Finally the alternative (non-Western and noncredal) spiritualities that made up the New Age were ever more popular, luring former political activists into private life and promising to replace extroverted demands to change society with inner quests for serenity and enlightenment.

We stop here with the quotes of this interesting article, since they suffice to complement the elements that sketch the political atmosphere of the end of the sixties and most of the seventies which gave inspiration for many rock songs of that era. What we want to add is that Bookchin's writings and lectures of that era influenced to a substantial degree several ecological initiatives and many more individuals that started to flirt with this new emerging movement. Some of those individuals took part in the formation processes of the new Green Parties and gave them radical inclinations. The majority, however, remained outside partisan processes, trying to realize communalist projects and initiatives, and familiarize wider audiences with Bookchin's Social Ecology. For more information we direct you to web pages that are devoted on these lines:
Institute of Social Ecology
Communalism
Left Green Perspectives
Murray Bookchin Archive
Janet Biehl's blog with graphics about Bookchin
Democratic Alternative
Social Ecology London
European Social Ecology Institute

Fresh Garbage by Spirit, Album: Spirit, 1968

Are they just lyrics or a strong musical accusation for the common bad habits our consuming/discarding civilization bequeathed to us?

You can hear this song with another instrumental (Taurus) in you tube:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2jCmNtLSCPI

New riders of the Purple Sage, album: NRPS, 1971 part 2

DIRTY BUSINESS

WELL THE MARSHALL CAME TO TOWN
AND HIS HAT WAS PULLED WAY DOWN
HE LOOKED LIKE HE HAD BUSINESS ON HIS MIND
HE DIDN’T STOP TO SAY
HE JUST RODE ALONG HIS WAY
‘TIL HE STOPPED IN AT THE OFFICE OF THE MINE

CHORUS:
DIRTY BUSINESS, DIRTY BUSINESS
DIRTY BUSINESS DOWN IN COAL CREEK
DIRTY BUSINESS DOWN IN COAL CREEK
THIS MORNING

WELL, I MAKE TWO BUCKS A DAY
AND THAT AIN’T A HEALTHY PAY
MY KIDS ARE JUST BEGINNING TO GET SICK
THERE’S TALK BEEN GOIN’ ROUND
HOW THEY’RE GONNA SHUT IT DOWN
IF THE MAN DON’T COME AND FIX THINGS
PRETTY QUICK

REPEAT CHORUS

PRETTY SOON THERE WAS A CROWD
IT WAS GETTING’ PRETTY LOUD
AND THE MEN ALL SAID THERE’D BE NO WORK TODAY
BUT THE OWNER WOULDN’T BUDGE
HE JUST SAT THERE LIKE A JUDGE
AND HE WOULDN’T GIVE A NICKEL MORE IN PAY

CHORUS:
DIRTY BUSINESS, DIRTY BUSINESS
DIRTY BUSINESS DOWN IN COAL CREEK
DIRTY BUSINESS DOWN IN COAL CREEK
THIS MORNING

JUST THEN THEY HEARD THE SOUND
THAT RUMBLED FROM THE GROUND
AND EVERYONE WAS RUSHING FOR THE DOOR
THE DUST CAME POURING OUT
AND IT FINALLY LEFT NO DOUBT
THAT THE MINE WAS NOT AT ISSUE ANYMORE

REPEAT CHORUS

A strong sociopolitical/ecological song about a coal mine that no matter the pollution it produces and the health risks, no environmental measures are taken and unemployed people are forced to work in it. But health and people are over profits so a strong demonstration takes place, the owner refuses to take measures or to spend a dime for, so the crowd takes law in his hand by destroying the mine.

WHATCHA GONNA DO

WATCHA GONNA DO ON THE PLANET TODAY
MISSY YOU’RE SO FINE TO SEE
AND WHERE YA GONNA GO ON THE PLANET TODAY
MISSY COME AND PLAY WITH ME

TAKE A LOOK AROUND YA NOW AND
WHAT DO YOU SEE?
IF YOU COULD GO SOMEWHERE’S ELSE NOW,
WHERE WOULD THAT BE?
WHEN THE FIND THE PLACE TO HIDE
COME AND TELL ME WHERE IT IS NOW,
I’LL STILL BE SITTING HERE, SINGING IN THE AIR

WHERE YA GONNA GO ON THE PLANET TODAY
MISSY THERE’S SO MUCH TO SEE
AND WHATCHA GONNA DO ON THE PLANET TODAY
MISSY I’D LIKE TO BE WITH THEE
TAKE A LOOK AROUND YA NOW AND
WHAT DO YOU SEE?
IF YOU COULD GO SOMEWHERE’S ELSE NOW,
WHERE WOULD THAT BE?
WHEN THE FIND THE PLACE TO HIDE
COME AND TELL ME WHERE IT IS NOW,
I’LL STILL BE SITTING HERE, SINGING IN THE AIR

WATCHA GONNA DO ON THE PLANET TODAY
OH, MISSY YOU’RE SO FINE TO SEE
AND WHERE YA GONNA GO ON THE PLANET TODAY
MISSY I’D LIKE TO BE WITH THEE

TAKE A LOOK AROUND YA NOW AND
WHAT DO YOU SEE?
IF YOU COULD GO SOMEWHERE’S ELSE NOW,
WHERE WOULD THAT BE?
WHEN THE FIND THE PLACE TO HIDE
COME AND TELL ME WHERE IT IS NOW,
I’LL STILL BE SITTING HERE, SINGING IN THE AIR

A call to environmental awareness. We must take into account the impacts our actions have on planet earth and the ecosystems, because we are part of it and when collapse will come there is no place to hide

you can hear Dirty Business in their site, the fifth song in the righthand list

http://www.nrpsmusic.com/music/index.html

and Whatcha gonna do in myspace