“Mother Earth” by Eric Burdon and WAR , Album: Eric Burdon Declares "War" (1970)

Up today, we couldn’t find the lyrics, we think that is about environment, but no matter what it talks about it’s a great song. If anyone can obtain them, please post them as comments


you can hear it live in youtube here

and here with Jimmy Hendrix in guitar

“Closer to the truth” by Tony Joe White, Album: Closer to the Truth (1991)

Strong instinct for survival
Romantically insane
Moving soft along the edge of time
Like a panther in the rain

Manipulated rebels
With a total disregard for the rules
When pride comes tumbling off the great white stallion
You move closer to the truth

And the search continues for the meaning
They build the cathedrals high
But we keep our weapons ready
Looming dark against the sky

They're taking down the rain forest
Changing it to a room without a view
And the big trees fall like dominoes
And we move closer
The eagle watches from the mountain
As the warriors turn into fools
And the dice are thrown on sacred ground
And they move closer to the truth

And who's gonna tell the children
How the rivers used to flow crystal blue
And we keep leaving scars on Mother Earth
And moving closer to the truth

A psychological and philosophical portrait of human beings and their relation and behaviour towards nature. The more they devastate nature the closer they move to the “inconvenient” truth of their declination and extinction.

You can hear this song in youtube

You can hear same songs from this artist in his myspace

"Traffic Jam" by James Taylor, Album: JT (1977)

Damn
This traffic jam,
How I hate
To be late.
It hurts my motor to go so slow.
Damn
This traffic jam,
Time I get home my supper'll be cold.
Damn
This traffic jam.

Well, I left my job about 5 o'clock,
It took 15 minutes go three blocks—
Just in time to stand in line,
With the freeway looking like a parking lot.

{Repeat Chorus}

Now, I almost had a heart attack—
Looking in my rear view mirror.
I saw myself the next car back,
Looking in the rear view mirror,
'Bout to have a heart attack.
I said . . .

{Repeat Chorus}

Now, when I die I don't want no coffin;
I've thought about it all too often.
Just strap me in behind the wheel
And bury me with my automobile.

{Repeat Chorus}

Now, I used to think that I was cool,
Running around on fossil fuel.
Until I saw what I was doing—
Was driving down the road to ruin.

Great lyrics about our strong real or mental dependence from cars in transportation and our mobility and the consequent causes of loss of time in traffic jam, aggression, stress, and degenerative diseases like heart failures. Artist do sarcasm about this addiction expressing a wish to be burried when dead with his car. Many years later, another band, Rage Against the Machine, will sung similarly that cars will be our wheel-chairs putting this problem in a global political context of oil dependance, global pollution and eternal war conficts for the controll of oil production territories.

Many researches show that cars devour too much of our leisure time not only in everyday traffic jam but also in search of parking, on the way to service station, to pay the related taxes, fines, insurances etc. They produce many accidents, deaths and permanent injuries. They occupie free space by making big roads at the expense of free mobility for pedestrians, or as obstacles when parked to people with mobility disfunctions, etc. So to speak the real total cost in our health, life, money and time by using every day our cars is not perceived easily in its integrity.

You can hear a cover of this song by Don Haren in Youtube

Album: Low budget by The Kinks, 1979

"National Health"

Nervous tension, man's invention,
Is the biggest killer that's around today
Let the tension out or it will build and build inside
And strike you down some day
Nervous tension, man's invention
Is the biggest waste of human energy
Let the tension out, or it will surely kill
And that will be a tragedy

Valium helps you for a while
But somehow valium seems to bring me down
There's no pill I can recommend where side effects
Aren't guaranteed to send you round the bend

You gotta let out the tension
With a little bit of exercise
Loosen up your muscles
And feel the knots in your body untie

We oh we oh
Oh oh oh oh ah ah ah ah
Oh oh oh oh ah ah ah ah

It sure beats quaaludes
It sure beats cocaine
Even Freud recommends it
Cos it relieves the strain

Altogether now
Oh oh oh oh ah ah ah ah
Oh oh oh oh ah ah ah ah

Some people say it sends you deaf
Some people say it sends you blind
Some people say it makes you old
some people say it blows your mind

But I say

If it's good for your health
It's good for your mind
If it keeps you together
It's really all right
We oh we oh

Oh c'mon, kick the cat

Oh oh oh oh it's the state of the national health
Oh oh oh oh Blame it on the national health

Nervous tension, nervous tension, nervous tension
Nervous tension. nervous tension, nervous tension
Nervous tension, man's invention
Is the biggest killer that's around

Oh oh oh oh ah ah ah ah
Oh oh oh oh ah ah ah an

Valium helps you for a while
But somehow valium seems to bring me down
There's no pill I can recommend where side effects
Aren't guaranteed to drive you round the bend

I say I say

Oh oh oh oh it's good for your health
Keeps you together, it's the state of the national health
Oh oh oh oh Blame it on the national health
Oh oh oh oh it's the state of the national health
Oh oh oh oh ah ah ah ah

A song about the strees of mobern life, the usually ineffective for real cure and with numerous side effects drugs and a proposal for natural ways of losing mental tension. There were some references to S. Freud and especially Wilhelm Reich's concept of body armouring as somatic muscular blocks or knots



"A Gallon Of Gas"

I've been waiting for years to buy a brand new cadillac
But now that I've got one I want to send it right back
I can't afford the gas to fill my luxury limousine
But even if I had the dough no one's got no gasoline

I went to my local dealer to see if he could set me straight
He said there's a little gas going but I'd have to wait
But he offered some red hot speed and some really high grade hash
But a gallon of gas can't be purchased anywhere for any amount of cash

I can score you some coke and some grade one grass
But I can't get a gallon of gas
I've got some downers some speed all the drugs that you need
But I can't get a gallon of gas
There's no more left to buy or sell
There's no more oil left in the well
A gallon of gas can't be purchased anywhere
For any amount of cash

I love your body-work, but you're really no use
How can I drive you when I got no juice?
Because it's stuck in neutral and my engine's got no speed
And the highways are deserted
and the air smells unnaturally clean.

It's got power-assisted overdrive and carpets on the floor,
but it's parked out front just like a dead dinosaur.
And I'll be paying off the bank for 45 years or more.
It should go 100 miles an hour,
but it's never moved away from my door.

Who needs a car and a seven-forty-seven
When you can't buy a gallon of gas
Who needs a highway, an airport or a jet
When you can't get a gallon of gas
There's no more left to buy or sell
There's no more oil left in the well
A gallon of gas can't be purchased anywhere
For any amount of cash
You can't buy a gallon of gas

A humoristic song about our strong dependence from oil fuels: our expensive car, all its accesories, facilities for transportations, roads, highways are completely useless if oil supplies and deposits were used up and consumed.

You can hear this song in youtube
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ne0PF0uLfBo

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

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

Nature's Disappearing, by John Mayall And The Blues Breakers, Album: USA Union 1970

Man’s a filthy creature
Raping the land and water and the air
Tomorrow may be too late?
Now’s the time that you must be aware
Nature’s disappearing
Polluted death is coming, do you care?

Garbage going nowhere
Soon the dumps will spread to your front door
Lakes and rivers stagnant
Nothing lives or grows like years before
Nature’s disappearing
The world you take for granted ... soon no more

Read about pollution
Make manufacturers uncomfortable
Boycott at the market
Containers that are non-returnable
Aluminum, glass or plastic
Eternal waste that’s not destructible

We’re of a generation
That may live out our natural time
But as for all our children?
Born to suffocate in human slime
Nature’s disappearing
And we are guilty of this massive crime

A song with lyrics that are decades ahead of its season. All the ecological problems that humanity and planet faces today are developed; also the proposals for escaping the crisis, especially concerning the wastes. The singer urges people as consumers to boycott the waste-producing markets in order to press and oblige manufacturers to conform to a nature-friendy production and to prefer to buy products with (listen to it) RETURNABLE containers, not only recycable.

you can hear it live in youtube