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

Uriah Heep, Album: Salisbury 1971

The Park

Let me walk a while alone
Among the sacred rocks and stones
Let me look in vain belief
Upon the beauty of each leaf

There is green in every glade
The tree tops been providing shade
They go spinning happy sound
All nature's strength around

And there's a horse that feels no pain
Its iron strength to take the strain
Children rock it to and fro
And gaily trim its coloured brow

Ah ah ah ah ah ah ah ah

Above the sky devoid of cloud
Think not to cast a thunder shroud
Upon this place so full of joy
A field of gold of love's employ

Ah ah ah ah ah ah ah ah

So why my heavy heart you say
When tears would stain the sights so gay
My brother's dreams once here did soar
Until he died at the hand of needless war

A lament of a brother’s loss in war who tries to find relief both in memories and in nature’s beauty and tranquility. In the middle of the song the random playing imitate successfully nature's sounds


Lady in black

She came to me one morning
One lonely Sunday morning
Her long hair flowing in the midwinter wind
I know not how she found me
For in darkness I was walking
And destruction lay around me
From a fight I could not win

Ahh Ahh Ahh, Ahh Ahh Ahh Ahh

She asked me name my foe then
I said the need within some men
To fight and kill their brothers
Without thought of love or God
And I begged her give me horses
To trample down my enemies
So eager was my passion
To devour this waste of life

Ahh Ahh Ahh, Ahh Ahh Ahh Ahh

But she wouldn't think of battle that
Reduces men to animals
So easy to begin
And yet impossible to end
For she's the mother of all men
Who counselled me so wisely then
I feared to walk alone again
And asked if she would stay

Oh lady lend your hand outright
And let me rest here at your side
Have faith and trust in peace she said
And filled my heart with life

There's no strength in numbers
Have no such misconception
But when you need me
Be assured I won't be far away

Ahh Ahh Ahh, Ahh Ahh Ahh Ahh

Thus having spoke she turned away
And though I found no words to say
I stood and watched until I saw
Her black cloak disappear
My labour is no easier
But now I know I'm not alone
I'll find new heart
Each time I think upon that windy day

And if one day she comes to you
Drink deeply from her words so wise
Take courage from her as your prize
And say hello from me

The anti-war classic of Uriah Heep that speaks directly to the heart. Lady in black could be interpreted as the “Women in Black” who mourn their sons’ loss in war, the Mother Mary (a religious reference), or even the “Mother Earth” who suffers by warfare activities.

You can hear this songs in youtube:

The park

Lady in black

Fools by Deep Purple, album fireball, 1971

I'm crying I'm dying

I can see what's wrong with me
It's in my head
I can see what's gonna be
As I lie in my bed
Man is not my brotherhood
I am of the dead
I died as I lived as I loved and was born
On some distant hill
The reasons to hide were the reasons I cried
Fools pass laughing still

There can be bad blood in all I can see
It's in my brain
You don't know the pain I feel
As I must live again
Rocks and stones can't bruise my soul but
Tears will leave a stain
They smile to themselves as they lay down my head
On some distant hill
The blind and the child sweep a tear from their eye
Fools smile as they kill

I got my own way to go and now I want
To take your minds
I believe if you could see
The blood between the lines
I believe that you could be
A better kind
Please lead the way so the unborn can play
On some greener hill
Laugh as the flames eat their burning remains
Fools die laughing still

A lament for the arrogance and ignorance of people. The bold part reminds us the slogan "This land does not belong to us, we borrowed it from our descedants"

you can hear this somg in youtube:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NTsrj2GfN8I

Happiness Is a Porpoise Mouth by country joe and the fish, album: Electric Music for the Mind and Body,1967

The white ducks fly on past the sun,
Their wings flash silver at the moon.
While waters rush down the mountain tongue
My organs play a circus tune.
I dance to the wonder of your feet
And sing to the joy of your knees.
The cold white dress on the mountain breast
Paints the frozen trees.

The maple plants patterns in the sky
Its leaves to kiss the wind
While scores of glittering bugs and flies
Dance polkas on her limbs.
I whistle symphonies of your face
And laugh for your hair so fine.
In startled greens of playground grass
A child jumps rope to rhyme.

Reeds and brass, the marching drums
Make a joyous sound
Trees bend low with nuts and plums
Then fall to find the ground.
I hunger for your porpoise mouth
And stand erect for love.
The sun burns up the winter sky
And all the earth is love.

a very poetic naturalistic love song by an artist of great sociopolitical and ecological awareness.

you can hear this song in youtube:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3ds5ErXQdAg

Album: Gypsy Cowboy by New Riders of the Purple Sage, 1972

LINDA

DID YOU SEE THE WAY THE SUNLIGHT LIT UPON THE HILLSIDES HERE THIS MORNING
DID YOU SEE ME WALKING IN THE MEADOW JUST BEFORE THE DAY WAS DAWNING
AH, DID YOU HEAR MY PEBBLES ON YOUR WINDOW
AND DID YOU HEAR ME ASKING IF YOU WOULD GO

LINDA COME ALONG WITH ME
LINDA, LINDA CAN'T YOU SEE
YOUR OLD MAN HE'S NEVER LET YOU BE
SO LINDA WON'T YOU COME ALONG WITH ME

DID YOU SEE THE RAINBOW THAT THE SUN CHASED WITH THE CLOUDS INTO THE MORNING
AND DID YOU SEE THE DEW THAT SPARKLED LIGHTLY ON THE GRASS AND THEN WAS GONE
HAVE YOU EVER BEEN TO LOOK AT HEAVEN
AND HAVE YOU TASTED OF YOUR CUP OF LIVING

LINDA COME ALONG WITH ME
LINDA, LINDA CAN'T YOU SEE
WELL THE DAY IS GETTING OLDER GIRL AND SO ARE WE
SO LINDA WON'T YOU COME ALONG WITH ME
AH LINDA WON'T YOU COME ALONG WITH ME



SUTTER’S MILL

GOIN’ DOWN TO SUTTER’S MILL
PAN A LITTLE GOLD
I’M GOIN’ DOWN TO SUTTER’S MILL
AND STAY ‘TIL I GET OLD

GOIN’ DOWN TO SUTTER’S MILL
NOW THINK I’LL GO DOWN THERE
I’M GOIN’ DOWN TO SUTTER’S MILL
GONNA GET MY SHARE

AH NOW THE PEOPLE THEY BEEN
COMING DOWN FROM ALL A-PARTS AROUND
THEY SAY YOU CAN FIND IT EVERYWHERE
IT’S LYIN’ ON THE GROUND THERE

GOIN’ DOWN TO SUTTER’S MILL
I’M GONNA SING MY SONG
I’M GOIN’ DOWN TO SUTTER’S MILL
WOULD YOU LIKE TO COME ALONG
WOULD YOU LIKE TO COME ALONG
WOULD YOU LIKE TO COME ALONG
I’M GOIN’ DOWN TO SUTTER’S MILL
WOULD YOU LIKE TO COME ALONG

SAILIN’

OH MY LADY WALKS SOFTLY AND CARRIES NO TIME
THE SUN IN THE MORNING IS HER ONLY WINE
AND SHE WAKES ME AND TAKES ME
WITH HER TO THE SEA

OH WE OFTEN GO SAILIN’ MY LADY AND ME
LADY IS LOVELY AND CARRIES NO COMB
AND JUST BEING WITH HER IS FEELIN’ LIKE HOME
SHE THINKS OF THE OCEANS AS
RIVERS SET FREE

OH WE OFTEN GO SAILIN’ MY LADY AND ME

OH MY LADY AND ME
WE GO DOWN TO THE SEA
SUNSHINE IN THE MORNING AT DAWN
CLIMB TO THE DECK AND WE
RAISE UP THE SAILS
CLEAR THE HARBOR AND WE’RE GONE

LADY SINGS SWEETLY AND CARRIES NO TUNE
HER VOICE MAKES ME THINK OF THE LIGHT
FROM THE MOON
AND SHE WAKES ME AND TAKES ME
WITH HER TO THE SEA

OH WE OFTEN GO SAILIN’ MY LADY AND ME

three songs from this album. The two are typical love songs where lovers imagine and romance themselves in a naturalistic scene.

The other, the sutter's mill, is an interesting song about escaping from heavy urban environments to pure nature, where you can find peace of mind in the simplicity of pre-urban way of life

you can hear some songs from this band in myspace