Don't Point That Thing at Me

Recently @TedLeo and @AimeeMann were asked to name their early influences and Ted said he was definitely taken, coming up, with Graham Parker. That caught my eye. Full marks, young Leo! An excellent choice, meaning, rather, that I approve because it dovetails neatly with my own preferences. However the experienced eye will notice that the picture above is decidedly not Graham Parker.

What gives?

If you were a teenager in the late 70’s and you had any pretentions as regards New Wave coolness, you were eventually drawn into the celestial orbits of Elvis Costello, Joe Jackson or Graham Parker. I honestly tried with Parker, but never could plug in all the way. I studied him but didn’t have fun with him. With Costello it was a case of knowing you were supposed to love him but him leaving you a bit cold at times, at least until you found complete rapprochement with him for “Imperial Bedroom” (which on a personal note I can sing backwards and forwards depending upon proximity, at time of singing, to a passing black hole or other anomaly of time and space).

But I lived in a city where the number one rock station had DJs that spun whatever they wanted whenever they wanted - think of that - and brought touring musicians into the studios all the time and they were all crazy for Joe Jackson. They played his music all the time. Whatever resistance you had was worn down over months and years. Yes it was commercial music, yes it was jumped-up, but it was good. Joe didn’t seem to care if you danced to his music at the bars. It didn’t bother him a bit. The other two…not so much. The station even played his “Friday” every single Friday at noon as a de facto kickoff to the weekend. If you were driving in your car with the windows down you felt the whole city sigh and let out a notch in its collective belts for the saturnalia yet to come.

All three are regarded as peerless songwriters, even today, with wide and lengthy catalogs of albums. Go and explore this treasure trove.

And check out this song, “Evil Empire” (play it here: http://grooveshark.com/#!/s/Evil+Empire/zSGLp?src=5)

“There’s a country where no one knows
What’s going on in the rest of the world
There’s a country where minds are closed
With just a few asking questions

Like what do their leaders say
In sessions behind closed doors
And if this is the perfect way
Why do we need these goddamn lies?

This doesn’t go down too well:
"We give you everything, you throw it back.
Don’t like it here you can go to hell.
You’re either with or against us.”

There’s a country that’s great and wide
It’s got the biggest of everything
Try to attack it and you can’t hide
Don’t say that you haven’t been warned

You can’t hide in a gunman’s mask
Or kill innocent folks and run
But if you’re good at it they might ask -
Come on over to the other side

There’s a country that’s tired of war
There’s a country that’s scared inside
But the bank is open and you can draw
For guns to fight in their backyard

I could go on but what’s the use?
You can’t fight them with songs
But think of this as just
Another tiny blow against the empire
Another blow against the evil empire
Just another blow against the evil empire"

Here’s the mind-blower: “Evil Empire” was released in 1989. Twenty-five years ago. It should be sung in every country that has policies and leadership its population can’t abide. The president’s pet of every such country owes it to humanity to take the stage at official functions and sing it during live telecasts to the everlasting fury of the dearest leader. The song is everything “Won’t Get Fooled Again” pretends it is. It’s raising a single hand against a regime rather than retreating into self.

And you can’t dance to it.