This week's featured artist started off with back-to-back dynamite singles and began drawing comparisons (and arguably so) to another young band at that time: U2. The years weren't nearly as kind to them (at least commercially and critically) as they have been to U2, but the rest of us will always have two wondrous anthemic gems to enjoy....
The Alarm formed in 1981 in Rhyl, Wales (funny how the memory plays tricks on us--until I did my weekly half-assed research, I would have sworn that, like U2, they were from Ireland). The band had some success early in their career with a number of hit singles and LPS (more so in their native U.K., but they did have a modicum of success here in the U.S.) and were the opening act for both the Pretenders and U2 at different stages. By 1991 the Alarm had folded but founding member Mike Peters reformed the band in a different incarnation in 1999 (and changed their name to The Alarm MM++) and the second version of the band is performing to this day. The original cast of the Alarm released five albums with all five reaching the top 35 in Great Britain (with a best at #6) and at least hitting the charts in America (with one landing at #39). The Alarm MM++ has released fourteen studio albums. The band has also had a top twenty single in the U.K., and one single here in the States that peaked at #50.
"Sixty Eight Guns" was originally released only as a single in 1983, before being added to their debut album Declaration in 1984. Both were the band's best showing in the U.K., with the single hitting #17 and the album #36. They would go on to have higher charting success in the U.S. with other recordings as "Sixty Eight Guns" only hit #106 (with a bullet!) on the Billboard Hot 100, and Declaration would only hit #50 on the Billboard 200.
When the Alarm first started, they were a politically and socially conscious band which was a natural for me at a time when Ronald Reagan was beginning the republican party's war on anyone who wasn't a white Christian male. While "Sixty Eight Guns" is of a different political stripe than the ones we Americans were facing in the early eighties (War on the Poor, War on Unions, codifying their racism-- among many others), it's still a song of defiance and that was enough when far too many Americans were all too happy to sell their souls for platitudes from a second-rate actor. There was power in the vocals, there was power in the music, there was power in the lyrics--and that power was us fighting for the destiny that was America's better angels and not the trappings of republican fascism. Sadly we're still fighting it, but as long as they haven't silenced our soundtrack they haven't silenced us and we can still make a difference. Power to the people, right on....
Lyric Sheet: "And now they are trying to take my life away/Forever young I cannot stay/Hey!/On every corner I can see them there/They don't know my name, they don't know my kind..."
Enjoy:
Republican = Traitor
Peace,
emaycee
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