State of the Union 3--Everyday Americans know Joe has the best guests (Fucking Bono!)

I’m watching are y’all?

White House State of the Union guests include Tyre Nichols’s parents, Paul Pelosi, Bono | The Hill https://t.co/4wVhI5ZsQX

— 𝓓𝓸𝓷𝓷𝓪ꨄ 🌻🇺🇦 (@Dcl_60) February 7, 2023

Republicans = Nazis

Peace,

emaycee

 

Friday Night Jukebox, Vol. CCCXCIV--The Alarm: Sixty Eight Guns

 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

Friday Night Jukebox, Vol. CCXIII--U2: Staring at the Sun

Hard to believe I'm four years into Friday Night Jukebox and I'm just getting to a song by U2, a band almost on a par (and much like, at least thematically) my favorite band of all-time, The Who...which is almost as amazing as the fact that the band has had the same four members since it released its first album in 1980--almost unheard of in rock and roll.

Bono, The Edge (two of the greatest stage names ever), Adam Clayton, and Larry Mullen, Jr. originally formed U2 in 1976 in Dublin, Ireland and like many a great band before them it took a few years for them to become musically proficient enough to actually perform in professional circles.  But once they did...hoo-boy, did they ever create quite the career.  Their list of accomplishments is stunning, having released fourteen albums and 70 singles (in various incarnations) over the last forty years.  They've sold over 170 million records (over fifty million in the U.S.), had 8 #1 albums on the Billboard 200 (and two more in the top ten), and two #1 singles (and four more in the top ten) on the Billboard Hot 100.  They've won more Grammys (22) than any other band, had the largest attendance and money grossing tour in rock and roll history (U2 360 tour), and were elected to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame (rather unsurprisingly) in their first year of eligibility.  All this, and they've still managed to find time for more political, social, and charitable causes than can be counted--outside of Bob Geldof, you'd be hard pressed to find anyone who has devoted more of his time to world causes than Bono.  And to be quite honest, their Wikipedia entry is one of the most interesting I've read in quite some time...

Fun Fact:  A couple of years into their tenure as a band, a family friend of Clayton's suggested six names for the band--and they chose U2 because it was the suggested name they disliked the least.  Not a lot of points on the coolness quotient, but it's certainly an interesting tidbit.

"Staring at the Sun" was released in 1997 on their Pop album.  It would go on to reach #26 on the Billboard Hot 100, and the album would reach #1.  In something of an oddity, though, Pop would be one of U2's worst selling albums, barely cracking the one million mark (and wouldn't that suck--only selling a million copies).

While "Staring at the Sun" is one of my favorite U2 songs, it probably isn't my favorite, but I chose it for a number of reasons.  First, a lot like REM's "Imitation of Life" (FNJ #132), it came at a point in their career when I thought their best singles days were behind them (though the same could be said of "Vertigo" released a few years later) and came as quite a nice surprise.  Second I had the pleasure of seeing U2 on their PopMart tour (a takeoff on Kmart--and how sad of a company is Kmart when one of the greatest bands in the world can't even save them) and they did a wondrous acoustic version of the song with just Bono and the Edge playing acoustic guitars (got to see it with my two oldest children, too, so it gets extra bonus points).  Third, while I would never say the Edge is underrated as a guitarist (#32 on Rolling Stone's list of rock's greatest guitarists), I think he's often forgotten on the list of guitar greats and "Staring at the Sun" showcases some of his best work.  Finally, it's got an anthemic nature to it, almost reminiscent of the Who's "Baba O'Riley" (for those of you saying "WTF!" I distinctly wrote almost) in that it's got that the world is kind of fucked up but we're all feeling in the dark (so to speak) together and we can get there as long as we keep trying (um, Shakespeare I'm not) vibe to it.  At any rate, it's a hell of a tune from the lexicon of a band that's had more than its share of hell of a tunes....

Lyric Sheet:  "There's an insect in your ear if you scratch it won't disappear/It's gonna itch and burn and sting/Do you want to see what the scratching brings..."

Enjoy:

Fuck Donald Trump,
emaycee

All is quiet on New Year's Day...

I bought a copy of U2's War on CD earlier this year for a dollar (quite the bargain)--I had forgotten after so many years how good the album is (and I still have the LP).  The song featured below, "New Year's Day," was the reason I bought the LP and War turned me into a U2 fan for life.

Hope you enjoy the song as much as I have:

Here's to a bitchin' New Year for all of us....

Peace,
emaycee

What more in the name of love

There's a part of me that's a little bothered by the fact that forty-five years after Martin Luther King, Jr. was shot to death in Memphis while there to support striking sanitation workers, that we still have so many people fighting for a decent living wage (sad fact:  7 of the 10 most common jobs in America pay less than $30,000 a year).

But a bigger part of me is quite proud of the fact that we Liberals continue to fight for it despite the odds, and support groups like the fast food workers in New York City who staged a walkout today in their fight for a decent living wage, on the anniversary of King's assassination.  And bemoans the weakened state of unions in America, and the lack of public recognition for all the good they have done for working Americans.

I defy anyone to name anything that the modern incarnation of the republican party has ever done to make life better for average working class Americans.

And by the way, delusions of paranoia don't count.

Peace,
emaycee