Songs About Terrible Events

I thought of "The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald," but then I realzied my entire perception of that tragedy was shaped by Gordon Lightfoot's song, so that doesn't count.

Now those who were living did their best to survive
In that mad world of blood, death and fire
And for seven long weeks I kept myself alive
While the corpses around me piled higher
Then a big Turkish shell knocked me arse over tit
And when I woke up in my hospital bed
And saw what it had done, Christ I wished I was dead
Never knew there were worse things than dying

It's the last line that gets me. The song made me do lots of unnecessary homework about Australia's input to WW2. Not sure it's all that realiable tho, being as Shane McGowan's an English public schoolboy not a former ANZAC...

Apart from that, the only disaster-related song (does WW2 count as a disaster? I think so) I ever encountered directly was the dreadful Ferry Aid version of "Let It Be" - and it made me think of nothing other than "what a nice tune - who wrote it?". Sorry.

the car's on fire and there's no driver at the wheel
and the sewers are all muddied with a thousand lonely suicides
and a dark wind blows
the government is corrupt
and we're on so many drugs
with the radio on and the curtains drawn

we're trapped in the belly of this horrible machine
and the machine is bleeding to death

the sun has fallen down
and the billboards are all leering
and the flags are all dead at the top of their poles

it went like this:

the buildings tumbled in on themselves
mothers clutching babies picked through the rubble
and pulled out their hair

the skyline was beautiful on fire
all twisted metal stretching upwards
everything washed in a thin orange haze

i said: "kiss me, you're beautiful --
these are truly the last days"

you grabbed my hand and we fell into it like a daydream or a fever

we woke up one morning and fell a little further down --
for sure it's the valley of death

i open up my wallet and it's full of blood

efrim

Band godspeed you black emperor!
Album f#a#oo
Year 1998

Shipbuilding in particular: writing about a war from the point of view of those whose jobs are saved because of it is an extraordinary shift of perspective. Those lines 'within weeks they'll be reopening the shipyard/and notifying the next of kin' make me go all goosebump just typing them out.

And some of the 'proufounder' bits of punk definately
1( articulated Things I Know to Be True but hadn't defined yet
2( made me think new things about them. Subway Sect are one of the only bands who actually make me think. joy Division have been a real help (I mean this) in moments of depression: Heart and Soul and Insight both show the world in a new and wiser light.

And I've learnt not only to understand but to have some empathy with black politics in general and rasta in particular through Soul/Hip Hop and Reggae.

As I write I realise just how much of my worldview and thinking about events has been changed/formed by music. I know this isn't OTN of your question but its relevant because this implies music can be something much more active than the passive reflection of emotion we are taught to expect from it.

I'm struggling to think of songs I know about terrible events... I feel there is a big one lurking out there just beyond my memory.

it was written in the 20s, i think, so where shane pogue went to school needn't be a factor in its historical reliability

There are probably reasons for this. Fiction never has any power unless it is focused on individuals, as was pointed out to me by a negative review of that new star wars movie. A song or story cannot hold anything so broad as the emotion involved in a tragedy, it can only succeed in being About that tragedy. I like the I Hate Music criticism of What's Going On: it points out that the album's only real message is that bad things are bad. If a 9-11 song focuses on an individual aspect of the thing, than it could be moving, but then what's the point of the 9-11 connection?

Also, in the past, when bad things happened, people went to war. Today, we don't go to war, we write songs. You may say this is not a bad thing but it is certainly true. And that is what is wrong with these songs, anyway. The whole idea that famous people are supposed to be the country's guidance-councelors, and offer understanding and hope. It is as vain a desire as has inspired any bad concept-album.

Yet it occurs to me that poems have been about terrible events, I think. There were some Keats ones, right? So, are songs poems or fiction? And are poems good?

Sinead O Connor put out a single about the Potato Famine.

uuuugggghhhhnnnn

Seriously, though.

Ohio by Neil Young and Presidential Rag by Arlo Guthrie where he grills the Nixon Adminstration for Watergate.

¥

Arlo's Presidential Rag communicates a more palpable disgust for their corruption than "the history" could ever illustrate. It makes me feel a real hatred instead of the complacency typically reflected upon mere political posturing. ¥

I can't really recall that many songs that have *changed* or even influenced my views on a certain event- mostly they just re-inforce my views, make them less abstract and intelectual and more emotional and awestruck. Good examples of this would be "We Almost Lost Detroid" by Gill Scott-Heron, "Roulette" by Bruce Springsteen (I know, I know, I wasn't even born when those events ocurred, but nuclear power remains an issue anyway, no?) and "War Crimes" by The Specials.

And Mark, as a hardcore Springsteen follower, I feel I must warn you: only purchase that album if you're a REALLY big fan. There's a few catchy tunes and a stirring line here and there, but mostly it's Modern Rock by the numbers (this might have something to do with it being almost "rush released" by Boss standards) and the lyrics, while true, are also so obvious it hurts: "man that 9/11 was a terrible thing, I bet the ppl who lost their loved ones in it are really sad but still we gotta keep on keeping on and above all don't let hatred take over 'cos really, there's a lot of great stuff in Islamic culture". I mean, he'll get no argument from me, but isn't this all, err, common knowedlege by now?

lou reed insisted on the cover of 'new york' that you sat and listened to the whole thing "as though it were a book or a movie".

it wasn't though, it was a record. so we shrugged and listened to our favourite songs and skipped over the rubbish ones. especially bloody 'strawman'.

*cough*

*shuffles away in shame*

This is truly one of the worst songs ever written.

I end up trying to find out more about things after hearing songs about them, I think, rather than songs really changing opinions on their own; I bought the Malcolm X autobiography after listening to Public Enemy a lot (i am horribly white); I think also I looked up De Saussure after listening-but-not-paying-much-attention to the Magnetic Fields track about him, thinking he was some kind of doomed Romantic poet figure..

Peace Frog - The Doors

"Death Valley `69" by Sonic Youth -- about Charlie Manson's "Family."

"Ballarat" by Lemonheads - Also about the Manson Murders.

"The Ghost in You" by Siouxsie & the Banshees off SUPERSTITION -- supposedly about the stand-off for democracy in Tianemen Square.

"Big Mess" by Devo -- supposedly about assasins Mark David Chapman and John Hinkley.

"Riot in Tompkins Square" by the Undead -- about the `89 riots in...wait for it...Tompinks Square Park.

"She" by the Misfits -- About Patti Hearst & the Symbionese Liberation Army.

"Bullet" by the Misfits -- About the assasination of Prez. Kennedy ("Texas is the Reason....")