Bookmarks: Protest songs

Oh, Edwyn Collins, you might believe there's not enough protest songs, but Tim Worthington is disproving you all over town with his guide to ten of most ineffectual protest songs of all time. It somehow misses off Back To The Planet's Please Don't Fight, but does corral everyone from Bill Oddie to Bros:

Matt and Luke attempt to reverse their Dumper-wards trajectory with an impassioned gospel-inflected ecological plea delivered to some bloke eating crisps, warning that there will be no birds up in the sky unless 'we' stop 'it' now. Presumably the minor landslide of vinyl, cassettes, 'Postermags', badges, t-shirts, leather jackets, pilfered bottle tops and Summer Specials containing bizarre text stories about kidnappers plotting to hold Matt to ransom in 'our 'oliday 'ome' that they had left in their wake did not constitute part of the 'it'.

Hey, Ayatollah, leave those kids alone...

Roger Waters has given his blessing to Candian-Iranian band Blurred Vision's adapted version of Another Brick In The Wall targeting Iran.

Let's hope EMI get the memo and don't go stumbling in with take-downs.

This is the track:



I suppose anything that helps is a good thing, but can't help feeling that using a song that's thirty-five years old is a bit like picking Lord Carrington as the figurehead for your campaign. Still, at least it's not Rage Against The Machine.

-What you protesting against? -What you got tickets for?

The art of protest song writing isn't as dead as occasional think pieces in the papers would suggest (these usually assume that back in the 60s you couldn't switch on the TV without seeing Phil Ochs turning up for Top of the Pops), but its nice that the Arts Council is doing something about it.

We're not sure the right thing to do, though, is a competition to encourage protest music with tickets for, and a slot at, Glastonbury as the prize. Because if your motivation to protest is to go to a festival for free, what sort of song are you going to wind up with?

Cause it's 1, 2, 3, 4
What are we fighting for?
Don't know, and I don't give a darn
Next stop is Worthy Farm...