Band Aid

It’s that time of year and Do They Know It’s Christmas is one of those holiday songs that defies genre and is played on almost every radio station I listen to.  It’s a holiday staple and by far the best of the three major singles to come out of the 1984-85 Band Aid initiatives to raise awareness and funds for the starving in Ethiopia.

Not only was the song the best of the bunch, it was the first of the bunch, leading other countries to put together their own Supergroup singles and it was also a pre-cursor to other fundraising initiatives like Comic Relief and Geldof’s own Live Aid concert.

Do They Know It’s Christmas, when compared to other Band Aid songs, is simply a better written song.  It’s the one in the bunch that paints the best picture of the bleakness of the situation in Ethiopia and is the strongest call to action to give and to feed the world.

Not that that makes it a great song, musically.  In this specific genre of song it is more about the intentions, spectacle and eventual outcome than the actual song itself.  It’s an engaging genre where you try to pick out the voices in the song and entertaining to see pairings of stars you would never see otherwise.

The song made massive amounts of money for charity – Geldof had hoped to raise £70 000 and the song ended up making over  £8 Million – and was an instant number one in the UK and many other countries, except the U.S. where, despite outselling the number 1 single 4 to 1, it received very little airplay in videoland which hurt its overall status.

My dad, who was born and raised on the Isle Of Wight, loved this song and it made its way onto his mix tapes that were listened to all year.  It’s not so much a Christmas song to me as it is a memory of a pop/rock sensation that you couldn’t escape.  I would be mowing the lawn in the middle of summer while Do They Know It’s Christmas blasted out of the mega speakers in the shed that my dad had turned into a mini concert hall as a part of the ongoing war with our neighbours.  But that’s a story for another time…

Have a look and listen now to the song that started it all.

Now, on the other end of the spectrum and a song that had no place in our house or on our mix tapes, was We Are The World.  Even a jaded Geldof himself, years after, admitted that Do They Know Its Christmas was not a good song musically.

In reference to it he said “I am responsible for two of the worst songs in history. The other one is ‘We Are the World‘.”

The difference in message is subtle, but it’s there, right in the title.  While the U.K. asks if “They” know it’s Christmas, in typical American fashion the song was made to be all themselves.  We Are The World positions the issue as one that needs to include Americans for it to be in any way relatable, as if caring for others without including yourself is an impossible concept to grasp.

Musically, the song is as sappy as it gets.  While the U.K. single hits a beat and a rock rhythm in the first 50 seconds, it takes 2 minutes and 40 seconds for anything interesting to happen muscially in the American song when Michael Jackson comes in and brings the smallest bit of flavour.  Outside of Stevie Wonder at the 4:52 mark, there are very few shining moments in the song by the artists.  The song continues forever and you just. want. it. to. end.

Not that any of that stopped We Are The World from becoming a monster hit in its own right and, again, it’s not about the music but rather the intentions, entertainment value and outcomes that matter.

Have a look and, before we get to the last song on the list, when you watch this video pay particular attention to the style and clothing worn by the artists.

In my family, sandwiched right in the middle of these two Supergroup Band Aid Singles, was the Canadian venture into the territory – Tears Are Not Enough.

This song was on just as many mix tapes as Do They Know It’s Christmas and my parents were huge fans of it.  We heard it on the radio on CHUM Fm before we had seen the video and I remember sitting around the kitchen table with them as they guessed out loud who was singing which part of the song.

While we as a country had (and still do!) more than our fair share of music celebrity given our population, Bryan Adams and Neil Young were not on the same level as Michael Jackson and Bono.  I remember my parents even getting stumped and never having heard of some of the names involved in recording the track.

The song picks up at the 1:14 mark with the first introduction of the chorus and Bryan Adams is definitely the first voice to kick the song up a notch just prior to that.  The sweet and sappy sticks throughout the entire song, but somehow the choices of who sings which lines and the various musical stylings involved raise this song above We Are The World and keep things interesting from artist to artist and line to line.

If you remember the song and know it well enough, who among us doesn’t pretend we are Corey Hart for just a few seconds or, even better, at the song’s best moment, Geddy Lee.}

Hell, it’s even fun to fumble our way through the French verse.

I like how the group grows as well… as the song builds, so does the chorus group.

Comparing the message to the other two, it is typically Canadian.  Like America, we are more self-reflective than the U.K. version, but in an almost self-deprcaiting way.

“Don’t you know that Tears Are Not Enough?”

It gently scolds and plays up on our guilt – a uniquely Canadian perspective within this particular genre.

The video below is the best quality one on YouTube – at the bottom I’ve put a link to the original music video that included news footage and even a cameo from Wayne Gretsky.

Lastly, a quick comment on our style… remember what the Americans were wearing?  What the hell was up just a few miles North?  Why did Canadian celebrities in the 80’s dress like their parents did them up for school picture day?  It’s hilarious to watch and David Foster’s enthusiasm is easy to mock as well… lots to laugh at with this video but also lots to enjoy.

And that’s what I love about this genre of song – they are both bad and good at the same time.  At a time when our obsession with celebrity was at a more manageable level, these songs gave us a huge dose of what we craved: rich and famous people, working together, trying to do good and improve the living conditions for others who are less fortunate.

It’s the right time of year to revisit that notion and, through the lens of nostalgia and the cultural forgiveness that comes with it, be inspired again.

* * * * *

Further Viewing – The original Tears Are Not Enough music video in full and a short doc around the making of the song that is also worth the watch.

That time I lived in Japan…

In late September and early October I did something I didn’t think I would ever do again in my life.

I spent three weeks in Japan.

Having lived in Japan for two years, 15 years ago, and working in the travel industry, I honestly never thought I would take an extended trip there again.  Don’t get me wrong – I LOVE Japan – but just, having lived there and having so many other countries on my list, it just didn’t seem like it would ever be a top travel priority again.

Well, call it serendipity, luck or a combination of the two, I found myself with an option to do the country again that I could not turn down.

The trip was incredible – Tokyo, Takayama, Kyoto, Hiroshima, Koyasan, Nara, Kobe and my adopted hometown of Osaka.  It was a combination of everything you want from Japan.

Weird robots:

(Not my video but this was posted just two months before we were there and the show was the same.)

Temples and cultural centres:

golden-temple          img_4325

History:

hiroshima

And some of the most peaceful, tranquil places you would ever want to be:

img_3999

It was a fantastic trip filled with new places, new experiences and an overwhelming sense of nostalgia I haven’t felt in a very long time.

But this is a music blog, not a travel blog, so let’s move past the pictures and trip review and get to the heart of the matter – Japanese music from the early 2000’s.

In documenting the soundtrack to my life, my years spent in Japan deserve more than just this one post and so I will just touch on a few key songs that still make their way onto random playlists to this day.

First of all, we were lucky enough to have made quick friends upon arrival with a group of musicians who ran their own recording studio and who had their own band, Death Pizza.  Death Pizza then became World Defense Lovers and they existed on the cool outer edge of Osaka’s alternative music scene.  Heavily inspired by, and not sounding entirely unlike, The Cranberries, World Defense Lovers could rock hard and then almost make you cry at how beautifully they blended celtic sounds with modern rock.

I have the signed CD here in my house, but online there is not much to find save their official website, circa 2004.  Download and listen to February for a taste of what this band offered.

http://wdl.fc2web.com/framepage2.htm

world_defense_lovers_offical_site

In more mainstream fare, Hip-Hop was only just in its infancy in Japan and yet it was everywhere.  Blending Western sounds, classic alternative rock samples and mixing Japanese and English fluidly, Dragon Ash was at the top of this scene.

In one of their most popular tunes, Grateful Days, the band sampled and looped the guitar opening from Today by Smashing Pumpkins to awesome effect.  This was just one of many Pumpkins’ links the band had in their repertoire and to hear those licks blended with Japanese rap is not as sacrilegious as you might at first think.  Give it a listen.

By far their biggest, inescapable hit at the time was Life Goes On.  This song played on TV commercials, in shopping centres… this is the title track to my Japanese soundtrack of the time.  I called them the Japanese Sugar Ray as the parallels between Life Goes On and Fly are numerous.

It’s amazing that after all these years singing along as best as I can, today is the first time I’ve ever watched this video with the lyrics embedded.

I have been singing so many words wrong all these years.  Still though, a fantastic song that brings me right back to 2002.

Rip Slyme was another big player in the burgeoning Japanese hip-hop culture at the time and what I liked best about them was their use of horns and funk.  Less English than Dragon Ash but some awesome instrumentals.  Have a listen to Funkastic for the best example of this.

Rakuen Baby was another inescapable song of theirs.

There are so many other bands and songs to look at, but I’ll leave you with just one more.

First of all, the band’s name is just awesome in its ability to be just close enough to an English saying to evoke some meaning but still retain some Japanese oddness.

Kick The Can Crew have a song called Sayonara Sayonara that has had the most staying power on my playlists over the last 15 years.  Put simply, the switch from the minor key in the verses to the major key in the chorus makes me just about as happy as any song can make me.

* * * * *

Japan gave me so much creatively while I was there… it was in Japan that I first started blogging, where I wrote my first novel and where I branched out musically and went to some of the craziest shows and concerts of my life.

And now I say it again, it’s unlikely I’ll ever spend an extended time in the country again in my life.  There’s a lot of world to see.

Or, in 15 years, the things I love most about the country might just pull me back again.

* * * * *

Further Reading – An Intro to Japanese Hip Hop

These songs above were based on my time and my experience in Japan and the one thing I am loving about this blog is that as I write from my own history, memory and experience I find that I start asking the Internet questions to get a broader picture on the topics I touch on.

This article gives a ton of new perspective to me as well as a number of artists and songs I haven’t even heard of.

This isn’t just further reading for you; I’m going to just leave this link here as a reminder to myself that there is a heck of a lot more good stuff to uncover.

an_intro_to_japanese_hip_hop___the_jet_coaster

Where have all the protest songs gone…?

We watch the news to see what Trump said today, to see where got bombed and how many died and to witness another shooting of a black man by police.

We watch the news to see racial tensions higher than we’ve ever seen in my lifetime.  We watch the news to see society take two steps backwards for every one step forward in the LGBT rights movement.

We watch the news to see corporations swallowing democracy whole and shitting out tiny bricks of gold.

We watch it for other things, but these are the things we are seeing.

And I don’t know if it’s because what my eyes are seeing has stopped my ears from hearing, but I’ve been feeling a void.  In this age of the inter-noise the protest song has disappeared, replaced by the sound bite and 24 hour news.

Oh, it’s still there – as I discovered tonight after actively searching it out – but the dominance of music as the prevalent form to speak out against injustice has given away to the late night comedian skewering the establishment which, while entertaining, is hardly affecting people’s hearts and minds past the initial viewing.  It’s fantastic, brilliant stuff, but it is single serving outrage; the kind of commentary that lasts only as long as the time it takes for another brilliant comedian to skewer someone or something new.

The enduring power of the protest song is missing from our culture.  It is showing up in pockets, but it is not making the mainstream and, as such, the most effective call to arms we have at our disposal is being wasted.

A song you listen to again and again and again… layers of meaning set in; you sing it to yourself, you attach yourself to it, it helps shape and prescribe your ideologies.  Slave songs in the south, folk songs of the 60’s, punk, reggae, hip hop… hell, even good old rock and roll… during every major movement and social crisis we have been through in the last century has been accompanied by a soundtrack.

Think about what you have been listening to over the last six months… what has the soundtrack been?  I’m not judging here, I know exactly what mine has been: a dollop of Katy Perry and One D for my daughter (yes, I use the term “One D” and if that doesn’t automatically make you stop reading, thank you, because there is some good music ahead) and a mix of Twenty One Pilots, AWOLNATION and some good old fashioned early 2000’s Emo.  My point?  My soundtrack has not reflected the environment I am living in… reading about… watching on the news.

But maybe that is starting to change…

If there was ever a night I wanted to be at Molson Amphitheatre, it was last night.  Don’t get me wrong, number one on my list of places to be was exactly where I was – singing happy birthday to my now six-year old daughter at The Old Spaghetti Factory – but damn if I didn’t want to see AWOLNATION, one of my favourite bands, open for Prophets Of Rage.

I don’t need to describe it – just read this article:  Dave Grohl joins Prophets of Rage in epic Toronto show

Wait, seriously, if you didn’t click on the link, read that article and then come back to me… it was, from all reports, an incredible show.

Meanwhile, Chuck D had many turns at the mic as well, although he was at his best when he was delivering U.S. election messages to the throngs.

“I don’t know what’s going on America, but stay as smart as you are and stay put. Stay the f— awake, Canada,” the veteran rapper implored, before busting out Public Enemy’s Miuzi Weighs A Ton.

The tour is called “Make America Rage Again” and it started just last Friday and seems to be picking up steam.  Maybe that’s what we need!   A music supergroup to come out, blast us with nostalgia and get us raging again!

 

I mean… COME ON…

 

 

What better way to stir up rage against the establishment than make us remember the rage we felt before?

Well, maybe there is a better way… maybe we do need NEW songs that speak to the atrocities we are seeing all around us, even if they were written about just slightly older atrocities from, like, a few months ago…

I am not poison, no I am not poison
Just a boy from the hood that
Got my hands in the air
In despair, don’t shoot
I just wanna do good, ah

 

Or better yet, put a song out that CANNOT BE CLEARER in its message that Black Lives Matter, and then surround that song with all of the news clips and video that has already been consuming us.  A perfect confluence of form and message.

This is the best protest song I have heard in a LONG time.

Mistah F.A.B. – 6 Shots

So for all you white folks that say we all equal
I bet you wouldn’t trade pigmentation with my people

Drop a song during New York Pride that puts a clear message around the fact that while we celebrate acceptance we cannot forget the fight.

 

I guess love ain’t free, there’s a fee, they cut your paycheck
It’s a free country, that’s unless you love the same sex
To people with no place to stay, I hope you stay blessed
You ain’t gotta flex that you straight, long as you straight flex

* * * * *

At the end of the day, it doesn’t matter which cause we are talking about, which fight we feel is the most important fight.

Why aren’t we sharing THESE songs?

Why does 6 Shots only have 25 000 Views on YouTube?

Where aren’t these videos in my newsfeed, accompanying the commentary everyone I know is putting out there?

The Protest Song is alive, and if we want things to change, let’s seek out the music behind the issues that matter to us and flood social media with them.

John Oliver is brilliant, and sharing his segments does good, makes us feel smart and makes us laugh when we don’t know how else to feel.  They spark outrage and unite us and justify our own frustrations and feelings of powerlessness to change things.

But I ask you again – how many times have you watched a segment more than once?  And what have you done with the emotions it made you feel.

Now, have a look around at all of the music being generated on these topics… make a playlist… share it with your friends…

I’m not saying it’s the only answer to fighting back against the injustice in the world, but the echo we can create by filling the inter-noise with meaningful music might be just enough to shift the momentum in our favour.

* * * * *

Further Reading:  A Brief History Of Protest Songs – Wall Street Journal

A social media post from Ahmir “Questlove” Thompson calling on musicians to write protest songs.

“Songs with spirit in them,” the Roots drummer and “Tonight Show” band leader wrote on Instagram. “Songs with solutions. Songs with questions. Protest songs don’t have to be boring or non-danceable or ready made for the next Olympics. They just have to speak truth.”

The Hip

Funny how my first night where I have a chance to write in over a month coincides with the final Hip show in Kingston.  How can I write a music blog and not comment?

It’s taken me an hour and a half to answer that question.

Say what you will about their music (and I have a lot of things to say that would get me burned at the stake tonight, so I’ll refrain), the fact that a concert has a nation glued to their television sets – above the Olympics even! – says something about the power of music, of this band and of the poet who leads them.

They have never been my favourite band, and I won’t pretend to like them now (as I did back in high school for fear of not fitting in), but this show, and everything around it, is a very impressive phenomenon the likes of which are very rare.

I wonder how the folks down at the amphitheatre are doing tonight at the Blue Rodeo concert?

This made me laugh.

Blue rodeo tweet 2

And man, has there ever been someone more overshadowed?  Bob Egan picked a great night for his last show before becoming a librarian in Kitchener.

Blue Rodeo tweet

Lastly, kudos to CBC for not censoring the eff word in Fireworks just now.  🙂

That’s it – not a hip fan but I’m a fan of anything that ignites pride and brings this country together.  Tonight those two feelings are clashing and as to which one is winning, well, I’m watching the show, aren’t I?

Black Boys On Camera

In the summer of 1999 a song made it’s way onto a mixed tape (yes, I was one of the few still doing those in ’99) that I had only just discovered.

It was haunting, beautiful, sad.

Sinead O’Connor – Black Boys On Mopeds.

The lyrics were obvious, the quiet rage behind them astonishingly clear.  Sincere.  Real.

And in ’99 the song to me was already from a bygone era.  A protest song around issues we have since resolved.  It was recorded in 1990 and was about an incident from the year before where police chased a black youth named Nicholas Bramble on a moped they thought was stolen (it wasn’t) and after losing control, Nicholas was victim to a fatal accident.

The song was on an album dedicated to a black man named Colin Roach who died of a gunshot wound inside a police station in London in 1983.  You can read the wikipedia entry here adding further to the feeling that we are… we HAVE to be… past this sort of systemic racism in our modern, enlightened society.

The shootings of Alton Sterling and Philando Castile are not new stories.  We have sadly seen too many cases like these in recent months and years; however, with these two shootings, followed by the police killings in Dallas, I am starting to feel in my deepest gut that we are at a tipping point.

The violence of Dallas is a huge escalation in this tension and, when coupled with stories like the Bahamas issuing official warnings and travel advisories for certain parts of the US, this has now gone further than we have seen it go in almost 50 years.

And that’s just the thing, now we SEE it.

We do not have these stories filtered through news media; we are seeing it first hand, from people’s cell phones, immediately.  I cannot shake the Philando Castille video from my brain.  It plays on the backs of my eyelids when I sleep.  The lasting effect of the immediacy with which we see these visceral images is yet to be determined, but there is one thing they do better than anything else: they polarize us.

When you see videos on topics like this (as opposed to reading news reports, columns, op-ed pieces) without the ability to discern full context it is so much easier to jump to assumptions and to form an opinion that is rooted in your own bias.  I am reminded of the footage we were all glued to in 1990 during the Iraq War – whether we knew it or not at the time, watching war happen in real time, for the first time, was the strongest form of war propaganda we had ever had in the Western World.

This is a great article from The Guardian on Confirmation Bias and sums up what I am trying to say perfectly:

“The more ‘news factoids’ you digest, the less of the big picture you will understand.”

This is no more apparent than with the recent hashtag #AllLivesMatter as a response to the #BlackLivesMatter message.

There have been some solid takedowns of this (see here and here for two of my favourites) but here is my simple take on it:

When you read #BlackLivesMatter which option below are you automatically confirming in your head?

#OnlyBlackLivesMatter

OR

#BlackLivesMatterToo

If you chose the first option you are, to put it nicely, simply unaware of the broader context of the message.

(You should see the descriptive sentences I deleted prior to settling on that one.  I’ll leave those in my drafts though – won’t win over anyone using insults now, will we?)

When the statistics show how much more likely it is for a black man to die at the hands of police than a white man, we NEED to have a dialogue around this and saying Black Lives Matter doesn’t mean that others lives don’t matter.  Again, to my point above, when we subject ourselves to getting our news in quick bites on important topics we risk simplifying the issue to the point that it disappears completely and the very nature of the conversation we need to have has changed.

Trevor Noah says this brilliantly in this piece.

“You can be pro-cop and pro-black, which is what we all should be.”

And this brings me back to Sinead O’Connor.  The song and the album were not only anti-police, they were her way of voicing her opinion against the Conservative politics of the time, comparing Margaret Thatcher’s methods to that of the Chinese totalitarian state that caused the massacre on Tiananmen Square.

“These are dangerous days.  To say what you feel is to dig your own grave.”

You can either listen to the song and rush into confirming your own biases, using it for whatever purpose suits the message you ultimately want to say anyway, or you can dig a little deeper and understand the context around it.

I feel that in these dangerous days, we should all be digging for a bit more context before spouting off our opinions.

* * * * *

Oh right, this is a MUSIC blog… I’m not supposed to have opinions on other topics here.

Well, here is the music that has been the soundtrack to the news videos that have been playing and replaying themselves in my head.

 

And the full lyrics to go with it:

Black Boys On Mopeds

Margareth Thatcher on TV
Shocked by the deaths that took place in Beijing
It seems strange that she should be offended
The same orders are given by her

I’ve said this before now
You said I was childish and you’ll say it now
Remember what I told you
If they hated me they will hate you

England’s not the mythical land of Madame George and roses
It’s the home of police who kill black boys on mopeds
And I love my boy and that’s why I’m leaving
I don’t want him to be aware that there’s
Any such thing as grieving

Young mother down at Smithfield
Five a.m., looking for food for her kids
In her arms she holds three cold babies
And the first word that they learned was please

These are dangerous days
To say what you feel is to dig your own grave
Remember what I told you
If you were of the world they would love you

England’s not the mythical land of Madame George and roses
It’s the home of police who kill blacks boys on mopeds
And I love my boy and that’s why I’m leaving
I don’t want him to be aware that there’s
Any such thing as grieving

* * * * *

In trying to make sense of everything over the last few days, I picked up the guitar and tried my hand at updating this amazing song to fit the still-developing narrative in the news today.

I don’t offer this as a piece of good music, just my attempt to interpret some further meaning in the chaos I feel building around us.

* * * * *

Update – June 10th 2020
With the death of George Floyd and the protests happening all over North America, I thought about writing a new post but decided against it, instead choosing to add to my previous thoughts here.

What I thought was the tipping point four years ago when I initially wrote this post was not, in fact, the tipping point at all.  The outrage subsided, inaction again ruled the day and there was no significant change.  I was complicit in this.  When the story moved on from the news cycle, it stuck with me, but did not force me to actually change or grow.

The action, awareness and calls for change we are seeing now eclipse what we saw in 2016.  I know I have been profoundly rattled, to my core, and I have been and will be working hard to ensure equality for people of colour.

Is this now, finally, the actual tipping point?  Will we see police reform?

Or will I be updating this post again in 2024?

My original post in 2016 had a video of a version of Sinead O’Connor’s song rewritten with the lyrics posted below it.

As the original song had a whopping 9 views on YouTube (8 of which I’m pretty sure were me) I’ve taken the opportunity to update the lyrics and post a new video.

As before, I don’t put this forward as a piece of good music, I put this forward because we are all now SEEING Black lives being taken, with our own eyes, more than we have ever seen them before.

To those who hate, to those who discriminate, to those who kill… the world is watching you now and, finally, it doesn’t look like anyone will be looking the other way anytime soon again.

Black Boys On Camera

Donald Trump on his Twitter feed
Inciting hatred and bigotry
It’s grown stronger since he was elected
#BlackLivesMatter but now they’re more neglected

We’ve seen this before now
We said “There’s been progress,” and you’ll say it now.
Remember what I showed you
If you hate and you kill we will film you.

America’s not the mythical land of apple pie and baseball
It’s the home of police who kill black boys for no reason at all
And I love my girl and that’s why I’m crying
I don’t want her to grow up in a world with
So many black people dying…

George Floyd taken down by police
Laid on the ground, held in place by a knee
In the camera we see a cold body
And his last words were “I can’t breathe…”

These are dangerous days
The darker your skin, the closer your grave.
Remember what I showed you
If you hate and you kill we will film you.

America’s not the mythical land of apple pie and baseball
It’s the home of police who kill black boys for no reason at all
And I love my girl and that’s why I’m crying
I don’t want her to grow up in a world with
So many black people dying…


* * * * *

Further Reading:  The Guardian and The NY Times

New York Times “A Nation Torn Over Race”‘

A review of O’Connor’s career to date and album “I Do Not Want What I Haven’t Got” from the Boston Globe circa 1990.