I front a band in Iowa City, which isn't of itself worth your time, because half the knuckleheads in Iowa City are in bands — but we were working on a new record to be released later this year, and I decided this song needed to come out before the election. It's called “One Twenty Oh-Nine” and it is a celebration of that day, just a few months from now, when ends this great yawning Bushian darkness that has killed so many, subverted so much of our civil society and threatens the very homes under millions of people's feet. I sent it over to my occasional editor, blogger and former record label honcho Howie Klein, who rakes the muck in his blog DownWithTyranny, and he made it quickly into a youtube video. We want to send this out to Rob Hubler and Becky Greenwald in their vital, heroic fights to grow the Blue Tide, to take back our government from agents of venal, mean, wealth-fetishizing fear-mongers that have brought this nation to the brink of disaster. (You can contribute to Rob and Becky by clicking the above links; in fact, you know what, cut and paste your contribution receipt into an email to me at tetdog@mchsi.com, cite this blog, and I'll send you a free mp3 of the song.)
I've already heard some folks say they're given pause by some of the sentiments of the focused anger of the lyrics. Let me state upfront, I don't apologize for a word of it.
People like George Bush, Steve King and Tom Latham have methodically ravaged this country in the name of a blind, stupid and oddly self-righteous adherence to Dickensian economic orthodoxy, religious chauvenism and war-mongering imperial hubris. More recently, their surrogates have gone so far as to call people who don't subsribe to this fascist cocktail “un-American” — including their dimwitted vice presidential candidate — somehow expecting the rest of us to stand oblivious to the fact such arcane barbaric worldviews are responsible for the “sad, bloody nightmare” in which we find ourselves mired.
Not being a politician, I don't give people a pass for this, nor do I have to play at politesse — my only rational solution to crimes so great is imprisonment or execution. I have for most of my life stood against the death penalty — but for men like George Bush and Dick Cheney and their enablers, I might just make an exception. Wearing a suit, having a lot of money and calling yourself a Christian is no defense against having murdered hundreds of thousands and ruined the lives of millons. Very little is, in fact.
My song is just a song. It never turned someone's home into a crater because they believed in the wrong god and lived on top of oil. It never pissed away somebody's life savings to make some guy with three luxury yachts another yacht. And if you think the last eight miserable goddamn years have been about anything other than that, you've been sold a Bridge in Brooklyn by linear-thinking pricks like King and Bush.
Welcome back to the Blue, Iowa.
The recording is by my band, Matthew Grimm & the Red Smear, and was produced by me and Jason Lewis at Sad Iron Studio in Iowa City, and is copyright-ed 2008 Grimm Reality Music (ASCAP). The video is by Howie Klein. “One Twenty Oh-Nine” can be purchased on our myspace site for 99 cents.
3 Comments
Bad weed in Iowa City?
Let’s see those lyrics:
We need not pretend we could ever be friends
But I don’t think it’s too much to ask
That after eight years of rows and untold broken vows
You give every day of it back
You may’ve done what you thought was best, but it’s conspicuous
How the inverse transpired
So with a world now in flames, I won’t bother to deign
To piss on your head if your hair catches fire
I’m normally not a mean-spirited guy
But if you got cancer I’d laugh till I cried
One twenty oh-nine the day of our new jubilee five-point-
nine billion voices and glasses upraised in the joy of your egress to ignominy
The skies will open in cool cleansing rain of ambrosia that all may partake
And next day we’ll start digging out of the wrack and the ruin you leave in your wake
I know you
won’t soon be troubled with staid self-reflection
Still a cloistered and dull trustfund kid
You’ll never be hungry, foreclosed on or held to the
Laws that hang others who did what you did
But maybe one shiny day
We’ll all see each other again in The Hague
One twenty oh-nine the day of our new jubilee five-point-
nine billion voices and glasses upraised to the end of our national ignominy
The skies will open in cool cleansing rain of ambrosia that all may partake
And next day we’ll start digging out of the sad, bloody nightmare you leave in your wake
And the next guy might well be a trainwreck but he won’t be you and that’s saying a lot
And if the myths you’ve damned others by prove to be true, pray you outlive the devil and god
peggy Tue 21 Oct 10:23 PM
Hey Grimm, troll alert
Peggy is the Fungus Amongus, the constant presence on blue blogs in Iowa and beyond, where she spouts GOP talking points, quotes imaginary press releases, and asks irrelevant questions to hijack diaries. See, e.g., here.
Your song is angry. But what citizen with a pulse and a newspaper subscription is not angry after eight years of incompetence, criminality, cronyism and trashing of the constitution? Don’t let the door hit you on the way out, is my general attitude. And take your Cheney and your torture and your strutting pathetic claims of surging success with you. That anyone thinks that stay the course is a desirable option is a testament to the need for greater attention to education in Iowa.
We actually have incumbent congressmen claiming that tax cuts on capital gains are a good idea for fixing the economic meltdown in which the capital losses are the greatest in 79 years, selling is contributing to the problem, and pretty much nobody has any gains. The triumph of ideology over common sense, redux.
Howie Klein has done a lot to try to change what is wrong with our country and I salute him for the effort. His slide show is not for those with delicate sensibilities, but then neither is the record of the last eight years.
riverdog9 Wed 22 Oct 12:53 AM
cool, no big
a troll posting the lyrics i wrote for a song that’s posted above them seems to be kind of running short on imagination. cause, y’know, ouch.
grimm Wed 22 Oct 5:40 AM