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Battle Hymn of the Permian Republic
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Written and circulated via cassette tape while Neil was singing 'Let's Roll.'
music blues country roots songwriting mono rural analogue folkways
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Great Big Yam is all about the picnics and harvests. Rural music from rural people.
Great Big Yam is a collective and individual effort to preserve traditional American music and create songs within that tradition. From the traveling blues to the banjo breakdown to the jigs and reels native to Ireland to the African roots to folk protest songs.
Song Info
Genre
Acoustic • Acoustic Folk
Charts
Peak #467
Peak in subgenre #57
Author
Bryan Newbury
Rights
2006 Bryan Newbury
Uploaded
August 18, 2006
Track Files
MP3
MP3 4.8 MB • 128 kbps • 5:17
Story behind the song
I wrote this in 2002 in Carlsbad, New Mexico. It was just after Wellstone's death, I think. It was circulated through cassette (which no one seems to play anymore) and eventually I thought it was pretty dated. I hope it gets dated some time.
Lyrics
I woke up this morning and I read yesterday’s news the Knesset was deploying guns and bulldozers and troops while the people that were occupied passed time by throwing shoes which were in truth weapons in their possession. Then the Israelis opened fire into a crowd of kids and no one on the news with fake hair dos could tell me what they did to get gunned down in the street like that while the others ran and hid they couldn’t explain these logical progressions. But they were sure that they had weapons of mass destruction Because a stone is a weapon of mass destruction And a home must be a weapon of mass destruction. Today 500 civilians died for the tank of fuel that you put in your Escalade to drive your kids to school; but the reassuring voice on the telescreen says “Don’t be fooled: they don’t like us, because they don’t like our freedoms. And there is no need for you to think or open up your eyes because CNN’s a friend indeed and the BBC tells lies & diplomacy’s a lousy trick which many times we’ve tried, and after all, words are weapons of destruction. And fuel is a weapon of mass destruction And a chainsaw is a weapon of mass destruction The Department of the Interior is a weapon of mass destruction Albeit an inferior weapon of destruction. I drove by Los Alamos to fill my voting card but it got lost in the mail, although they did try hard to assure me of the coincidence while locking me behind bars because my thoughts were weapons of destruction. And dissent is a weapon of mass destruction Ecevit, he’s a weapon of mass destruction Uranium, that’s a catalyst to construction Although in certain peoples’ hands it just can’t be trusted. We can sit up disputing ironies until the hour is late but the starting point of foreign wars is made by Quaker State and stumbling through the pews do you dispute free will or fate? You’d be surprised at what you might discover: That religion is a weapon of mass destruction Indecision is a weapon of mass destruction Television is a weapon of mass destruction And derision is a weapon of destruction. Once the oil reserves run dry they’ll have to bomb us all and head into their bunkers waiting up nights for the call that tells them we’ve turned into carbon and the black gold’s back by fall, which will be pumped by a weapon of mass destruction. Whereupon they’ll stand in splendor at the turning of the leaves and leave their shoes behind for universal peace with their car keys and recharge all the batteries on their SUV’s which are indeed a weapon of mass destruction. That turn poor children into bodies buried bleeding in the sand obsolete though now replete of the tin in their dogtags which have been burnt and molded into coins and into aluminum cans which can be used as a Weapon of Mass Destruction. Because the coca plant’s a weapon of mass destruction And for all that, we’ve been bombing Columbia Taking their coffee beans to give them instructions On how to run the register at your Starbucks in the suburbs. I’m not sure of swords or ploughshares which is the worse concept Monsanto made the soybean sing and now with what is left of the fields to till and seeds to sow, because they’re half owned by us and the other half by the Anadarco trust. But of bombs and guns and butter there is no need to take action and split yourselves into groups of tribal warring factions. Knight Ridder runs with the big boys, baby, but they don’t run retractions and all of these are weapons of mass distraction.
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