| "There weren't no depression, we always lived that way."
September 22, 2008
In this day of economic trouble, recession and the like, I bump up my post promoting this song from the great roots music band, Dread Clampitt, and offer a tribute to the song "Granny Brown."
Balder Saunders is in this band (cd for sale here in Products > Music). He's the son of Jack, a hero writer of mine (novel for sale here in the Products > Literature section). Granny Brown was his gramma. She raised a bunch of wild commercial fishermen types with their own boat in a bay in Panama City. For the band's first CD Balder wrote a tune for his gramma. It's a great one.
Of course the main thing is the lyrics. Altho, the tune is great as well. But we all know that the meaning of lyrics is hugely important in music. (We're not just killing time with this stuff, right?)
This song includes lines that go vaguely like this:
I asked her What about the depression? /
She said There weren't no such thing, we always lived that way /
We got our pride and our music /
We weren't supposed to have nothing /
So much fun to be had, quit your cryin and your fussin
Here's a link to it at an official bootleg server:
http://www.archive.org/details/dc2003-10-17.flac16
The song is listed a ways down.
Hopefully your computer is newer than mine and you can play a "flac" file---it's supposedly like a MP3.
Ah, here's another link---this one is an MP3 and it played for me. It's muddled but you can get the tune and some lyrics (2nd song in the list):
http://ia310137.us.archive.org/2/items/dc2006-01-28.flac16/dc2006-01-28d1t02_64kb.mp3
Of course if you think you MIGHT like a song that stands up so strong in the face of hard times, maybe you should just buy the CD from me! Or maybe there are other songs that express this sentiment better. If you know of any, please post them! It's a very apt type of song these days, I would think...
Some folks wonder that if gas goes higher and times get harder if more people will start doing more free culture things like singing and dancing or biking and walking and visiting with neighbors rather than going on chartered bus trips to casinos. Given where we live, Martha is pessimistic---she says there will just be a lot more discounted casino trips and coupons for bargain charter buses going to casinos. I was kinda thinking that, what with OYB being a leader in sustainable affordable folkway culture for almost 20 years that it might start finally standing out a bit more and become more popular as the consumer culture collapses. Martha says it's not likely---and in truth I've seen a steady readership of this website at about 15,000/month for the past few years. Quite good, but not growing in any surprising way even as the media tries to make hay off of its latest hysteria. Maybe my scene just doesn't connect to the mass scene in any way, for better or worse.
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