Shawnee thinks JollyDogs has a pretty darn good stereo. I concur and to celebrate purchased a $9.95/mo subscription to Spotify so we could download music to play offline. The fine print claims internet access is required every 30 days so the company can determine which artists get paid royalties based upon what we play, and if one doesn’t check in the account is suspended. I took that to mean the songs would all disappear from our phones, but it hasn’t happened so I’m tickled pink. When we’re not working on our guitar playing skills, we’re playing the stereo, something we’ve already mastered.
Spotify’s AI algorithms have helped me discover artists that I may have heard but didn’t know the band name. Perhaps for obvious reasons we both like music with a lot of acoustic guitar picking. Welcome to “The Lumineers” and “Zac Brown Band”. Completely different kinds of music, love ‘em both.
Growing up during the Vietnam war, much of the rock and folk music was blatantly of the war protest genre. Not too long ago the Dixie Chicks were ostracized by a portion of “red blooded ‘mericans” for their protest of W’s adventurist war efforts. I admire them for having the cojones to stand up for what they believed in but in our modern age of nasty discourse they got death threats for their views. Funnily enough Zac Brown Band released a song back during W’s wars that, when I listen to it, was a not so subtle poke at the public supporting the war. It’s entitled “Chicken Fried”, a great two-steppin’ rockabilly tune with a couple of lines that get my attention,. First “there’s no dollar sign on peace of mind”, and the more interesting one, “salute the ones who die, the ones who give their lives, so we don’t have to sacrifice all the things we love, like our chicken fried, and cold beer on a Friday night, a pair of jeans that fit just right, and our radio on”. The song continues with more serious sentiments, but essentially thanks soldiers for going to die so the rest of us won’t be inconvenienced. Seems ironic to me.
The Lumineers have song called “Charlie Boy”. It’s about the lead singer’s uncle who he never met, a young man with big plans and ambitions of becoming a doctor. JFK was president then and made one of his many beautiful and inspirational speeches with the now-famous line “ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country”. JFK inspired Charlie to put his plans aside and serve his country, so he joined up, went to Vietnam and got himself killed just like a lot of other Americans. The singer notes how much he admired the sacrifice of the uncle he never met, and he goes on to point out that “the words of our leaders, they really do matter”.
These days the American president does occasionally make a speech that inspires some of the people. It would seem that he is such a polarizing personality that those who love him would almost offer him their virginal daughters, while those that hate him find fault with everything his administration does. The liberal media propaganda machine jumps on every asinine tweet and public statement such as one during a recent Covid-19 press briefing where he seemed to believe he had dictatorial authority. The conservative media propaganda machine pretended nothing ever happened. Thoughtful journalists who note his behavior and statements and perhaps comment that nobody would willingly raise their children to behave like him earn labels like “liberal do-gooder”, “fake news”, etc.
Barak Obama was quite the orator, as was JFK and Ronald Reagan. They all understood the power of words and stories just like The Lumineers and Zac Brown Band. The current US president understands the power of bullying, is a master manipulator and ensures he’s the elephant in the 24/7 news cycle room.
The best news is that we cruisers have to try to really hard to even hear about his latest flatulence or the propaganda machine’s reactions. Self-isolation has some real benefits.
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