Tuesday, March 6, 2012

Songs to Fight the Plutocracy By: "Corporate Domination"

From Erik Loomis at Lawyers, Guns and Money:

It is with great sadness that I have to write this obituary for the great Alaskan songwriter Buddy Tabor. It was only with my link to his song “3 Strikes You’re Out,” pointing out the hypocrisy of Rush Limbaugh that commenters notifying me that Tabor died last month of lung cancer at the age of 63.

A man who I believe was one of the 5 greatest living American songwriters in the early 21st century and nearly completely unknown outside of Alaska, I only knew of him because a good friend of mine moved to Skagway and sent me a tape of his amazing album “Abandoned Cars and Broken Hearts.” There are certain times in every music fanatic’s life when you hear something and are instantly arrested by it. This might happen to me every 2 or 3 years. Less than 10 times in my life. This was one of those times. I remember, I popped it on with another friend of mine over and he had the same reaction. I spread his music the best I could to various Albuquerque people, probably not more than a few, but I’m glad I was able to do so. I would have told people to buy his albums, but that wasn’t really possible. He wasn’t online and I never found a way to buy his albums. My friend in Skagway channeled them to me until he left; Buddy may have released another album after that but I have no way of knowing.

SNIP

Buddy could also write a mean political song, particularly later in his career as he, like many of us, became more angry at where the nation was heading. “Corporate Domination” is as good a song for Occupy as anything I’ve heard. A classic of the political genre if you ask me.


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