2) Stupid song
3) The most dangerous woman
4) Stupid Pledge
5) Direct Action
6) Pie in the sky
7) Shoot or stab them
8) Lawrence
9) Bread and roses
10) why come
11) Unless you are free
12)I will not obey
13) the long memory
14) the silence that is me
15) Joe Hill
16) the saw playing musician
17) dump the bosses
18 the international
Released in 1999
RBR-015
joe hill - (instrumental)
stupid's song
oh i have led a good life, full of peace and quiet,
i shall have an old age full of rum and riot
i have been a good lad, careful and artistic
i shall have an old age coarse and anarchistic
once i paid my taxes and followed any rule
banker, boss and bureaucrat found me a willing tool
i voted democratic and paid the church it's due
now all those swine will have to find another chump to screw
of interest, banks and credit, insurance, tax and rent,
of lawyers, agents, generals and clerics i repent
with this for corporations and scores for those elected
oh i will be an old bum, loved but unrespected
the most dangerous woman
i was traveling through illinois when i was invited to stop and sing at a memorial,
there in the little town of mount olive. now who of note in american history is
buried in the cemetery of mount olive, illinois? i'll give you a hint: it was a
woman. it was the union miner's cemetery... d'you have it yet? mary harris,
harris jones... mother jones. it's hard for the mind to encompass a life that
embraced the presidencies between andrew jackson and herbert hoover. why,
when mother jones was a little girl, there were people still alive who remembered
the revolutionary war and she died on the eve of the new deal. her millinery shop
burned down in the chicago fire and she had heard abraham lincoln speak in
person. mostly though, mother jones was the "miner's friend." down in
workers, the miners; mother jones had already organized their wives and led
them over the snow-covered game trails down into the holes where, armed with
mops and brooms, they drove the scabs out of the coal pits. now mother jones
wasn't an organizer, she was an agitator; which meant often enough she was
hated as much by the organizers as by the bosses. one time mother jones was
out in colorado, at the great ludlow strike. now that was the strike to enforce the
eight-hour day which the state of colorado had made a law, but they couldn't
enforce it 'cause rockefeller owned the militia. now, the governor had promised
not to send the militia into the coalfields, but he lied and he did. mother jones
was in the union hall down there in ludlow and word came that the militia had
entered the coalfields. well she leapt up and she screamed, "let's go get the sons
of bitches!" and she stormed out. she didn't look to see if anybody was following
her; nobody was following her. she just flounced up the road alone and
confronted the militia. and that was the year that president theodore roosevelt
called mother jones "the most dangerous woman in america" and she was
eighty-three years old. that's some kind of dangerous
stupid's pledge
i pledge allegiance to the flag of the multinational corporations and to the profit
for which they stand; one interlocking directorate under no government:
indivisible, with monopoly and cheap labor for all!
direct action
pie in the sky
shoot or stab them
lawrence
bread and roses
as we come marching in the beauty of the day,
a million darkened kitchens, a thousand mill lofts gray
are touched with all the radiance that a sudden sun discloses,
for the people hear us singing, "bread and roses, bread and roses."
as we come marching, marching, we battle too for men,
for they are women's children, and we mother them again,
our lives shall not be sweated from birth until life closes;
hearts starve as well as bodies; give us bread but give us roses!
as we come marching, marching, unnumbered women dead
go crying through our singing their ancient cry for bread.
small art and love and beauty their drudging spirits knew.
yes, it is bread we fight for, but we fight for roses too!
as we come marching, marching, we bring the greater days.
the rising of the woman means the rising of the race.
no more the drudge and idler - ten that toil where one reposes,
but a sharing of life's glories: bread and roses, bread and roses!
why come?
jack miller kept the senior citizens center for a long time up there in seattle,
washington... jack had spent most of his life in the forest as a logger or "timber
beast," they called 'em in those days 'cuz you were treated like an animal... there
were no bunk houses... you called sleepin' on the ground with his fellow workers
with their wet clothes in the rainforest piled in a heap next to the fire hopin' that
they would be dry by the time to go to work the next day... they spoke many
different languages in the forest and they could hardly talk to each other it was
just like lawrence... they said most of 'em had never been to school... ahhh, most
of 'em couldn't read or write... jack miller could remember the verona, and there
was a shingle-weavers strike up at everett, washington called the everett
massacre - it's another one of those that didn't make it into the history books -
the wobblies they chartered a steam launch called the verona and they had it
sailed up there to everett to bring in strike relief and as the boats sailed into the
pier, sheriff mcgray had ringed the whole pier with armed deputies - he just
deputized every drunk in every bar in town and put a rifle in their hand. well, they
had surrounded the boat and when they lowered the gang plank, sheriff mcgray
walked to the end of it and said, "who are your leaders here?" and they shouted
back with one voice, "we are all leaders here." well, that scared the tar out of the
law you know and they began shooting. those deputies began shooting. a lot of
those wobblies were killed. some of the deputies were killed in the crossfire
though. so when the wobblies - those that survived - made it back to seattle,
they were arrested and they were thrown in the snohomish county jail on a
charge of murder. the whole bunch of 'em. well, that jail was an all steel jail - it
was the newest affair - all made out of steel. it had just barely opened so the heat
wasn't on and there was no blankets and you couldn't get any smokes. so those
wobblies they passed a note from one cell block to the other and then by
common consent, the next day they were all gathered in the middle of each cell
block and when the noon whistle blew, they began to jump up and down
simultaneously, up and down, up and down, singing all the time and finally they
hit the resonating frequency of that jail and cracked the south wall... they broke
the jail. and jack miller said, "thus proving everlastingly what a union is - a way to
get things done together that you can't get done alone." now jack said, "you
know, we didn't have any intellectual life. we lived in our emotions. we were
passionate people and we were comfortable in our emotions. we made
commitments to struggle - emotionally - commitments for which there are no
words, but those commitments carried us through fifty, sixty years of struggle."
he said, "you show me people who make those same commitments intellectually
and i don't know where they'll be next week." kind of stern, isn't it? well, he said,
"armed only with our sense of degradation as human beings, we came together
and organized and changed the condition of our lives. now this is the hard thing,"
he said, "why can't you young people with all you've got do the same thing?"
(ani/julie)
mmmm... i wonder why ...us young people ...can't do like they did. yeah yeah,
why? why do you think..
why can't us young people... why come... why come... why come us young
people... can't do like they did... yeah why... why do think us young people can't
do like he did... why come we can't do like he did... why come...like i
dunno...why come you young people can't get off our butts and do like they
did... julie wolf... why come...why come... why come.. why come
unless you are free
i will not obey
the long memory
the silence that is me
joe hill
the saw playing musician
dump the bosses
the internationale