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Brown: Rage sings in many keys

Published May 6, 2006 at midnight

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The Neil Young song Ohio is considered the gold standard of modern protest music.

The story has it that David Crosby showed Young the famous Newsweek cover of a female student bent over the body of one of the four slain protesters at Kent State in 1970.

Young pulled out a guitar and wrote the song on the spot, raging, "We're finally on our own . . . four dead in Ohio." Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young recorded it within 24 hours and the single, backed with Find the Cost of Freedom, reached stores eight days later.

It seemed cutting-edge at the time, but it really was just a throwback to minstrels in earlier times - you find out what's happening in the world, put your spin on it and turn it to song.

Young has done it again with a concept album, Living With War, available online now and in stores on Tuesday. Set to rock guitar reminiscent of Young's best hard-rock tunes on Rust Never Sleeps or Ragged Glory, it explores Young's thoughts on what he sees, reads and lives concerning the war in Iraq and the state of the nation.

Much is being made of Young's album because of the track Let's Impeach the President. Set to a tune evocative of Steve Goodman's City of New Orleans, it is an anti-Bush screed, citing wire-tapping, lying, religious divisiveness and other alleged misdeeds as reasons to remove the president from office.

But the rest of the album isn't the diatribe you'd think, based on that track. Throughout the course of the album, Young looks at life during wartime from a variety of angles.

• Flags of Freedom cops another tune, this time Bob Dylan's Chimes of Freedom (which Young acknowledges with a shout-out in the song); it's a look at liberty and what it means.

• Families honors those affected or left behind during war.

• The Restless Consumer explores our national need to consume, whether it's good for us or not.

• Roger and Out is a moving tribute to every soldier who has ever given his or her life for this country.

• The disc ends with a 100-voice choir singing America the Beautiful. You can disagree with his message, but by disc's end you can't doubt the Canadian-born Young's concern for his adopted country.

Young is getting the most attention, but an avalanche of other songs are coming out about the war and other current events. (Early in the war, many songs came out from the likes of Toby Keith and Darryl Worley with a more conservative outlook; I've been hard-pressed to find new examples of music supporting the way the country is going. If you've got some, please e-mail me the information and we'll do a follow-up.)

Eight days for Ohio was impressive, but technology has moved on. Bruce Springsteen trumped that handily, thanks to the Internet. With his new We Shall Overcome: The Seeger Sessions freshly in stores with some pointed choices of folk songs about war and loss, Springsteen took it a step further. He began performing a song that wasn't on the album, How Can a Poor Man Stand Such Times and Live?, an old folk piece written about the stock market crash of 1929. He updated the lyrics, though, to reflect modern New Orleans and the ongoing devastation there: "There's bodies floatin' on Canal and the levees gone to Hell . . . Them who's got got out of town / And them who ain't got left to drown."

The band performed it at its tour-rehearsal shows in Asbury Park, N.J., and crowd reaction was so great that he pulled a live version and put it on his Web site on April 27. Fans consider it some of Springsteen's finest work in years.

The Flaming Lips recently took the approach of songs that are antiwar, but more circumspect and philosophical, less specific. Springsteen and Young both reject that notion and apparently aren't worried about leaving "timeless" classics (though one could argue that Young's Ohio and Campaigner are both timeless despite topical references in both songs to Richard Nixon).

The Dixie Chicks are back, unbowed by the firestorm they suffered for making comments critical of the president several years back. Not Ready to Make Nice is a comment on the politics of personal destruction. In the video, the Chicks' white dresses are smeared with black ooze, and the lyrics address the death threats the trio got in the wake of the controversy.

"They say time heals everything, but I'm still waiting," Natalie Maines sings. "It's a sad, sad story when a mother will teach / her daughter that she ought to hate a perfect stranger / how in the world can the words that I've said / send somebody over the edge / that they'd write me a letter saying I'd better shut up and sing or my life will be over."

Whether they've been right or wrong, musicians in modern times have continued to be topical in their music, with Midnight Oil often leading the way. Anti-Flag's new album For Blood and Empire finds the punk band lashing out with songs such as The Press Corpse and Depleted Uranium is a War Crime.

R.E.M.'s Michael Stipe released In the Sun, another New Orleans benefit disc getting wide airplay, after going down to the Gulf Coast months after the hurricane and seeing the vast devastation that still exists.

Paul Simon has had a long history of songs reflecting national concerns, particularly Bridge Over Troubled Water and the touching American Tune, the latter summing up the uncertainty the nation felt as the Vietnam War staggered to an end.

Simon's upcoming album, Surprise, is now partially streaming online at paulsimon.com. Songs such as Outrageous and Wartime Prayers address topical issues, with lines like "It's outrageous to line your pockets off the misery of the poor" and "People hungry for the voice of God hear lunatics and liars."

It's a debate that's not going to end soon. But if nothing else, Denver can be extremely proud of its role in politics. The Dave Matthews Band finally announced what it was going to do with the $1.5 million raised at the Hurricane Katrina benefit at Red Rocks last summer – the one where Red Rocks, the city, virtually every worker, etc., donated their time. That money will be used to build more than 300 homes for musicians in the Upper Ninth Ward of New Orleans.

While the national bickering continues, we should be proud that we're one of the communities that made a tangible difference in a time of great suffering.

Songs with a point

Topical music available online:

• Neil Young: Living With War (in its entirety at

• Dixie Chicks: the single Not Ready to Make Nice (audio and video at

• Bruce Springsteen: the live track How Can a Poor Man Stand Such Times and Live? (www.brucespring steen.net).

• The Flaming Lips: At War With the Mystics (album streaming at www.flaming lips.com).

• Paul Simon: Surprise (four songs from the album streaming at www.paul simon.com).

• Michael Stipe: In the Sun (download at iTunes).

• Anti-Flag: For Blood and Empire (two songs streaming at www.anti-flag.com)

Mark Brown is the popular music critic. or 303-892-2674