Sing a Song of Freedom

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Sing a Song of Freedom
by Erik Jay

I am just about in the middle of my original-music CD project, and I just finished writing the lyrics for one of the last three tunes (we record 'em in batches). Now, inasmuch as I am a Christian man committed to a certain worldview, there is usually a message of love or hope or renewal in my songs. Okay, fine.

But the lyrics that came along for this latest song were different. (Full disclosure: God writes the music AND the lyrics and gives them to me pretty much finished. I am more of a funnel in this process than anything.) These new lyrics seemed to derive from my other main self-tagging adjective: libertarian. And this got me to thinking about the dearth of sensible, rational, well-thought-out lyrics in contemporary music.

Sure, you've got your gospel artists reminding everyone Who God Is and What He's Doing in our lives, but I was thinking of the secular music segment, and the mainstream one at that. What are the lyrical (sic) messages that we, as a society, get from that cacophonous buffet? And where are the conservative, or libertarian, or individualist, or anti-collectivist lyrics?

No one needs any more evidence of the sorry state of modern songwriting than the playlist at any major-market radio station; tune in to the AM or FM powerhouses in your neck of the woods, whether rap or dance or techno or alternative or rock or who-knows-what, and you'll get pretty much the same batch of tunes as I do on L.A.'s diversified outlets. And we don't need to spend more than one pudgy paragraph summing up the current state of affairs in pop music lyric writing.

You have your cop-killing misogynists of the gangsta rap school, where all authority is evil and all women are whores; you have your gaggle of tra-la-la Lolitas (Britney and Courtney and Cristina and Hoozerface and Wutzername) winking and slinking and coyly singing their featherweight fables of sunny seduction and guiltless sensuality; you have your angry troubadours and troubadourettes across a number of musicologically primitive genres, like Tracy Chapman and Bruce Springsteen and Sheryl and Melissa and all the rest, correcting the benighted members of our Sick Society with profound pronouncements carried on their weighty warbles; and then there are your self-consciously Wizened Souls, like Sting and Paul Simon and these U2 characters, who find it incomprehensible that anyone young or hip or aware or intelligent would have any opinion to the right of Ted Kennedy. Did I leave anyone out?

Of course. I left out a lot, but I served up enough to make a meal. That is, you know where I'm going with this, and you have enough examples of platitudinous high-school poetry, both in the above paragraph and in your own memory, to sustain the following generalization: most pop music lyrics that touch on issues philosophical, or political, or spiritual, will approach them from the left. And we're not just talking Bob Dylan here, you know? Yes, I'm sure you do.

Well, okay then: Where are the liberty-lovers' lyrics? Without going back to Sousa, or quoting favorite hymns, or dredging up Broadway show tunes, what can we listen to in the last generation of pop/rock/jazz music that won't insult our political sensibilities? Some of you who know the group I'm going to name may not even have gleaned the libertarian, even patriotic, slant of the words; others of you may have heard the group's name, but not realized what their message was; others of you may not like the slick, funky jazz style of the music. But to everyone I heartily recommend... Steely Dan.

Whoa! A group named after the "Naked Lunch" protagonist's marital aid? What?!

With these eccentrics, I saw (heard) it early on, in a song from one of their first albums in 1972 or '73 -- and even at that time I recognized it as being WAY out of the mainstream, message-wise. To a relaxed little Latin beat, with a spare jazz-combo arrangement of piano, bass, guitar, and drums, came these lyrics:

A world become one, of salads and sun -- only a fool would say that.
A boy with a plan, a natural man, wearing a white Stetson hat.
Put down that gun, be gone! There's no one to fire upon.
If he's holding it high, he's telling a lie.
I heard it was you talking about a world where all is free.
It just couldn't be -- and only a fool would say that.

Holy cow! A far cry from "We Are the World" with its implicit, explicit, and unmistakable message of global governance, wealth redistribution, and rule by (sensitive and nurturing) elites.

Another great Steely Dan tune, "Babylon Sisters" from the 1978 "Aja" album, had this to say about young airheads with unregenerate musical tastes:

Drive west on Sunset to the sea. Turn that jungle music down,
just until we're out of town.
This is no one-night stand, it's a real occasion.
Close your eyes and we'll be there.
It's everything they say, the end of a perfect day,
distant lights from across the bay.
Babylon sisters, shake it.
So fine, so young, tell me I'm the only one.

Yikes. Not only are Donald Fagen and Walter Becker good musicians and writers, they're guys who don't take themselves so darn seriously. Think about Mr. Heavy Message, Bruce Springsteen, poking fun at HIMself; he's out on tour right now doing a song about that Amadour Diallo guy who got shot up by the New York cops, and we can surmise that he's not giving the issue a balanced treatment. The song reportedly starts with 41 drum slaps and the number "41" chanted -- 41 times of course. Get it? And this guy is called a "genius" by the PC "critics" in our national media. A genius who still hasn't learned a fourth chord to add at least some variety to the stock, standard, uninspired ghosts of R&B tunes past that he calls his original "compositions". Self-parody? For the "musical conscience of his generation"? No way!

Not only do they mock big government, Fagen and Becker mock their own aging egos and the radio culture that enriched them:

Hey, nineteen (19-year-old girl), that's Aretha Franklin.
She don't remember queen of soul.
Hard times befallen soul survivor.
She thinks I'm crazy but I'm just growing old.
Hey, nineteen, we can't dance together,
we can't talk at all.

In "Don't Take Me Alive" -- another '70's tune that was way ahead of its time lyrically and musically -- we get the idea that the Steely Dan boys had more than a passing acquaintance with the militia movement:

Agents of the law and luckless pedestrians,
I know you're out there with rage in your eyes and a megaphone.
Saying "All is forgiven. Mad dog, surrender!"
How can I answer? A man of my mind can do anything.
I'm a bookkeeper's son, I don't want to hurt no one,
but I shot my old man back in Oregon -- don't take me alive.
Got a case of dynamite, I could hold out here all night.
Well, I shot my old man back in Oregon -- don't take me alive.

There are scores of great songs and many, many individualistic and anti-statist lyrics in the Steely Dan discography. If you have some of their records, you know that; in fact, I haven't run across many serious musical folks who have only "one" or "some" of the Steely Dan records. If you have one, and like it, you will end up with ALL of them. Like I did.

First of all, know this: The best musicians in the biz are on these dates. Everyone in the music business has a very, very high regard for Steely Dan; the stock answer among the cognoscenti when someone asks "How do I learn how to produce records?" is "Listen to Steely Dan."

From the political standpoint, I couldn't recommend any of their records over any other. However, my personal opinion is that "Katy Lied" is the ultimate early-to-mid-years session, and "Aja" and "Gaucho" are the later-date blockbusters. Then, too, the brand-new "Two Against Nature" would be a great first Dan album for the uninitiated. All of their records, new or old, feature first-rate musicianship, original compositions, wry and intelligent lyrics.

This is popular music the way the term was understood in George Gershwin's day -- the highest level of art and craft, arranged and packaged and delivered to an eager, informed, quality-conscious populace. Most pop music is eminently disposable nowadays; Steely Dan records are keepers, and you will be astonished to hear material from, say, 1978 ("Peg") that could be released today and STILL sound ahead of its time!

Anyway, yes, Virginia, there is music that is pro-individual, pro-free-markets, pro-American, and everything else. You just have to look for it these days -- or read the "American Partisan" for cultural commentary that will point the way.

Full circle now: I was writing these new lyrics, remember? And the tune that they accompany has a funky, upbeat, infectious Steely Dan-ish feel to it, so I went and wrote Christian/libertarian lyrics for it. I'll give you the first verse and chorus, then you can pay to hear the rest, oh, sometime around September:

I'm not Superman, but I'd sure like to play him on TV.
Souped-up circumstance, a rodomontade reality.
Buffed-up, bullet-proof, never falls to sinister conspiracy.
Launchpad on the roof, supersonic sandwichboard for liberty.
Don't you tell me how to live my life & I won't tell you what you gotta do.
You know that no one here is qualified to rule the other members of the zoo.
We really don't need the politicians telling us that one size fits all.
We all are individuals, we have to answer our own call.
I'm not Superman, and I sure as heck ain't Santa here to bless you.
I'm not Superman, I'm not going to fly down to your rescue.

All right! Jamming with liberty! I hope you hear the music that your worldview deserves, friends, and to that end I do recommend Steely Dan. Now, until next time, go out there and do some good.